Author Archives: Stephen Henry Miller

More Progressive Tolerance

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Log Cabin Republican James Driscoll writes that his support of Trump cost him a 15-year long position as political consultant to AIDS Healthcare Foundation, and that his landscaping was vandalized because he put up a Trump sign.

He recounts that Juan Hernandez, a fellow Log Cabin Republican, was attacked by anti-Trump thugs at a Trump rally, leaving him bloodied with a concussion and broken nose.

Alas, this kind of response to Trump supporters isn’t uncommon: Navy Vet’s House Torched in Florida, Vandalized with Anti-Trump Graffiti, which also reports, “Investigators are looking into possible connections with anti-Trump graffiti that was sprayed on two mobile homes near Mango, Florida, earlier this month. One of those homes was set on fire, too.”

More. From Austin Bay:

[S]ince the election Americans have seen a lot of broken glass, witnessed beatings and suffered hours-long traffic and business disruptions within their cities. … Peaceful protests? No, the demonstrators vandalize and destroy. They have two goals: intimidating people and sustaining the mainstream media lie that Donald Trump is dangerous.

There’s an awful lot of projecting of their own inner demons outward, allowing them to engage in ritualized virtue-signaling. Screaming obscenities while carrying signs reading “Love Trumps Hate” is the obvious example of the lack of self-reflection regarding their behavior.

A disturbing encounter between two young anti-Trumpists and a man wearing a “Build the Wall” t-shirt. Feel the love? (I don’t support “the wall,” by the way, but this encounter is revealing in terms of who is boiling over with rage and engaging in mocking condescension. And it’s not atypical.)

In Too Much Stigma, Not Enough Persuasion, Conor Friedersdorf argues that “the coalition that opposes Donald Trump needs to get better at persuading its fellow citizens and winning converts, rather than leaning so heavily on stigmatizing those who disagree with them.” You think?

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Progressive ‘Tolerance”

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HGTV ‘Fixer Upper’ couple Chip and Joanna Gaines find themselves in the liberal media’s crosshairs for attending a church that has traditional view of homosexuality. Twitchy has a roundup of the tweets that link to the publications’ articles, including these:

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I liked this response:


And this one:

Perhaps for their faith crime, the state will force them to fix up a house for a gay wedding.

More. Obviously, the liberal news sites are looking to stoke a controversy along the lines of the Benham Brothers who, two years ago, had their upcoming “Flip It Forward” show on HGTV (helping “lower-income families purchase fixer uppers and transform them into dream homes”) dropped after an outcry and boycott threats over the brothers’ faith-based opposition to same-sex marriage and abortion. But Jason and David Benham were vocal about their views, which the Gaineses are not (if that should make a difference). The witch-hunt mentality of the liberal inquisitors also brings to mind the 2014 resignation of Mozilla’s co-founder and CEO Brendan Eich amid outrage following the discovery that he had contributed $1,000 in 2008 to a winning California ballot initiative against same-sex marriage.

But all Chip And Joanna Gaines did was go to church.

Furthermore. Guy Benson weighs in. Note: his post includes a tweet from a Stephen Miller who is not me.

Apparently, from some of the comments, this kind of mean-spirited, ritualized shaming is just a tempest in a teapot because the left is targeting conservatives. Nothing to see, move along, boy Miller is stupid (a recurring theme) for believing this might be of interest to anyone reading a site called CultureWatch.

And more. Not much buzz about this from the trendy lefty sites but the right has noticed (in responding to the left’s manufactured Gaines controversy): Likely DNC Chair Rep. Keith Ellison’s Imam: Homosexuality Is ‘Not What God Intended’.

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Castro’s Dead. Good

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From the facebook page of libertarian movie-review site Miss Liberty’s Film & Documentary World:

Fidel Castro is dead. A great film (free online) to remember him by is “Improper Conduct,” on the subject of Castro’s gulags for gay people. He hated gays and decided to “get rid of them,” in the manner that socialists do such things.

From Foreign Policy two years ago:

“Though the Castro family is no longer sending LGBT people to labor camps as they did in the 1960s and 1970s, the only permitted LGBT movement in Cuba is the official, state-run one.”

From 2016 Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein on Twitter:

Michael C. Moynihan responds to Stein:

More. As Cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas describes in his memoir Before Night Falls:

Homosexuals were confined to the two worst wards of El Morro: these wards were below ground at the lowest level, and water seeped into the cells at high tide. It was a sweltering place without a bathroom. Gays were not treated like human beings, they were treated like beasts. They were the last ones t come out for meals, so we saw them walk by, and the most insignificant incident was an excuse to beat them mercilessly. The soldiers guarding us, who called themselves combatientes, were army recruits sent here as a sort of punishment; they found some release for their rage by taking it out on the homosexuals. Of course, nobody called them homosexuals; they were called fairies, faggots, queers, or at beset, gays. The wards for fairies were really the last circle of hell.

And let us not fail to remember that other icon of the Cuban revolution, Che Guevara. And more here.

And yes, Donald Trump got this one right:

“Fidel Castro’s legacy is one of firing squads, theft, unimaginable suffering, poverty and the denial of fundamental human rights,” [Trump’s] statement said. “While Cuba remains a totalitarian island, it is my hope that today marks a move away from the horrors endured for too long, and toward a future in which the wonderful Cuban people finally live in the freedom they so richly deserve.”

Trump added: “Though the tragedies, deaths and pain caused by Fidel Castro cannot be erased, our administration will do all it can to ensure the Cuban people can finally begin their journey toward prosperity and liberty.”

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Religious Exemptions: Just Like Segregation?

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Proposed legislation that would exempt religious nonprofit organizations from an Obama executive order requiring government contractors to follow LGBT nondiscrimination policies is on hold, but the ACLU and its allies are gearing up for battle on behalf of forcing Catholic charities to facilitate adoptions by same-sex couples because, you know, Jim Crow.

As the Wall Street Journal reports:

“What you’ve seen since the election is people see this as a line-in-the-sand moment,” said Ian Thompson, a spokesman for the American Civil Liberties Union. “This is an opportunity to really say, ‘No, we’re not going to allow our taxpayer dollars to be used to fund discrimination and target vulnerable communities across the country.’ ”

Supporters say the exemptions are needed to protect religious groups who help the government through their work with veterans, refugees, the homeless and others. In some cases, religious groups may be the only ones offering those services, they say.

A more-constructive progressive/LGBT movement would see the value of allowing exemptions for religious nonprofits in that the advocates would still get 95% of what they want—the government on record outlawing sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination by contractors—while showing some flexibility for services provided by faith-based groups. But no dice.

It’s possible soon-to-be-president Trump will rescind the order and/or replace it with a version that includes an exemption for religious groups. If he does so, or if he doesn’t and Congress moves ahead with its measure, progressive activists will fight it tooth and nail, because all or nothing serves their mobilization/fundraising agenda.

That’s also why activists will never allow any LGBT anti-discrimination bill to move forward if it includes exemptions for faith-based groups, even though Trump might be willing to sign such a measure. But having Trump sign an LGBT anti-discrimination law would be progressives’ worst nightmare, and they will do whatever it takes to prevent that from happening.

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Losers: The Culture Warriors

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It was a bad year for culture-war zealots. As noted below, Oregon labor commissioner Brad Avakian, prosecutor of people whose faith isn’t secular-progressivism of the statist/authoritarian variety, lost big-time his race for Oregon secretary of state. He thought driving a mom-and-pop bakery out of business because its proprietors declined to bake a wedding cake for two lesbians, while offering to find another baker to do so (as it would violate their religious beliefs to participate in a same-sex wedding) would be his winning ticket. Wrong.

In North Carolina, it looks like Gov. Pat McCrory, who pushed through a law requiring the use of bathrooms in conformity with one’s birth certificate in government buildings and public schools (thereby overturning a newly passed Charlotte anti-discrimination ordinance) has lost, or might just barely squeak through after a recount.

Just two examples, but I think it’s indicative of the national mood. Sexuality and religion culture-war instigators were not in favor this year, whether on the pro- or anti-LGBT side. And that’s a welcome development.

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How Identity Politics Sunk Liberalism

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The Washington Times editorializes on election winners and losers. Excerpt:

The most deserving loser of all was one Brad Avakian, the Oregon official who fined a baker and his wife $135,000 for declining to bake a wedding cake for two lesbians, because it would violate their Christian beliefs to participate in a same-sex wedding. The bakers offered to find someone else to bake the cake. Paying the fine drove them out of business, and Mr. Avakian counted on the publicity to assure him a career in higher politics, and he ran for Oregon secretary of state. He was trounced by an opponent who was the first Republican to win a statewide race in Oregon in 14 years. Not even a doughnut hole for Mr. Avakian.

This week of Thanksgiving, I’m thankful for that outcome.

On a wider note, an op-ed in the New York Times by Trump critic Mark Lilla calls out liberals’ obsession with identity politics and division over the common principles that bring us together as Americans. He writes:

Hillary Clinton…tended on the campaign trail to lose that large vision and slip into the rhetoric of diversity, calling out explicitly to African-American, Latino, L.G.B.T. and women voters at every stop. This was a strategic mistake. If you are going to mention groups in America, you had better mention all of them. If you don’t, those left out will notice and feel excluded. Which, as the data show, was exactly what happened with the white working class and those with strong religious convictions. Fully two-thirds of white voters without college degrees voted for Donald Trump, as did over 80 percent of white evangelicals. …

We need a post-identity liberalism, and it should draw from the past successes of pre-identity liberalism. Such a liberalism would concentrate on widening its base by appealing to Americans as Americans and emphasizing the issues that affect a vast majority of them. It would speak to the nation as a nation of citizens who are in this together and must help one another. As for narrower issues that are highly charged symbolically and can drive potential allies away, especially those touching on sexuality and religion, such a liberalism would work quietly, sensitively and with a proper sense of scale. (To paraphrase Bernie Sanders, America is sick and tired of hearing about liberals’ damn bathrooms.)

It’s a nice idea, but I wouldn’t count on it happening.

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Faith and Freedom Can Get Along Just Fine

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Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, writes:

Our laws can promote freedom from discrimination alongside freedom of religion. An extreme approach that believes one side wins only if the other side loses, that would veto any affirmation of existing protections, will produce nothing but discord and resentment. What we need instead is compromise and good faith, on both sides.

Sound a lot like what Jonathan Rauch has been saying.

I’ll note that this was written as the GOP took the presidency and maintained its majorities in the Senate and House, so no, it’s not an argument being made from political weakness.

[Added: I understand the response “Sure, now they want to compromise,” but activists have stated for 20 years that their goal was to pass sexual orientation (and, more recently, gender identity) nondiscrimination protections, and now there’s a GOP president who might actually support and sign a reasonable bill. So staunch opposition to religious exemptions and requiring that the existing Religious Freedom Restoration Act (signed by Bill Clinton) be excluded from applying to any such measure—as the Human Rights Campaign and others are demanding—is not a strategy that seeks to accomplish anything except to maintain the political standoff so useful in fundraising appeals.]

A win-win compromise—LGBT legal protections with reasonable and traditional exemptions for religious belief, especially among small, independent service providers—would be in the best interest of everyone except for activists whose power and prestige is based on perpetuating the culture wars.

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Trump and LGBT Issues: Beyond the Fear-Mongering

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Walter Olson, a former Independent Gay Forum contributing author, shares his expectations about what’s ahead for LGBT issues in a Trump administration—and, tangentially, on the obtuseness of left-liberal LGBT political groups. [Update: a slightly revised and more accessible version was published Nov. 13 in the New York Post.] Excerpts:

• Freedom to marry is not going anywhere. The Supreme Court, even after two or three Trump appointments, is unlikely to reverse the outcomes of Windsor and Obergefell unless public opinion itself turns against those outcomes, which I do not believe it will.

• The plans of organized gay groups for sweeping new legislation are largely a dead letter. They will not admit that it was a mistake to have pulled support for the possibly enactable ENDA in favor of the overreaching Equality Act. (For reasons I have written about elsewhere, I myself favor neither of these bills.)

• Following the ACLU’s lead, organized LGBT groups will go on refusing to acknowledge any legitimate role whatsoever for religious or conscience exemptions in discrimination law and will decline to enter any negotiations to amend, refine, or otherwise improve measures like the so-called First Amendment Defense Act (FADA). That will in turn increase the danger that Congress will pass some version that is bad, unfair, or impractical.

• There will be at least one surprise that would ordinarily be seen as positive, such as the first appointment of a gay person to a Cabinet or Supreme Court post.

I agree.

More. Walter adds in the Post version:

I was not a Trump backer in last week’s election, but you don’t have to support him to see the pattern. Since he began testing the political waters in the 1980s he has repeatedly and visibly distanced himself from the rut much of the GOP was mired in on this set of issues.

In his acceptance speech in August, when GOP conventioneers heartily applauded his pledge to “do everything in my power to protect our LGBTQ citizens from the violence and oppression” of jihadist ideology, he departed from his script: “I have to say, as a Republican, it is so nice to hear you cheering for what I just said. Thank you.”

By now it’s part of his brand, and no one cares more about protecting his brand than Donald Trump. I suspect to do that he’ll prove quite prepared to rein in the unwise impulses of some of his appointees.

And on “60 Minutes” Sunday night, CBS News reports:

Trump said after the Supreme Court ruling last year it’s the law of the land — and that he is “fine” with that being the case.

“It’s irrelevant because it was already settled. It’s law,” he said. “It was settled in the Supreme Court. I mean it’s done … these cases have gone to the Supreme Court. They’ve been settled. And– I th– I’m– I’m fine with that.”

This is only a surprise to those who got their news from the mainstream and LGBT media during the campaign, or read LGBT political groups’ dishonest fundraising appeals.

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Look Who’s Shut Out Now

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A fundraising email from Log Cabin Republicans’ President Gregory T. Angelo makes some salient points. Excerpt:

For the past three weeks, I’ve been in regular communication with the Trump Transition Team, the group tasked with organizing personnel and policy for our president-elect.

While Log Cabin Republicans was working to have a relationship with our nation’s incoming chief executive, the LGBT Left was busy demonizing Donald Trump and fundraising off of bogeymen. …

After working for decades against Republicans rather than with them and putting all their faith into the failed candidacy of Hillary Clinton, purportedly “non-partisan” LGBT advocacy groups now face GOP majorities in the House and Senate, and a Republican in the White House….

Collectively, LGBT advocacy organizations on the Left have staff in the hundreds. Budgets in the millions. And yet, they don’t have a single point of contact in the incoming Trump administration. …

While LGBT liberals were breathlessly lamenting this fact to the New York Times, Log Cabin Republicans was quietly working behind-the-scenes to ensure the advances in LGBT freedom we have made thus far remain secure and continue in a Trump administration. No one else is doing this.

If interested in donating, here’s a link.

The New York Times article referenced above reports:

The election of Donald J. Trump to the presidency sent panic through much of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community, which for the first time in eight years will face an administration hostile to its civil rights goals and a president-elect who has expressed a desire to reverse many of its political gains.

Jay Brown, a spokesman for the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest gay rights organization, said its office had received calls throughout the day on Wednesday from frightened people who wanted to know what the election results might mean for them.

And yet:

Mr. Trump has no reputation for personal animosity toward gay people, and the Log Cabin Republicans, a gay and lesbian political organization, congratulated him on his victory. He employed gay people in the Trump Organization, spent most of his life in socially liberal New York City, and surprised some Republicans this year when he said transgender people should “use the bathroom they feel is appropriate,” a view held by few others in the party.

But many L.G.B.T. leaders said they were unmoved by accounts of Mr. Trump’s personal tolerance.

Of course they were.

More. Given that the big LGBT political lobbies, which officially say they’re nonpartisan but operate as Democratic party auxiliaries, are now sending out their own fundraising appeals around their opposition to all things Trump and Republican, it’s worth repeating this observation from a recent post:

For more than two decades the Human Rights Campaign has failed to pass its signature legislative goal, which for most of that time was the Employee Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) and is now the Equality Act. This includes periods with both a Democratic president and Democratic congress (under Bill Clinton and Barack Obama), and periods with a Republican congress but enough GOP support to push ENDA through. What happened? Every time the measure was poised to pass, activist groups would insert some new provision that would lose majority support (adding transgender protections most prominently, and now the expansion to include public accommodations). Or, as with ENDA under Harry Reid’s Senate and Nancy Pelosi’s House, the Democrats would strangely fail to move the bill out of committee, with nary a protest from HRC—until Republicans were back in charge.

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The Price of Liberal Smugness

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All else aside, I think there’s much to be said about how the liberal-left has alienated itself from middle/working class, non-urban mid-America. In this Vox piece by Emmett Rensin, The smug style in American liberalism, I couldn’t agree more with this bit:

“Over 20 years, an industry arose to cater to the smug style. It began in humor, and culminated for a time in The Daily Show, a program that more than any other thing advanced the idea that liberal orthodoxy was a kind of educated savvy and that its opponents were, before anything else, stupid. The smug liberal found relief in ridiculing them.”

As I wrote in a Sept. 10 post on Hillary Clinton’s “basket of deplorables” speech at an LGBT fundraiser with Barbara Streisand:

Trump supporters, to a large extent, see failed Democratic policies on the economic and international fronts, and while many believe Trump to be flawed, they view him as a better choice than Hillary when it comes to reviving economic growth and defending American interests. But progressive Democrats can only see the world through a self-justifying lens of rote identity politics, so if you don’t believe in bigger, more intrusive government chipping away at economic prosperity and expressive freedom, you’re a bigot.

And as I noted in a follow-up post, “In the end, however, Hillary’s LGBT smugfest with Barbra may turn out to be one hell of a costly fundraiser.” I think clearly it was.

Related. Robby Saove at reason.com has some pertinent insights:
Trump Won Because Leftist Political Correctness Inspired a Terrifying Backlash:

I have warned that political correctness actually is a problem on college campuses, where the far-left has gained institutional power and used it to punish people for saying or thinking the wrong thing. And ever since Donald Trump became a serious threat to win the GOP presidential primaries, I have warned that a lot of people, both on campus and off it, were furious about political-correctness-run-amok—so furious that they would give power to any man who stood in opposition to it.

And post-election observations from “Hillbilly Elegy” author J.D. Vance on Life Outside the Liberal Bubble. He writes, “To suggest that Trump voters are worried about anything real is to invite scorn from certain corners of the mainstream media.”

Furthermore. Victor Davis Hanson writes:

Finally, the more Clinton Inc. talked about the Latino vote, the black vote, the gay vote, the woman vote, the more Americans tired of the same old identity politics pandering. What if minority bloc voters who had turned out for Obama might not be as sympathetic to a middle-aged, multimillionaire white woman? And what if the working white classes might flock to the politically incorrect populist Trump in a way that they would not to a leftist elitist like Hillary Clinton? In other words, the more Clinton played the identity politics card, the more she earned fewer returns for herself and more voters for Trump.

And Joan C. Williams writes in the Harvard Business Review:

Hillary Clinton, by contrast, epitomizes the dorky arrogance and smugness of the professional elite. The dorkiness: the pantsuits. The arrogance: the email server. The smugness: the basket of deplorables.

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