Civil Rights and Discrimination

Equality March: Separate Realities

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CNN reports:

Conservative gay Americans, for their part, view the march as a partisan event emphasizing “division far more than equality,” said Gregory T. Angelo, president of Log Cabin Republicans, a conservative LGBT group.

“For months now we’ve heard that Trump is going to ‘roll back’ advances made by the LGBT community, and time and again those rumors were proven to be unfounded,” he told CNN. “All of this chicken-littling has turned the self-styled ‘Resistance’ into little more than a hollow cliche.”

Gay rights activists, however, say Trump’s refusal to issue an official White House statement commemorating LGBT Pride Month — chosen by advocates to commemorate New York’s Stonewall uprising in 1969 — is symptomatic of the White House’s agenda for LGBT Americans. The march on Sunday will be an attempt to the let the Trump administration know that America’s LGBT community will not be ignored, they say.

Along similar lines:


Scott Shackford offers a reasoned assessment:

But Trump has notably not espoused antigay policy stances and has, in fact, resisted efforts to do so within his administration. So far, Trump is probably the most LGBT-friendly Republican president we’ve had.

That doesn’t mean that Trump supports the same policies that progressive LGBT leaders would like. That’s really the crux of the problem: Trump’s administration doesn’t want to use the federal government to advance anti-discrimination policies that cover LGBT people. His Department of Justice has withdrawn federal guidance ordering public schools to accommodate transgender students’ gender choices for bathrooms and other facilities.

Put in historical context, that’s a relatively mild decision, though it must feel awful for transgender students who are affected (and ultimately it may be decided by the courts, not Trump’s administration, anyway). Despite LGBT activists’ fears, the administration is not scaling back executive orders forbidding government contractors from engaging in LGBT discrimination. Life is still improving for LGBT people.

More.


Given the proximity of “Remember Pulse” and “F*ck Trump” signs at the Equality March, it’s as if Donald Trump, rather than homophobic jihadi Isalmism, was behind the Pulse nightclub massacre whose anniversary the March was helping to mark.

Added. The world as the LGBT left sees it: Via a commentary in The Advocate:

Trump quickly seized on the Pulse shooting in an attempt to further isolate Muslims and LGBTQ people from one another. … But the LGBTQ community never took the bait. Instead of broadbrush blaming of an entire religion for the act of one crazed individual, it locked arms with American Muslims in an incredible sign of unity.”

One crazed individual!

James Kirchick addresses this sort of response (in discussing Linda Sarsour’s Politics of Hate and the Pathos of Her Jewish Enablers) when he writes:

One sees this mentality at play in the ADL’s skirting the question of Islam entirely in its poll on European anti-Semitism, in the Obama administration’s repeated insistence that the people murdered at a Paris kosher supermarket by an avowed Islamist in 2015 were victims of a “random” assault on “a bunch of folks in a deli….”

More. Social conservatives are none too pleased.

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Administration Pride Messages Get No Respect

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More signs of the times where Republicans can’t gain any points with LGBT progressives no matter what they do.

This is typical of LGBT progressives, including the attack on Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, who isn’t an opponent of LGBT protections or marriage equality. Still, declare implacable opposition to the GOP then lambaste Republicans for not being more solicitous.

Flashback: The claim that Pence favored conversion therapy is fake news.

More.

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A Hateful Choice, But Respect Free Speech

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While I support demonstrating against a branch of the City University of New York (CUNY) for choosing as a commencement speaker Sharia law advocate and Palestinian terror-defender Linda Sarsour, demanding that she be disinvited plays into the hands of “progressive” opponents of free speech.

Aside from her advocacy for Sharia law, Sarsour, reports an Israeli news site:

is also an avowed anti-Zionist, having shared the stage with a terrorist murderer who killed two Jewish students in a supermarket bombing in Israel. Sarsour praised convicted PFLP terrorist Rasmea Odeh when the two addressed a left-wing conference in Chicago on April 2nd, saying she was “honored and privileged to be here in this space, and honored to be on this stage with Rasmea.”

While commencement speakers are overwhelmingly partisans on the left, and leftwing activists routinely and usually successfully demand that conservative commencement speakers be disinvited (or prevented from being heard due to the protestors’ loud chanting and other disruptive activities), nonleftists shouldn’t follow suit and demand that terror advocates supported by the left be likewise “deplatformed.” By all means, hold protests and boycott the event, but leave it to the left to demand limits on speech.

And no, the fact that Sarsour helped to organize the anti-Trump Women’s March in Washington and has been praised by former president Obama and other Democratic leaders in no way makes her acceptable. It just adds to the shame of the left.

(Jihad Watch takes on the skewed press coverage of the anti-Sarsour demonstration.)

By the way, leftwing defenders of Sharia law advocates might want to note that supposedly “moderate” Islamic Indonesia, in a province now under Sharia law, publically flogs men “guilty” of gay sex, with two men brutally “canned” 83 times last week. I guess the “moderate” part is that they weren’t thrown to their deaths from roofs.

More. This is not a parody. This is how you hear a great many progressives talk. They believe Christian conservatives who don’t want to be forced by the state to participate in same-sex weddings are worse—much, much, incomparably worse—then Sharia law advocates who would beat and executive homosexuals.

And then there’s this.

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That’s Not Funny!

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LGBTQ hypersensitivities have played a major role, after race and gender, in the intersectional hysteria that has gripped college campuses and, indeed, much of the left. Does growing mockery signal that sanity may be returning? If so, is there a path toward equality and supportive community that doesn’t invoke authoritarian-like thought control and the demonizing of white, heterosexual, cisgender males?

—


Really not so funny:

More. Via Heterodox Academy: “In the wake of the violence at Middlebury and Berkeley…many commentators have begun analyzing the new campus culture of intersectionality as a form of fundamentalist religion including public rituals with more than a passing resemblance to witch-hunts.”

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Assaults on Free Speech Continue

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This says so much:

Kirchick [was] expected to address the ways in which oppressive regimes endanger gay rights. The event has generated controversy on campus, with DePaul officials censoring a poster promoting the talk due to its statement: “Gay Lives Matter.”

More. It’s not just Jamie Kirchick. Leftist Protesters Shout Down Gay Journalist at Portland State University, referencing Chadwick Moore’s attempt to share his views. Writes Tom Knighton:

College campuses aren’t welcoming places for any speaker who isn’t a Leftist—the Left’s dirty little secret is that identity doesn’t really matter to them at all. …

The student group that put on the event, Freethinkers of PSU, is reportedly a non-partisan student group. They reported that they attempted to place flyers for the event with PSU’s Queer Resource Center, but were denied.

From the comments:

Kosh III: The true danger to the First Amendment is from Trump and his cult followers such as Miller and other quislings. But maybe Miller hopes for a sinecure in the Fourth Reich?

Jason replies: Only in the Alice-in Wonderland delusions of the left would opposing mob tactics to keep invited speakers from expressing views that the mob dislikes be seen as the Nazi side.

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‘Religious Freedom’ Is a Core Value, Not a Scare Phrase

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The executive order is significantly reduced in scope from earlier drafts promoted by the Heritage Foundation and other social conservatives. In its final form, it:
1. Declares that it is the policy of the administration to protect and vigorously promote religious liberty;
2. Directs the IRS to exercise maximum enforcement discretion to alleviate the burden of the Johnson Amendment, which prohibits religious leaders from speaking about politics and candidates from the pulpit (and which mostly goes unenforced, especially against black churches supporting Democratic candidates);
3. Provides regulatory relief for religious objectors to Obamacare’s preventive services mandate, a position supported by the Supreme Court decision in Hobby Lobby.

The ACLU is threatening to sue. Update: No, now they’re not.


Social conservatives, rightly, see a defeat—Trump (and Ivanka/Jared) are not, and have never been, on the anti-gay bandwagon.


But the Human Rights campaign isn’t changing its narrative:


Furthermore. From the comments: To the charge “Isn’t it more accurate to say that [the Johnson Amendment] mostly goes unenforced against ‘any’ churches? There has been exactly one (1) prosecution of a church under the Johnson Amendment in the 63 years it’s been around. Why single out black churches in particular?,” reader Jason replies:

Short of actual prosecution is the threat of prosecution. White evangelical churches have been warned, from time to time, about supporting socially conservative politicians and “crossing the line” from the pulpit, and liberal groups have threatened to make this an issue. But Stephen is correct; African-American churches sermonizing to vote for Democrats are under much less pressure, owing to the history of the civil rights movement. To raise the issue (and some on the right do) is to invite the charge of racism. So black churches feel much less constrained than do white churches.

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More on the Anti-Trump March

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Washington Blade columnist Mark Lee comments on Facebook that “people are starting to ask on social media if the event will actually happen or if they should cancel their travel plans and reservations.”

As the Blade reports:

The National LGBTQIA+ “Equality March for Unity and Pride” in DC takes place in only 7 weeks – but there’s been little preparation or organizing for the event. No permits yet, no route finalized, no website launched, no details disclosed, and no money raised to cover the major expenses for an event of this type.


Yes, it will happen. Yes, it will be a mess. And yes, it will amount to little and lead to nothing.

But hey, the co-chairs are diverse, complete with a listing of their preferred pronouns including “They, Them, Theirs,” “They/Them She/Hers,” and “She, Her, Hers, Trans Goddess.”

More. When it’s finally announced, expect that platform to embrace the full bag of left-progressive political demands. On the LGBTQIA+ front, expect calls to roll back the extremely limited protections for small businesses under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act by passing the Human Rights Campaign-backed Equality Act, and demands that the federal government mandate what are essentially gender-neutral restrooms and changing facilities.

Some activists might even say having ‘genital preferences’ in dating is transphobic, at which point sexual orientation itself may become a thought crime.

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A GOP Bill to Ban Anti-LGBT Employment Discrimination Won’t Happen (IMHO)

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Via the Washington Blade, a look at the chances of Republicans moving an LGBT anti-discrimination bill.


I agree that Donald Trump might sign a reasonable workplace anti-discrimination bill, and I had forgotten that House Speaker Paul Ryan was a co-sponsor of the Employee Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), which the Democrats failed to move forward when during the first two years of the Obama presidency they controlled the White House and had supermajorities in Congress.

But I don’t think a Log Cabin-backed measure will go anywhere in the current political climate. For one thing, the establishment (i.e., Democratic) LGBT lobbies won’t support a bill that’s limited to employment discrimination and which includes reasonable religious exemptions. Without the support of the Human Rights Campaign, no Democrats will be on board.

The column’s author, Malcolm Lazin, executive director of the Equality Forum and LGBT History Month, says he would back such as measure. But he’s nevertheless dismissive of efforts to balance the competing rights of employment nondiscrimination and religious freedom, as if the latter was nothing but a right-wing ploy—a popular assertion by secular progressive who assign no value to constitutional protections against being forced by the state to violate deeply held religious convictions because, after all, only our rights matter.

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