Politics & Public Opinion

Modern Politics

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Actually, former NYC City Council Speaker Christine Quinn’s full comment is not objectionable, as she notes that TV actress Cynthia Nixon had supported Quinn’s Democrat primary opponent and the eventual winner, Bill de Blasio, over Quinn in the 2013 mayoral race:

Cynthia Nixon was opposed to having a qualified lesbian become mayor of New York City. Now she wants an unqualified lesbian to be the governor of New York. You have to be qualified and have experience. She isn’t qualified to be the governor.

Nixon’s beliefs include giving the teachers’ unions everything they demand, and then some. And while she’s fervently pro-choice on abortion, she’s fiercely against school choice:

“[Cuomo] also wants to increase the number of privately-run charter schools in New York City by more than 50 percent,” Nixon wrote. “And he has been a loud proponent of private school tax credits, essentially a backdoor voucher system.”

I’m no fan of Cuomo, but putting students before educrats sounds good to me.

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Support for LGBT Acceptance Drops, Say Activists Who Can’t See How They’re Responsible

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GLAAD (formerly the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) reports that:

While the past several decades have yielded remarkable progress for the LGBTQ community in the United States, acceptance of LGBTQ people is slipping, and discrimination is increasing, in the face of attacks, bias, and erasure by the Trump administration. This is the first time the Accelerating Acceptance report has shown a drop in acceptance for LGBTQ people.

Even if you accept GLAAD’s finding of a drop in acceptance, here’s an alternative explanation to “Erasure by the Trump administration,” whatever Trump is Hitler hysteria that’s supposed to invoke. How about this: Forcing religiously conservative (but NEVER Muslim) small business owners to craft creative expressions for same-sex weddings seems to many Americans who are willing to live and let live as, well, ugly authoritarianism. Or that the federal government decreeing that public schools make restrooms and locker rooms open to use based on gender identity rather than anatomy seems to many who are OK with same-sex marriage to be an ill considered overstep.

And then there’s this.

The LGBT activist movement has squandered a great deal of goodwill. Blaming Donald Trump won’t restore it.

More. Andrew Sullivan has similar thoughts:

The mainstream media has no other explanation than, well, Trump, and a culture more tolerant of intolerance. That may well be part of it. But no one seems to notice the profound shift in the tone and substance of advocacy for gay equality in recent years, and the radicalization of the movement’s ideology and rhetoric. That is also surely having an impact. …

As many of us saw our goals largely completed and moved on, the far left filled the void. … “Live and let live” became: “If you don’t believe gender is nonbinary, you’re a bigot.” I would be shocked if this sudden lurch in the message didn’t in some way negatively affect some straight people’s views of gays.

The left’s indifference to religious freedom — see the question of Masterpiece Cakeshop— has also taken a toll. So have the PC bromides of the LGBTQRSTUV reformulation.

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Trump: Year One

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Or you could choose to believe that Trump is Hitler:

As Walter Olson wrote, “Organized gay and anti-gay groups keep their respective bases in a constant state of alarm with crisis talk.” Indeed.

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Derangement

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I guess they think the tax bill is like the Holocaust.

Gay people should be ashamed that this publication, on display in news boxes throughout the Washington, D.C. area, purports to represent our views.

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After Roy Moore

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Some of the conclusions being drawn from the defeat of Roy Moore in the Alabama Senate race and the election of Democrat Doug Jones are overwrought, as post-election political analysis tends to be. Nevertheless, the election was a defeat for a social conservative (albeit one accused of sexual misconduct with minors) in an overwhelmingly Republican state. Here are some posts I found worthwhile.

David Boaz reposts Roy Moore’s final message to America: “Abortion, sodomy, and materialism have taken the place of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

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Who Supports Freedom of Expression, and Who Doesn’t

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The libertarian Cato Institute has a major new survey report on The State of Free Speech and Tolerance in America.

Among the many, many findings were several on LGBT-related issues. For instance, the national survey of more than 2,500 U.S. adults found that just half of Americans (50%) say that business should be required to provide services to gay and lesbian people even if doing so violates their religious convictions, but 68% say that bakers should not be required to bake a custom cake for same-sex weddings if it violates religious convictions, while only 32% would force them to do so.

By party, just over half (52%) of Democrats would require bakers to bake a custom cake for same-sex weddings, while 13% of Republicans would require that a baker do so. LGBT progressives who think that they have sweeping support for this are mistaken.

On hate speech, 40% think government should prevent hate speech in public. Also, 59% of liberals say it’s hate speech to say transgender people have a mental disorder, while only 17% of conservatives agree. And 51% of Democrats support a law that requires Americans to use transgender people’s preferred gender pronouns.

Looking further at LGBT issues, Democrats are more likely than Republicans to say a business executive should be fired if he or she believes:
— transgender people have a mental disorder (44% Democrats vs. 14% Republicans).
— homosexuality is a sin (32% Democrats vs. 10% Republicans).

While some may feel that personal belief unrelated to job behavior in this circumstance shouldn’t cause anyone to be fired, it’s interesting that Americans appear more opposed to a lack of acceptance toward transgender people than toward gays and lesbians.

Guy Benson shares his take:

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