Politics & Public Opinion

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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Identity Politics In, Class Consciousness Out

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Joshua Mitchell writes::

“Identity politics rejects the model of traditional give-and-take politics, presupposing instead that the most important thing about us is that we are white, black, male, female, straight, gay, and so on. Within the identity-politics world, we do not need to give reasons—identity is its own reason and justification. Because identity politics supposes that we are our identities, politics does not consist in the speech, argument, and persuasion of normal politics but instead, in the calculation of resource redistribution based on identity—what in Democratic parlance is called “social justice.” … What speech does attend this post-political age consists in shaming those who do not accept the idea of identity politics—as on our college campuses. In the 1960s, college students across the country fought so that repressed ideas would receive a fair hearing. These days, college students fight to repress all ideas except one: identity politics.”

He also observes:

“Once, the Democrats were the party of the middle class, attentive to how it might be lifted up—or at least, kept from falling. But during the 2016 election, the Democrats offered the middle class nothing—Americans counted only insofar as they belonged to this or that identity group. And when the Democrats lost, they blamed white members of the middle class who voted for Trump and who had had enough of identity politics.”

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Marching in Lock Step

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Organizers ban gay Trump supporters from North Carolina pride parade. Diversity!

And Scott Shackford writes:

Talbert has said he’s going to sue Charlotte Pride for discrimination, which is also a terrible response. Charlotte Pride should be allowed to include or exclude any participants it wants. It’s their parade. And there’s already a Supreme Court decision that affirms that parade organizers have the right to exclude participants with messages they do not support.

But Charlotte Pride’s organizers should remember something. That Supreme Court case was about a very long fight by LGBT groups to be included in St. Patrick’s Day parades. And they’re only just now, in this decade, convincing the Catholic organizers of those events to allow them in. To turn around and treat another group of gay people the same way is pretty terrible.


Meanwhile…
No doubt more “pinkwashing,” progressives will declare:

Los Angeles Pride Parade becomes Resist March—to foster inclusion.

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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?

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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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Pride Month Approaches

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June is Pride Month, and various cities and locales are facing a new wave of politically correct deplatforming and exclusion protests.

In Washington, D.C., organizers of D.C.’s annual Capital Pride Parade and Festival were pressed by a group called No Justice No Pride to ban police officers and corporate sponsors from the annual pride parade and events. The organizers stood their ground.


In Toronto, organizers went the other way and banned LGBT police from participating in their pride events, capitulating to Black Lives Matter activists.


D.C.’s Capital Pride did remove a volunteer event producer for expressing views they deemed offensive. Bryan Pruitt had posted an article last year at the conservative blog RedState that said government decrees and legislation regarding transgender bathroom use sought “to implement a solution in search of a problem. The City of Charlotte passes an unnecessary law and the State Legislature provides an equally overreaching response.”

On that point, if not on others, I would agree, so I guess my volunteer services would also be unwelcome.


And the demands keep coming….

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The Trump Divide

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Log Cabin makes its case:

Countered with:

Trump can be criticized on many grounds but all those “F”s from LGBT activist “leaders” is pure partisan progressive hackery.

Plus this charming cover.
trump

And widespread disdain for both parties—by those who identify as party supporters:

Finally, Andrew Sullivan detests Trump but makes some pertinent observations.

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Competing Headlines

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Take One

Anti-LGBT adoption bill sent to South Dakota governor. (State law allows adoption agencies to discriminate against same-sex couples.)


Liberals Call SD Religious Freedom Adoption Law ‘Anti-LGBT’. (State law allows religious nonprofits to follow principles of their faith.)

Honorable Mention:

LGBTQ Advocates Fear ‘Religious Freedom’ Bills Moving Forward in States. (Count on NPR online to use scare quotes around a pivotal constitutional right that’s out of favor on the left.)

Take Two

Amid Dramatic Cuts, HIV/AIDS Funding Spared in New Trump Budget. (Despite our best efforts, we really couldn’t spin this as anti-LGBT; a source does say “What’s unknown is how this might affect a whole range of other programs that provide HIV support.”)

GOP health plan’s ‘devastating’ impact on those with HIV. (One way or another, Trump will imperil the HIV-positive.)

Honorable Mention:

Trump budget slashes State Department, USAID funding. (One of the revolving marquee headlines this weekend at Washington Blade online, apparently for no reason other than AID at first glances looks like AIDS.)

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