Politics & Public Opinion

Log Cabin Makes Most of Bad Situation

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The Log Cabin Republicans national office has issued a statement explaining why they aren’t endorsing Donald Trump, while acknowledging the fact (so cravenly misreported by the Democratic Party aligned LGBT media) that Trump is the best GOP presidential nominee on LGBT issues:

Mr. Trump is perhaps the most pro-LGBT presidential nominee in the history of the Republican Party. His unprecedented overtures to the “LGBTQ community”—a first for any major-party candidate in our nation’s history—are worthy of praise, and should serve as a clarion call to the GOP that the days of needing to toe an anti-LGBT line are now a thing of the past.

But Log Cabin Republicans have long emphasized that we are not a single-issue organization, nor are our members single-issue voters. Even if we were, rhetoric alone regarding LGBT issues does not equate to doctrine. As Mr. Trump spoke positively about the LGBT community in the United States, he concurrently surrounded himself with senior advisors with a record of opposing LGBT equality, and committed himself to supporting legislation such as the so-called “First Amendment Defense Act” that Log Cabin Republicans opposes.

Should Mr. Trump become our nation’s next President, Log Cabin Republicans welcomes the opportunity to work with his administration to ensure the advances in LGBT freedom we have fought for and secured will continue. Until and unless that happens, our trust would be misplaced.

LCR was in a difficult situation. Trump’s personality defects and dismissiveness toward certain liberty rights are what disqualify him, making it hard or impossible for many Republicans of conscience to give Trump their support. But being anti-gay is not one of his deficiencies.

As I’ve said, both Clinton and Trump are terrible choices. Hopefully, four years from now the country can rectify its mistake.

More. As noted in my last post, gay Trump supporters can make a legitimate case even if it’s one I don’t embrace, as others are doing. But LGBT progressives have gone off the deep end with anti-Trump fear-mongering, in service (of course) to the one true party.

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The Other Option

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Terry Michael, who supports Libertarian Gary Johnson, asks a pertinent question: “Why do LGBT voters ask so little of Hillary? He writes:

I am baffled how organizations supposedly representing us have positioned the LGBT community as an adjunct to the Democratic Party. … The prime example of LGBT organizations seduced by the Democratic Party and The Clintons is the Human Rights Campaign — the other HRC — and its executive director, Chad Griffin, a Clinton crony from Bill’s hometown of Hope, Ark.

As I’ve said, Griffin’s HRC and other well-heeled LGBT lobbies are first and foremost Democratic machine operations, with a mission to corral LGBT dollars and votes for the party ticket.

More. Via the Wall Street Journal, ‘Country’ Gay Couple Backing Trump Receives Threats and Barbs—From Other Gay Men:

It’s not OK to be gay, and also support Donald Trump—that’s the overwhelming reaction from more than 900 people who commented on a Wall Street Journal video of a young couple at a Trump rally posted to Facebook earlier this month.

The Journal’s interview with Dewey Lainhart, 31 years old, and his fiance Cody Moore, 22 years old, at Mr. Trump’s rally in Cincinnati on Oct. 13 has gotten around 200,000 views.

In the video, Mr. Lainhart says he works in the steel industry and shares Trump’s skepticism about multilateral trade deals. He says, “It’s time for a change, and Trump’s the man for it.” He started a Facebook page in support of the candidate called “LGBT for Trump.”…

Most of the comments ridiculed Messrs. Lainhart and and Moore for supporting Mr. Trump — calling them “rednecks” and suggesting that someone should “take away their gay card.”

I’m a free-trade supporter (just one reason I can’t back Trump), but the condescension toward this couple and the call to “take away their gay card” is classic.

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An Honest Look at Trump

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As readers know, I’ll be voting for Gary Johnson on the Libertarian ticket—not because I think he’d be a great president, but because the major party candidates are both personally repugnant advocates of, in different respects, truly awful policies. The next four years, most likely under Clinton, will be a rough patch in any event.

That said, readers also know that I am sickened by the way LGBT progressives have, with utter dishonesty, characterized Donald Trump as “anti-gay” because that false narrative serves their party. At some point, the mendacity is so corrupting that one can only despair of these people.

So I welcomed David Lampo’s A Gay Defense of Donald Trump, one small voice of reason amid a sea of hysterical base-frightening in the Washington Blade. As Lampo writes:

The fact is that any honest look at Trump’s record and views on gay rights shows that most of the attacks by gay Democrats on his views are simply incorrect.

Trump, of course, has been a New York Democrat and social liberal for most of his adult life, chummy with many Democratic politicians, including the Clintons, and active in many charities, including support for AIDS charities. He has a long record of public support for expanding gay rights, including adding sexual orientation to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. He stated support for employment nondiscrimination as far back as 2000 in his book, “The America We Deserve,” in which he wrote of his support for a country “free of racism, discrimination against women, or discrimination against people based on sexual orientation.”

He publicly supported repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” and in an interview with The Brody File (a very conservative radio show) in 2011, in response to a question about civil unions, he said, “First of all, I live in New York. I know many, many gay people. Tremendous people. And to be honest with you … I haven’t totally formed my opinion. But there can be no discrimination against gays.”

Lampo concludes:

There’s no doubt one can find much to criticize in Trump (and, for that matter, Hillary Clinton), but to label him anti-gay or a mouthpiece of the religious right is so off-base and incorrect it calls into question the credibility and honesty of those making such accusations.

That’s putting it charitably.

More. A bit off-topic, but this is what you won’t learn about Clinton by reading and viewing liberal media. Peggy Noonan writes in the Wall Street Journal:

Readers of these pages know of the Uranium One deal in which a Canadian businessman got Bill Clinton to help him get control of uranium mining fields in Kazakhstan. The businessman soon gave $31 million to the Clinton Foundation, with a pledge of $100 million more. Uranium One acquired significant holdings in the U.S. A Russian company moved to buy it. The deal needed U.S. approval, including from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

While it was under consideration the Clinton Foundation received more money from Uranium One. Bill Clinton got a $500,000 speech fee. Mrs. Clinton approved the deal. The Russian company is now one of the world’s largest uranium producers. Significant amounts of U.S. uranium are, in effect, owned by Russia. This summer a WikiLeaks dump showed the State Department warning that Russia was moving to control the global supply of nuclear fuel. The deal went through anyway, and the foundation flourished.

In addition:

Peter Schweizer, who broke the Uranium One story, reported in these pages how Mrs. Clinton also pushed for a U.S.-Russian technology initiative…. Of the 28 announced “key partners,” 60% had made financial commitments to the Clinton Foundation. Even Russian investors ponied up. … U.S. military experts warned of satellite, space and nuclear technology transfers. The FBI thought the Russian partners’ motive was to “gain access to classified, sensitive, and emerging technology.” WikiLeaks later unearthed a State Department cable expressing concern about the project. Somehow, said Mr. Schweizer, the Clinton State Department “missed or ignored obvious red flags.”

This is why Clinton will be a disastrous president. But the media, which is full of Trump’s supposed fealty to Putin, covers up Clinton’s venality. Corruption all round.

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BladeWatch

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Increasingly, there is no longer an LGBT rights movement. Clearly, the gay rights movement of the 70s, which became the lesbian and gay rights movement of the 80s and 90s, is gone—for the most part, a victim of its own success after the victories for military inclusion and marriage equality.

Today, there’s an archly politically correct transgender movement that’s focused on bathroom access (a legitimate issue greatly magnified by both sides, with few documented cases of actual discrimination in practice beyond the controversy around minors in public schools) and correct pronouns (often taken to ridiculous extremes). And there’s the Democratic party’s ongoing crusade to recruit LGBT votes and dollars by any means at hand. For the most part, the LGBT media has been thoroughly co-opted into this endeavor.

Lately, reading the Washington Blade is akin to reading The Onion, except that the latter often makes more sense. A few recent examples.

Headline: Trump makes ‘religious liberty’ a priority at anti-LGBT confab.

Excerpt:

Donald Trump didn’t make any explicit anti-LGBT remarks during his speech Friday at the Values Voter Summit, but loaded his remarks with coded language on “religious liberty” to indicate support for undermining LGBT rights.

The meme that religious liberty and the right to religious dissent are not only unacceptable anti-state activity but the worst kind of bigotry is thoroughly entrenched in the left-thought of the day. This, of course, all goes to forcing independent business owners to provide creative services to same-sex weddings, which, along with gender-appropriate pronouns, has become the dominant cause of what presents itself as the LGBT rights movement. That so many of the progressive mindset can’t, or won’t, see how ugly and authoritarian this has become is a sad commentary on moral corruption that dresses itself in the self-righteous narcissism of the politically correct and morally superior, fighting the “bigots” who won’t do as the progressive state decrees, clinging to their false superstitions and mistaken beliefs that individuals have a right not to be compelled to violate their “faith” principles.

Another headline: ID laws may ‘disenfranchise’ 34,000 trans voters.

Excerpt:

More than 34,000 transgender Americans in eight states could be prevented from voting in the November 2016 election because of strict voter identification laws that require voters to present government-issued photo IDs at the polls, according to a newly released report.

Just as, apparently, transgender persons can also no longer fly on airplanes or enter government buildings, since government-issued ID is also required for these activities. The fact that this big lie against voter ID is used with such unembarrassed impunity tells you all you need to know about the dishonesty of the contemporary progressive left and the degree to which LGBT activism and media have sunken down into the muck.

More. No voter fraud in the U.S. to speak of, Democrats say with a straight face. Of course, they know the truth. Corruption all round.

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Progressive ‘Love’

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Via the Washington Post:

As thousands of Donald Trump’s supporters left his rally here this week, they were greeted by protesters who accused them of being, among other things, racist, hateful and uneducated.

“Grow a brain, b—-!” one protester shouted at a Trump backer. Another pointed at rallygoers and yelled: “Racist a——s!” A third held a sign that read: “Make racists afraid again.”

Then they chanted in unison: “Love trumps hate! Love trumps hate! Love trumps hate!”

And they’ll never see the irony.

Daniel Henninger writes in the Wall Street Journal:

The moral clarity that drove the original civil-rights movement or the women’s movement has degenerated into a confused moral narcissism. One wonders if even some of the people in Mrs. Clinton’s Streisandian audience didn’t feel discomfort at the ease with which the presidential candidate slapped isms and phobias on so many people.

Nay. This is what they think.

Even better, via the Washington Blade.

As I said, LGBT supporters stand with Clinton on ‘deplorables’ remark. They can’t see that demonizing your opponent’s voters, rather than criticizing your opponent, is a terrible strategy in a democracy. But then, it’s all about signalling the moral superiority of the progressive base.

In the end, however, Hillary’s LGBT smugfest with Barbra may turn out to be one hell of a costly fundraiser.

Gregory Angelo of the Log Cabin Republicans has observed, correctly, that when it comes to LGBT inclusion Trump is “one of the best, if not the best” (meaning least worst) Republican presidential nominees ever. Democrats, with some justification, can laugh at that as a weak standard. But that’s not what they’re doing—they’re portraying Trump as the most anti-gay Republican ever (the Blade cartoonist warns he’ll be closing down gay bars). That’s just partisan hackery.

And more from supporters of the Party of Love.

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Deplorables and Bigots

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Hillary Clinton made it clear what she thinks of Donald Trump supporters. In comments that were only slightly walked back the next day, she told an LGBT fundraiser in New York City featuring Barbra Streisand:

To just be grossly generalistic, you can put half of Trump supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? Racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic, you name it.

She further explained:

That other basket of people are people who feel that government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures. They are just desperate for change. Doesn’t really even matter where it comes from.

In other words, Trump voters are either haters or pitiable dupes.

The fundraiser reportedly raised around $6 million, with ticket prices ranging from $1,200 to $250,000, with many paying $50,000, according to reports.

Are some of Trump’s supporters bigots? Sure. But nowhere near half of them, and to say so is to pander to Hillary’s supporters sense of smug moral superiority to the lower orders, particularly the white working and lower-middle classes excluded from the Democrats’ top-bottom coalition of wealthy liberals and minorities—plus, of course, the growing legions of government employees.

One could as easily claim that half of Hillary’s supporters are left-authoritarians (she was endorsed by the head of the Communist Party USA, after all), and be as close to the truth, which is to say, not very truthful at all.

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.

A case in point is Obama’s chair of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission declaring that antidiscrimination laws override other constitutional liberties and those who disagree are (well, you know):

The phrases ‘religious liberty’ and ‘religious freedom’ will stand for nothing except hypocrisy so long as they remain code words for discrimination, intolerance, racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, Christian supremacy or any form of intolerance.

Meanwhile, Massachusetts just issued a regulation requiring public accommodations to recognize people on the basis of their gender identity and not biological sex, pointedly noting that regardless of doctrinal issues, “Even a church could be seen as a place of public accommodation if it holds a secular event, such as a spaghetti supper, that is open to the general public.”

The decision of what church events are secular and which are religious is apparently to be determined by the state.

I’m no fan of Milo Yiannopoulos, the self-aggrandizing openly gay editor at the conservative Breitbart site, but he scores some points about the Democrats’ distorted view of Trump voters in this interview with CNBC. (For the record, I don’t equate most Trump supporters with the alt-right and would agree there are bigots within the alt-right movement who are backing Trump—just as there are left-authoritarians and PC inquisitors supporting Hillary.)

More. David Boaz writes that “it’s an indication that politicians like Clinton and Obama just can’t *imagine* any legitimate reason that people would vote Republican. … I think it’s a problem for politicians not to be able to imagine how anyone could think or vote differently from them.”

(I’ve moved the updates into a new post as they grew beyond a few additional closing thoughts.)

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A Symbiotic Relationship

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Jason Willick explains at “The American Interest” why The Campus Left and the Alt-Right Are Natural Allies:

On the one hand, excessive left-wing speech policing and cultural brinksmanship on issues of race and gender was bound to make Milo-style ideological transgression more appealing. On the other hand, the alt-right’s newfound cultural power seems to vindicate some of the assumptions of the PC leftt: that racism and misogyny are deeply embedded in America’s cultural fabric, just below the surface, ready to erupt unless controls on thought and language are continuously tightened. …

The PC left and the alt-right exist symbiotically with one another: Working together to exacerbate tribal loyalties, to undermine the legitimacy of the state as a political unit, to question the idea that Western institutions can really treat groups of people with equal respect—in other words, to draw out and hijack the inherent weaknesses and contradictions in the Enlightenment liberal tradition. It’s unlikely that either movement has the cultural power or breadth of appeal to succeed on its own. But taken together, they make a fearsome foe.

From where I sit, it seems that far more center-right conservatives and libertarians are sharply critical of Trumpism and the alt-right than center-left progressives are of illiberal PC extremism, which they often strain to defend when they aren’t denying that it exists at all.

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She Who Must Never Be Criticized

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The LGBT-left blog Towleroad posted on LGBT Advocates Steam Over One-Sided ‘Washington Post’ Article on Hillary Clinton’s Gay Rights Record. I read the Washington Post article and thought it was ultimately a celebration of Clinton’s evolution, despite the promising— and certainly accurate—headline that “Hillary Clinton had the chance to make gay rights history. She refused.”

The Post article made clear that Clinton has now adopted a position of strong advocacy for LGBT rights within the context of the progressive agenda. But any criticism of Hillary, even pointing out her prior opposition to same-sex marriage and public acquiescence to the Defense of Marriage Act and the “don’t ask, don’t tell” military policy, is anathema to the political operatives who helm the biggest LGBT lobbies, which are firmly joined at the hip to the Democratic party.

Remember, “Oceania was at war with Eurasia: therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia.”

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Immigrants and Values

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Donald Trump proposed an ideological test that would limit immigrants seeking admission to the U.S. to “those who share our values and respect our people,” saying: “Those who do not believe in our Constitution, or who support bigotry and hatred, will not be admitted for immigration into the country.”

Trump noted that such a test has been used during the Cold War as a basis for allowing immigrants to come to our shores, further inciting those who believe we were on the wrong side of that struggle.

LGBT activists immediately responded with condemnation and mockery.

Russell Roybal, deputy executive director for National LGBTQ Task Force Action Fund, told The Advocate that Trump’s proposal is a form of “thought-policing.” And, of course, progressives are never in favor of limiting expression and discussion.

The Human Rights Campaign issued a statement claiming that “What’s craziest about this ignorant, incomprehensible plan is that Donald Trump and Mike Pence would fail their own test,” because they met with evangelical Christian leaders who oppose same-sex marriage and favor allowing small business owners with religious objections to abstain from providing expressive services for same-sex marriages.

Whatever the merits of the Trump suggestion, the response highlights what many choose not to see: that a great number of immigrants from Muslim countries are intensely anti-gay (and hostile to Jews, and to women’s equality).

In the U.K., an ICM poll revealed that more than half of Muslims disagree with homosexuality being legal in Britain.

If a political party proposed allowing hundreds of thousands of anti-gay conservative Christians to immigrate to the U.S. from abroad, I suspect the response from LGBT progressives would be far different.

Bruce Bawer observed:

Here in Oslo, a gay couple who were holding hands in the largely Muslim neighborhood of Grønland were physically assaulted by a man who told them: “This is a Muslim neighborhood.” In a follow-up story, Dagbladet interviewed a local man, born in Pakistan but resident in Norway for ten years, who argues that “Grønland is a multicultural environment where there are many people who don’t like homosexuals, so they shouldn’t hold hands.” He says such things are OK in west Oslo, where there are few Muslims, “but here in Grønland they shouldn’t do it. Ideally, it should be forbidden to practice homosexuality in this area.”

There are those who have been quick to dismiss this as an isolated incident. On the contrary, it’s simply an indication that Norway is headed the same way as the rest of Western Europe.

He added, elsewhere:

One familiar response is: “Well, non-Muslims beat up gays, too!” Yep – indeed they do. Yet for a while there, in much of Western Europe, homosexuality was on its way to being a non-issue. In Amsterdam in the late 1990s, I was delightfully surprised to discover that when groups of straight teenage boys passed gay couples in the streets, they just walked past without any reaction whatsoever. The sight of gay people didn’t upset, threaten, amuse, or confuse them; the familiar, insecure urge to respond to open homosexuality with some kind of distancing, disdainful word or gesture – and thereby affirm to one another, and to themselves, their own heterosexual credentials – was simply not part of those kids’ makeup. For me, it was a remarkable experience. Amsterdam then seemed to me the leading edge of a new wave in the progress of human civilization.

Alas, it is now very clearly the opposite. The number of reported gay-bashings in Amsterdam now climbs steadily year by year. Nearly half Muslim, the city is a front in the struggle between democracy and sharia, under which, lest it be forgotten, homosexuality can be a capital offense. Things have gotten so bad there that even on the part of the exceedingly politically correct, there has been a degree of acknowledgment that something has changed, and is still changing.

As Douglas Murray wrote before this latest controversy, The gay community is in denial about Islamism. Or LGBT activists leaders are, at least.

More. An observation from Mallard Fillmore.

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Trump and After Trump

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The Washington Blade reports Log Cabin continues to mull Trump endorsement, and David Boaz posts, “He’s wholly unfit for the presidency, he traffics in racial and religious scapegoating, but he’s not particularly antigay…. So what’s Log Cabin to do?”

And no, reports like this one, also in the Washington Blade, casting Trump as “anti-LGBT” for meeting with conservative evangelicals, at what must by definition be “an anti-LGBT event,” are engaging in falsification that’s, well, worthy of Donald Trump. LGBT progressives with bylines are just as scurrilous as the Hannity and Limbaugh gang on the other side.

On a more positive note, Rich Tafel and Ted Buerger look forward to how Creative Destruction Will Allow Republicans and Democrats to Rebuild After 2016, and conclude:

The irony is that, in the wake of Trump’s self-destruction, we Republicans may be more motivated to make that change, from which could rise a renewed, inclusive party of Lincoln. That is our opportunity.

If the party loyalists recognize that Ted Cruz opened the door for Donald Trump, than in the wake of Trump’s defeat there is indeed a possibility that the socially moderate message we heard from Jeb Bush and John Kasich could hold sway as the Republicans rebuild their party.

A good sign: Florida Gov. Scott: Same-sex marriage is ‘law of the land.’ “We need to figure out how to come together as a country,” he told Fox News. “[T]he Supreme Court has already made a decision. In my state, we’re focused on jobs.”

And the New York Times reports on Marco Rubio’s addressing Christian conservatives and telling them, “When it comes to our brothers and our sisters, our fellow Americans, our neighbors in the LGBT community, we should recognize,” he said, that American history “has been marred by discrimination against and rejection of gays and lesbians.”

More. Tafel and Buerger write of the two major parties and their presidential campaigns:

But Americans deserve better. Gallup polls now confirm that most Americans are “socially liberal and fiscally conservative.” As hopeful believers in the American dream, most Americans want a sustainable society based on innovation and opportunity, security and trust, private charity and public safety-net, inclusion and religious liberty, personal freedom and human dignity. That aspiration should be at the core of each political party. It is not.

Yes, inclusion and religious liberty are both core American values, although I can see LGBT progressives stamping their feet and shouting that “religious liberty” is nothing but code for discrimination (because, you know, God talk) that seeks to elevate individual conscience above compliance with the will of the state.

Furthermore. Progressives believe taxpayers should be forced to fund late-term abortions but that no taxpayer money should go toward grants allowing low-income students to attend religiously affiliated colleges that don’t support same-sex marriage.

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