IGF CultureWatch

New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, alarmed by signs that suggest GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump is seeing a rise in support from the gay community, made the following declaration:

“That’s terrifying,” Booker told the Washington Examiner after the Democratic National Convention. “Donald Trump probably picked one of the most anti-gay vice presidential candidates we’ve had in a long time.”

Booker said Gov. Mike Pence, R-Ind., has been at the forefront of leading efforts he said unfairly discriminate against members of the LGBT community. The New Jersey senator went on to argue why he believes the Democratic Party is best for the gay community.

“Clearly we are the party of civil rights, worker’s rights, women’s rights and definitely gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender rights,” Booker said.

“Instanpundit” Glenn Reynolds picked up on this, and his readers share some interesting comments.

I’ve previously explained why, in my view, Mike Pence is being unfairly demonized and why, in America, people should not be compelled by the state to provide expressive services to same-sex weddings when to do so violates their religious convictions. But Booker’s comments are in keeping with the view of LGBT activists and media. This week, the Washington Blade was devoted almost exclusively to a celebration of all things Hillary while it’s been denouncing all things Trump, including commentary deploying the “f” word (as in “fascist”).

There is much to criticize about both presidential candidates, but for all his many bad positions, animus toward gay people is not a Trump hallmark. He is arguably the best GOP presidential nominee on “LGBTQ” issues we’ve seen, and far better than the party as a whole when it comes to LGBT inclusion.

Also this week, the Washington Post reports that Chelsea Clinton, appearing on a panel sponsored by Facebook and Glamour magazine, shared this bit of wisdom:

“I would just say urgently to every young woman, and, yes, every young man, um, every person who may not know their gender yet, or may have no gender identity — whatever you care about is at stake in this election,” she said….

The next day, she was the star guest at a Human Rights Campaign lunch where, the paper recounts, “She received several standing ovations in her nine-minute remarks.”

Recall that, despite no journalistic experience, NBC News paid Chelsea Clinton an annual salary of $600,000 to be a special correspondent, which included interviewing the Geico gecko, until she lost interest in that endeavor. But when you’re party royalty, and it’s the correct party, nothing is good enough.

Semi-related. David Frum, a moderate Republican who opposes Trump, looks at what liberals don’t understand about Trump’s popularity among his supporters. (No, they’re not backing him because they’re “fascists.”) It speaks to the widely shared perception among Trump voters that the system is rigged in favor of wealthy elites and government-entitled minorities—what others have termed the liberal “top-bottom coalition”—and how their daily experiences confirm that view.

GOP vice presidential nominee Mike Pence and Democratic veep nominee Tim Kaine have both altered their positions, and perhaps cut their consciences, to fit this year’s fashions. For instance, both have been supportive of multinational trade-promotion agreements. No more.

Looking at Kaine, the Washington Times reports that when he ran to be Virginia’s governor in 2005, he was against marriage equality and favored restrictions on abortion:

At the time he was a self-proclaimed pro-life “conservative” who openly quoted the Bible in his ads and checked off nearly every other box on conservatives’ wish list.

“The truth is, I cut taxes as mayor of Richmond. I’ll enforce the death penalty as governor, and I’m against same-sex marriage,” Mr. Kaine said in one of his ads. “I’m conservative on personal responsibility, character, family and the sanctity of life. These are my values, and that’s what I believe.”

And in a radio ad, cited here, Kaine said:

I oppose gay marriage, I support restrictions on abortion — no public funding and parental consent — and I’ve worked to pass a state law banning partial-birth abortion … [My opponent] played politics with abortion and as a result Virginia still has no ban. As governor, I’ll always put principle over politics and you’ll always know where I stand. That’s who I am and what I believe.

Nothing new here, of course, but it’s still interesting to see the gyrations that politicians are willing to make.

Defining himself as “conservative on…family and the sanctity of life” goes further than the positions against same-sex marriage that both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama held at the time—they were always progressive on social issues, as a matter of self-branding.

Kaine has also just flip-flopped on the right to work without union membership (for it as Virginia governor, now against it).

Still, as this year’s veepstakes shows, maybe most politicians don’t believe anything except what will further their paths to power. Or they convince themselves that their old views were wrong and now they’re right, which just happens to be politically convenient at the present moment.

Donald Trump’s acceptance speech was full of the jingoistic bombast and wrong-headed policies on trade and immigration that prevent me from giving him my vote (I’m for the Johnson-Weld Libertarian party ticket). And the GOP platform, as previously discussed, was given over to hardcore social conservatives and the religious right, and consequently is awful on LGBT issues.

But I contend wholeheartedly that despite the platform committee’s antics on the sidelines, the Republican Convention represented a dramatic change from the past—and for the better—on LGBT issues, and failing to recognize that is simply partisan myopia. A quick recap (along with the consensus liberal and LGBT media assessment):

Ted Cruz: “Whether you are gay or straight, the Bill of Rights protects the rights of all of us to live according to our conscience.”
(media assessment: code for discrimination)

Newt Gingrich: “If our enemies had their way, gays, lesbians and transgender citizens would be put to death as they are today in the Islamic State and Iran.”
(media assessment: absurd fear-mongering)

Peter Thiel: “Every American has a unique identity. I am proud to be gay. I am proud to be a Republican, but most of all I am proud to be an American.”
(media assessment: sellout)

Donald Trump: “Only weeks ago, in Orlando, Florida, 49 wonderful Americans were savagely murdered by an Islamic terrorist. This time, the terrorist targeted our LGBTQ community. No good. And we’re going to stop it. As your President, I will do everything in my power to protect our LGBTQ citizens from the violence and oppression of a hateful foreign ideology.” [applause] “I must say as a Republican it is so nice to hear you cheering. Thank you.”
(media assessment: pandering)

The liberal media and LGBT left-progressive establishment were, of course, dismissive—at best, window-dressing and all that. But Trump’s comments and Thiel’s remarks were a huge departure for the GOP.

The last openly gay Republican convention speaker, then-Rep Jim Kolbe of Arizona in 2000, didn’t mention being gay. Nevertheless, the Texas delegation staged a protest while he spoke, removing their hats, bowing their heads and publicly praying. Nothing like that happened this time, nor is it likely to ever happen again.

More. Donald Trump was never likely to pay much attention to a committee-drafted platform he didn’t control, and letting the social conservatives run riot with it was a sop to the evangelical-right delegates, many of whom (but not all) were initially pledged to Ted Cruz. But Cruz’s convention speech nonendorsement of Trump has made the bad blood between the two men even worse. On reflection, Trump’s outreach to “LGBTQ” voters was like his own nonendorsement of the platform planks opposing LGBT social acceptance and legal equality that the Cruzites had pushed through.

It quite likely, I believe, that if Trump were elected he would sign The Equality Act—the proposed federal law to include LGBT antidiscrimination provisions in the Civil Rights Act—should it reach his desk. I’m no fan of the measure on libertarian grounds, but it’s the top item on the political agenda of progressive LGBT activist groups. However, given their virulence toward Trump, I suspect if he wins they will act to keep that from happening.

Furthermore. Wall Street Journal columnist Holman W. Jenkins Jr., a “Trumpian nonbeliever,” writes that Trump’s acceptance speech:

…was a masterful if lengthy exposition of his nationalist-Peronist viewpoint: America is a nation of lovely people of every creed, ethnicity and sexual orientation best by murderous illegal aliens, Islamic terrorists and the predatory trade practices of other countries.

I think that’s right (which is why I support Johnson-Weld). But it’s also right that the rejection of political gay-bashing by Trump throughout his campaign, and no mention at all of abortion in his convention speech, was a not-so-subtle repudiation of the platform committee’s hard-edged political-social conservatism. If Trump were elected, the platform in 2020, under his control, would likely be very different—especially since, as the Pew Research Center reports, 61% of young Republicans favor same-sex marriage.

Which may be why, at least in part, an extreme social conservative like Paul Mero has announced Trump has chased me from the GOP.

Scott Shackford writes at reason.com, GOP’s Overall Message to LGBTs: We Don’t Actually Want You Dead, Okay? While I’m generally a fan of Shackford’s often-astute analysis, I think Trump went beyond that in calling the LGBTQ victims in Orlando “wonderful Americans” and praising the convention audience for applauding that line. True, the GOP has set a low bar when it comes to LGBT equality, but that doesn’t mean we should dismiss signs that it’s being raised.

The LGBTQ+ progressive left and gay libertarians, moderates on the center-right and economic conservatives have always had an uneasy alliance, but an alliance it was, around issues such as marriage equality (once the left got over its view that marriage was an oppressive, patriarchal, bourgeois institution) and equality under the law.

Now, in an era in which gays in the U.S. enjoy legal equality and broad (if not universal) social acceptance, that alliance is all but undone. And while all gay non-leftists are not supporting Donald Trump (count me among them, please), his campaign is highlighting that widening divide.

The Washington Examiner reports that:

…the presumptive Republican nominee went out of his way to recognize the gay and lesbian victims of the slaughter and frame his anti-terror approach as a signal of his commitment to gay rights.

“Our nation stands together in solidarity with the members of Orlando’s LGBT community,” Trump declared. He said the attacker’s decision to “execute gay and lesbian citizens because of their sexual orientation” was “an assault on the ability of free people to live their lives, love who they want and express their identity.”

And this:

“Hillary Clinton can never claim to be a friend of the gay community as long as she continues to support immigration policies that bring Islamic extremists to our country,” he said.

It’s a new take on Trump’s immigration politics, though combining support for immigration restrictions and gay rights has been more common in Europe, where Muslim arrivals have been perceived as threatening social liberalism.

That’s a message that will resonate with a swath of LGBT conservatives, and it enrages progressives. Witness this release from Get Equality (received via email):

LGBTQ Protestors Disrupt Donald Trump at Press Conference, Saying “Lies Equal Violence”

LGBTQ grassroots network GetEQUAL disrupted a press conference that followed a day-long meeting between Donald Trump and several hundred evangelical leaders. The disruption called attention to hate-mongering by both right-wing leaders and Trump — creating the atmosphere that led to last week’s massacre in Orlando — as well as the systemic violence that queer and trans people of color face every day. The disrupters chanted “Take responsibility for Orlando,” “Your hate is killing us,” and “Your lies are killing us” in the middle of the press conference.

The standard progressive trope, and one that now dominates college campuses, is that views disagreeing with progressivism are equal to violence and therefore must be silenced.

The fact that Trump, who for all his many failings has never demonstrated animus toward gay people, and evangelical Christians are responsible for the Islamic jihadist-inspired mass murder in Orlando and elsewhere, is simply repugnant.

And of course wildly hypocritical, since there are no protests from the left when Obama meets with anti-gay Muslim leaders.

The Libertarian Party has just nominated successful, two-term governors with reputations as being fiscally conservative, socially liberal, to be its presidential and vice-presidential candidates. With former Gov. Gary Johnson of New Mexico at the head of the ticket, and former Gov. William Weld of Massachusetts in the vice presidential slot, the LP is in a position where it could, perhaps, become a force to be reckoned with.

Many disaffected Republicans can’t stomach the idea of voting for Trump, and a few Bernie supporters can’t stomach the idea of voting for Hillary (and some of them, especially the college kids, were never actually socialists but liked Sanders’ views on pot and could similarly be attracted to Johnson’s long-standing opposition to the drug war).

The Johnson-Weld ticket supports marriage equality. And, in a recent Facebook post, Johnson takes the position that under anti-discrimination laws a private business can’t discriminate against who it will serve, but “anti-discrimination laws do not, and cannot, abridge fundamental First Amendment rights.” I agree with that.

Many had hoped that the GOP would nominate a socially moderate former governor willing to put the party’s anti-LGBT culture-war past aside and move on, while stressing a commitment to fiscal responsibility and to limiting government over-reach. That, obviously, didn’t happen. So this year, in particular, the LP represents an alternative that’s worth considering.

While you can’t expect to get everything you want from candidates running for the highest offices in the land, the Johnson-Weld ticket comes pretty darn close.

Cruz was hoping the “bathroom issue” would make a difference in Indiana. But despite a final push, he lost big and then suspended his campaign.

Via Politico on why Cruz’s social conservative pandering fell flat in Indiana (and, really, most everywhere else):

The only problem with Cruz’s socially conservative message? The voters he has to win over [in Indiana] don’t like it. …

Today, vast swaths of the state’s Republican electorate, from Indianapolis to West Lafayette, have retreated from the culture wars. And like the 50s-era diner itself, Cruz’s dogged socially conservative message seems anachronistic—and perhaps a little tin-eared—to these fiscally conservative, socially liberal Republicans….

Along similar lines, Dave Weigel on why Cruz’s defeat in Indiana may also be the biggest electoral victory for transgender rights:

[Cruz] pummeled Donald Trump for supporting the rights of transgender people to use their adopted gender’s bathrooms. And then he lost in a landslide, and quit the presidential race.

I wish Kasich had competed in Indiana; the pact with Cruz was a bad idea.

On the other hand, hard to argue with Cruz’s takedown of Trump. If only they both could have lost!

More. “Many Republicans were surprised Mr. Cruz was the one in the large GOP field to wind up being Mr. Trump’s most formidable opponent,” the Wall Street Journal reports, noting:

The senator’s coalition never grew beyond a core group of dedicated social conservatives, leaving Mr. Trump to pick up support from voters who might have otherwise supported one of the other 14 Republicans who have ended their presidential campaigns.

Cruz’s social conservative bloc was large enough to make him the designated runner up in a crowded, diffuse field. But as the political power and popular appeal of the religious right wanes in the GOP, Cruz as the alternative meant votes going to Trump.

Furthermore. Via a Wall Street Journal editorial, A Cruz Postmortem:

Mr. Cruz’s pandering to the right also sent a signal to moderate and somewhat conservative Republicans that he didn’t need their support. Mr. Trump split the “very conservative” vote with Mr. Cruz but crushed the Senator among more moderate voters. That doomed Mr. Cruz in the East in particular, but also in Indiana.

The Texan’s lost opportunity was to expand his appeal beyond his most conservative base of support and coalesce mainstream Republicans. He never tried to break out of his factional ghetto, as if excoriating the establishment and transgender bathroom laws could motivate a majority to defeat Mr. Trump’s plurality.

The conservatives aghast at Mr. Trump should appreciate the irony that even as Mr. Cruz hoped to produce a new conservative era, he helped wreck the best chance for conservative reform in years.

Indeed. And the WSJ rightly points out the culpability of both Cruz “and his allies at the Heritage Foundation and the Mark Levin talk-radio right.”

Is there anything positive in the now-likely nomination of Donald Trump? Well, the New York Times reports that Donald Trump’s More Accepting Views on Gay Issues Set Him Apart in GOP. To which Democratic partisans respond in unison, “oh yeah, Hillary is better.” And on that front, she is (after a circuitous route based on the nation’s growing acceptance of gay legal equality).

But that’s not the question; the issue here is what Trump signifies for the GOP, and despite his likely drubbing in November (with the proviso that anything could happen in an election), we can at least say that classic LGBT fear-mongering of the Ted Cruz variety didn’t work, with even white evangelicals treading to Trump. That, if nothing else, is a positive change that could augur well for the GOP post-Trump.

More. From the NYT:

Mr. Trump is not as embracing of gay rights as the Democratic candidates are; he said during this campaign that he believes that marriage is between a man and a woman…. But he does not emphasize marriage as an issue, and he makes no mention of it, for example, on his campaign website, which focuses on issues like immigration and trade.

And Mr. Trump, who has inflamed tensions with almost every group, from Hispanics to women to African-Americans, has avoided attacking or offending gay men and lesbians during the campaign.

Cruz is hoping the “bathroom issue” will make a difference in Indiana. We’ll see.

Also, I’m no Trumpian but I did get a kick out of The Ballad of Lying, Cheating, Stealing Ted.

Update: Despite a final push on the restroom issue, Cruz loses big in Indiana.

And Via Politico:

The only problem with Cruz’s socially conservative message? The voters he has to win over [in Indiana] don’t like it. …

Today, vast swaths of the state’s Republican electorate, from Indianapolis to West Lafayette, have retreated from the culture wars. And like the 50s-era diner itself, Cruz’s dogged socially conservative message seems anachronistic—and perhaps a little tin-eared—to these fiscally conservative, socially liberal Republicans….

On the other hand, hard to argue with Cruz’s takedown of Trump. If only they both could lose!

Via Emmett Rensin at Vox.com, The smug style in American liberalism:

In 2016, the smug style has found expression in…a foundational set of assumptions above which a great number of liberals comport their understanding of the world. It has led an American ideology hitherto responsible for a great share of the good accomplished over the past century of our political life to a posture of reaction and disrespect: a condescending, defensive sneer toward any person or movement outside of its consensus, dressed up as a monopoly on reason.

It’s so true, but liberals (actually, illiberal progressives would be more accurate) can’t see it; their unquestioning sense of moral superiority and their “Just Do What We Say” assumption of a right to dictate to others is the ocean they swim in.

More. George Will on the four key tenets of progressivism: (1) history has a destination; (2) progressives uniquely discern it; (3) politics should be democratic but peripheral to governance, which is the responsibility of experts scientifically administering the regulatory state, and (4) enlightened progressives should enforce limits on speech in order to prevent thinking unhelpful to history’s progressive unfolding.

Furthermore. Via The Atlantic, on why a high school senior feels alienated from activist groups that share causes in which he believes:

“I genuinely cared about these causes—still do,” he wrote, referencing everything from anti-racism to LGBT rights to reproductive health. “I believed I was doing something noble. At the same time,” he added, “a large part of me was not quite in agreement with some of the views and concepts espoused by social-justice groups. Their pro-censorship tendencies, fixation with intersectionality, and constant uproar over seemingly trivial and innocuous matters like ‘cultural appropriation’ and ‘microaggressions’ went against my civil-libertarian sensibilities.” …

“When I go off to college next year, I honestly don’t know where I’m going to fit in… The only political/social group accepting of my views are normally libertarians,” he wrote. “For the most part, these campus activism groups have my sympathies. I just wish that they didn’t have such a hostile attitude towards free speech and didn’t dismiss opposing viewpoints based on the person’s identity.”

And as for the next generation of progressive leadership, Protesters shouted obscenities in an effort to silence the speakers, saying they espouse “hate speech”. And they are utterly mystified when their hypocrisy is pointed out.

Plus, comedian Steve Crowder’s social justice warrior takedown.