Politics & Public Opinion

The Post-Trump GOP

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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!

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Liberalism: What Went So Terribly Wrong

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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.

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The Best Man

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John Kasich is hitting the right notes in calling for both religious conservatives and progressive LGBT activists (and their followers) to stop behaving like authoritarians, so of course both religious conservatives and progressive LGBT activists (and their followers) mock and condemn him—his advice would disrupt their mutual grievance games for fun, profit and power over others.

Via a Washington Blade report with the misleading headline (because he’s not addressing discrimination against employees), Kasich: LGBT people who face discrimination should ‘get over it’, discussing Kasich’s position on small business owners who don’t want to provide services to same-sex weddings:

Urging people to “calm down,” the governor said the country needs to protect religious liberty, but also can’t allow discrimination, so must “strike a balance” on the issue. “What I like to say is, just relax, if you don’t like what somebody is doing, pray for them,” Kasich said. “And if you feel as though somebody is doing something wrong against you, can you just for a second get over it because this thing will settle down?”

Kasich lamented the issue has “become a wedge issue that can be exploited by people on both sides,” saying the country should be the United States and not the “Divided States.”

He’s right, of course. But good luck with that position in today’s polarized politics.

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No One Is on the Moral High Ground Here

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The outing of the son of Mississippi’s GOP governor, after he signed a religious liberty bill, raises the usual issues. If the son of Gov. Phil Bryant wanted to make his sexual orientation public, he would have done so. His outing (assuming he is gay) is an attempt to embarrass the governor.

It’s at best a ham-fisted attempt to “educate” the benighted masses that gays are in all families. To the extent anyone pays attention, it will further polarize, with defenders of the Mississippi law seeing it as an exceedingly ugly tactic by opponents and thus feeling reinforced in their beliefs.

Personally, I believe it’s wrong for small business owners with religious convictions against same-sex marriage to be forced to provide expressive services to same-sex weddings (as they are in states and localities with LGBT anti-discrimination measures that apply to “public accommodations”). But the Mississippi law is in many respects “problematic” (as progressives like to label things they want to suppress) and quite probably unconstitutional. That’s because, among other reasons, it’s a mishmash of agenda items, including an unenforceable declaration that “marriage is or should be recognized as the union of one man and one woman [and that] sexual relations are properly reserved to such a marriage.”

The “religious liberty” battle now roiling through the states could have been avoided with a bit of common sense, such as an acceptance of religious exemptions in LGBT anti-discrimination matters. But progressive activists have made it clear they will tolerate no dissent on this.

I wish that the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act, passed in 1993 with support from many Democrats who would now be required to strenuously oppose it, applied to states and localities. The law holds that legislation burdening the exercise of religion on behalf of a compelling government interest must be the least restrictive way in which to further the government interest. But in 1997 the U.S. Supreme Court held that RFRA could only be applied to federal legislation.

If that were not the case, it would have been interesting to see how RFRA might have played out in religious liberty disputes based on state and local anti-discrimination laws. (Subsequently, attempts to pass statewide RFRAs based on the federal model have been treated by opponents as the second coming of Jim Crow.)

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More Evidence: All About the “T”

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The news media is all over that Bruce Springsteen cancels North Carolina concert over ‘bathroom law’ (via CNN.com):

Springsteen and his E Street Band were slated to perform at the Greensboro Coliseum this Sunday. The roughly 15,000 ticketholders will all be eligible for a refund. The newly enacted law requires individuals to use bathrooms that correspond to the gender on their birth certificate, and has drawn fierce criticism for excluding legal protections from gay and transgender people.

The North Carolina law, as the article notes in a secondary fashion, invalidates a comprehensive LGBT anti-discrimination measures passed in Charlotte and prohibits any future local measures in the state. But the reporting and commentary is fixated on the bathroom issue.

Part of this is because transgender bathroom and locker room use has—along with forcing small businesses with religious objections to provide expressive services to same-sex marriages—become the dominant LGBT issue of the day. Employment discrimination, what’s that?

Along those lines, the Washington Post recently informed us that queasiness over using restrooms with the opposite sex is simply a matter of socialization and enculturation:

A bathroom bill wouldn’t be raised in some parts of Europe where restrooms are unisex. But the public bathroom here has regularly been a location of consternation for the puritanical, puri-panic-al United States: an American conundrum resulting from American sensibilities and American history.

Which is why so many suspect that gender-neutral bathrooms is the actual aim of progressive activists, and are responding with such vehemence.

Is this rightwing manipulation? Sure. But leftwing overreach has opened the door that reactionary politicians are now walking through.

P.S., I’ve traveled throughout Europe and don’t recall shared “unisex” (the author means mixed sex) restrooms, even in Scandinavia. But hey, if it serves the narrative.

More. Gay Washington Post columnist recounts:

I was having dinner with some LGBT colleagues when I excused myself and headed to the facilities — one labeled for men, the other for women, facing each other across a small hallway. Between them stood an employee, who looked me up and down and opened the men’s room door for me.

How polite? Hardly. Instead of thanking him, I explained how presumptuous he had been in deciding my bathroom preference for me. I tried in vain to explain how “gender identity” (the way individuals perceive themselves) is different from “biological sex” (generally indicated by a person’s genitalia, or sex assigned at birth).

Yes, for many progressives the aim is gender-neutral restrooms.

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One-Party State Supporters

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Some on the LGBT progressive left are condemning the Human Rights Campaign for endorsing incumbent Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.). Kirk is one of an admittedly too-small number of GOP congressmembers working to make their party more LGBT supportive.

HRC’s policy is to endorse incumbents who are mostly if not 100% onboard with its scorecard priorities—even if an opponent dots more “i’s” and crosses more “t’s.” Otherwise, elected officials would have less reason to be responsive when lobbied—and in the Democratic party, there’s often a primary challenger claiming to be even more progressive across the spectrum than a sitting congressmember.

But as I never tire of pointing out (as it makes progressives stomp their feet so), the worst nightmare of the LGBT left is a Republican party that ceases to be predominantly anti-gay, pulling gay voters away from the party. So when HRC occasionally does the right thing and endorses a pro-gay-equality Republican incumbent, it’s seen as a betrayal. Left foot first; always, left foot first.

I don’t think these progressives actually believe the GOP can be permanently prevented from keeping or taking legislative power so why bother working to reform them. It’s more like if the GOP is allowed to have power in Washington, then worse is better as regards mobilizing LGBT votes and dollars to put the one-true-party back in office.

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Illiberal Progressives Empower the Right

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This weekend, “anti-Donald Trump protesters blocked an Arizona highway and created a traffic nightmare in a bid to keep the GOP frontrunner and his supporters from attending a Saturday rally,” reported the New York Daily News. The incident follows the successful effort by protesters to force the cancellation of a Trump rally in Chicago, after which the candidate handily won the Illinois GOP primary.

You don’t have to look warmly on Donald Trump (I certainly don’t) to see that preventing him from speaking is all wrong, totally counterproductive, and completely in keeping with the contemporary worldview of progressive activists. Instead of countering Trump’s speech with their own message, they want to prevent him from speaking, and then celebrate their victory while Trump claims—as hard as it is to believe—the moral high ground.

In January, LGBT progressive activists created a disruption that succeeded in forcing the cancellation of a reception with an Israeli gay rights group at the LGBTQ Task Force’s Creating Change conference in Chicago. One can think Trump wrong on just about everything, and the Israeli gay rights speakers as courageous and virtuous, and still condemn progressive activists in both situations for their tactics of “de-platforming” (that is, forcibly silencing) those with views they disagree with. As I wrote at the time:

On college campuses progressivism now means shutting down or otherwise eliminating the expression of viewpoints that are not deemed sufficiently and correctly progressive. It’s a new streak of authoritarianism that reflects back to the pro-Soviet leftism of the ‘30s and ‘40s.

Freedom of speech isn’t the only constitutional right progressives believe we would be better without (ok, they support freedom of speech they agree with; it’s just “hate speech” that shouldn’t be protected). You can’t pick up an LGBT paper or visit an LGBT website and not see articles and editorials informing you that religious liberty is nothing but code for the right to engage in anti-gay discrimination. Just like the right to freedom of speech is just code to engage in hate promotion. And then progressives wonder why, in rejecting their brand of authoritarianism of the left, a growing number seem inclined to embrace its opposite, authoritarianism of the right.

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Red State, Blue State

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“Despite skewing Democrat, LGBT people are flocking to red states,” reports the Daily Beast. The piece cites marriage equality nationwide and more accepting attitudes as a factor, but notes that this is reflective of wider national migratory patterns:

Specifically, it lines up with people—especially young people—choosing less to live in huge, expensive cities, which were traditionally friendlier toward LGBTQ individuals, and choosing instead to make lives for themselves in small and mid-tier cities in the middle and southern states. …

Smaller cities have shorter commutes, cheaper rent, and less competition for good-paying jobs. And a lot of smaller cities are investing in the kind of infrastructure (public transportation and amenities, walkability and density near city centers) that young people value.

Other reports on the migration pattern are more explicit in citing the economic vitality of Red states as compared to those long-governed by Democratic majorities. Stephen Moore writes at the Daily Signal:

They are leaving states with high minimum wages, pro-union work rules, high taxes on the rich, generous welfare benefits, expansive regulations to “help” workers, green energy policies, etc.

Similarly, blogger James Joyner notes in a Christian Science Monitor column:

Red states offer lower housing costs, lower taxes, and less regulation than blue states. That’s why so many blue-state voters are moving to the West or South. In the short term, the red states gain power. in the longer term, they change. … While the near-term political effect of this has been to increase the power of red states, the longer term impact has been to turn them into purple and even blue states

The concern is that the new migrants, attracted to superior economic conditions, bring along their left-liberal economic ideas and will proceed to vote for big-government Democrats in their new havens—after which they’ll wonder at the mystery of why the economies in those states will have begun to falter, too.

On a more optimistic note, many LGBT people may have felt it necessary to live in liberal states and cities but now have the freedom not to do so. A rising number of fiscally conservative gay voters would be a good thing.

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CPAC 2016: Progress on the Right

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Via the Washington Times:

The traditionalist and libertarian wings of the conservative movement have long disagreed on the issue of gay marriage, but an ideologically diverse panel at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Thursday was able to find common cause amid the fault lines. …

Townhall.com’s Guy Benson and the Cato Institute’s Ilya Shapiro, both of whom support same-sex marriage, broke with liberals on whether dissenters should be forced to accommodate same-sex weddings such as by baking cakes, taking pictures or performing ceremonies.

At Townhall.com, Matt Vespa writes: CPAC’s Marriage Equality Panel, Something That Could Never Happen At A Progressive Conference:

Benson aptly noted that a panel such as this could never have been conducted at a left wing conference without boos, hissing, and other disruptive shenanigans.

And video here.

This “common ground” won’t please LGBT progressives, and many on the right support efforts by Ted Cruz and, to a slightly lesser extent, Marco Rubio, to roll back marriage equality. But the tenor and tone at CPAC is still progress, as is the fact that CPAC accepted the Log Cabin Republicans among the many official co-sponsors with a booth, which in years past was denied to both Log Cabin and the now-defunct GoProud at the behest of anti-gay conservatives at the Heritage Foundation and like-minded groups.

More. John Kasich tells businesses why they shouldn’t discriminate against gay people. It sidesteps the constitutional, and moral, issue of forcing independent business providers to engage in expressive behavior regarding same-sex weddings that violates their religious convictions, which may put me and fellow libertarians to the right of Kasich. Not that Kasich’s position will appease frothing-at-the-mouth Dan Savage.

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This Should Not Happen in America

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Via the Washington Times, New York farm owners give up legal fight after being fined $13,000 for refusing to host gay wedding:

The owners of a New York farm fined $13,000 for declining to host a same-sex wedding on their property have chosen not to appeal a court ruling against them, bringing an end to the high-profile legal battle after more than three years.

The [state Division of Human Rights] fined the Giffords $10,000 for violating the state Human Rights Law and ordered them to pay $1,500 each to Melisa and Jennifer McCarthy for “the emotional injuries they suffered as a result of the discrimination.”…

The Giffords argued that they would host wedding receptions, parties or other events for same-sex couples, but the court said that their “purported willingness to offer some services to the McCarthys does not cure their refusal to provide a service that was offered to the general public.”

LGBT progressives cheer and pat themselves on the back, while they sneer at those who cling to their guns and their religion—and then wonder how it could possibly be that Donald Trump seems poised to become the next president.

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