Politics & Public Opinion

A Widening Political Divide

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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.

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A Libertarian Moment

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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.

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Indiana

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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.”

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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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