Politics & Public Opinion

GOP Trumped

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I fervently hope Donald Trump isn’t the GOP nominee, but it says a great deal about the state of the union that he so far seems unstoppable. Given the Democratic alternative, it’s a depressing campaign season indeed.

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Aaron Zitner and Dante Chinni, in Donald Trump Forges New Blue-Collar Coalition Among Republicans (subscriber firewalled), shed some light on the predicament:

Mr. Trump’s appeal is a form of secular populism rarely seen in Republican primary races, and one he is pressing in part with appearances in working-class communities in Iowa that include independent voters and even Democrats who may be lured into the caucuses. …

Past nominating contests have often boiled down to two-person races in which an establishment-backed front-runner beats a socially conservative candidate who appeals to working-class voters—a role Rick Santorum filled in 2012, as did Mike Huckabee in 2008 and Pat Buchanan in 1996. Now, Mr. Trump appears to be opening a new, third lane in the GOP, drawing on a large share of voters who don’t have a college degree and don’t identify strongly with the party’s touchstone social issues, such as opposition to abortion rights and gay marriage.

That raises the prospect that the 2016 contest could narrow to a three-person race featuring the leading choice of social conservatives, the top pick of the party’s establishment wing of centrists and business-friendly Republicans—and Mr. Trump.

Gay-baiting isn’t among Trump’s fascistic tendencies. He is not a social conservative. He’s not much of an economic conservative, either. He favors the crony capitalism that made him rich. He is, instead, a populist demagogue.

What Trump will mean to the future configuration of the GOP is yet to be determined.

More. Via LCR:

Log Cabin Republicans remains committed to the eradication of radical Islamic extremism and believes it poses an existential threat to our culture and members of the LGBT community in particular, but inciting the politics of fear will not achieve those ends.

Plus this observation:

Considering Mr. Trump’s insistence that pursuit of a constitutional amendment banning marriage equality is futile as it would never be realized, we hope he likewise comprehends that his position advocating a carte-blanche ban on Muslim immigrants is equally fanciful.

As others have pointed out, on LGBT equality issues, Cruz and Rubio (among the main contenders) are far worse.

Meanwhile, how Hillary Clinton is bringing the nation together, as usual. Like Obama, her ire is most provoked by the one true enemy, Republicans.

OK, there is some justification if she were addressing Cruz, Carson and Huckabee, but no, not Bush, Kasich, Paul, Christie or (on Muslims) Rubio. Her partisan hyperbole is red meat for the base, and not what the country needs.

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Slandering DeMaoi Worked

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Via NBC-San Diego, DeMaio Accuser Sentenced for Obstructing Justice:

A former aide to Congressional candidate Carl DeMaio was sentenced to five years of probation Monday for using a phony email account to make it appear DeMaio or one of his associates threatened him.

The presiding judge said the slanders “definitely played a role” in DeMaio’s defeat.

LGBT progressives championed the (false) accusations that sunk Carl’s congressional campaign (he had been leading in the polls beforehand). I, however, was skeptical. As you may note, commenters on that thread were not.

Glenn Reynolds at instapundit: “I’m cynical enough to think that if he’d done this to a Democrat, he would have been punished more severely.”

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Hillary Tells a Tale

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Via BuzzFeed: There’s No Evidence In Clinton White House Documents For Clintons’ Story On Anti-Gay Law.

Yes, Republicans were/are worse—sometimes much, much worse—on marriage equality. That doesn’t mean we should excuse every attempt by the Clintons, Obama and others to make themselves look much more nobler than they were. Truth should mean something other than spin.

Scott Shackford has more. Hillary Clinton’s Bizarre Gay Marriage Revisionism Doesn’t Fool Those Who Remember. And he tweets: “There are now gay people semi-defending DOMA in order to protect Hillary and I honestly don’t know what to say.”

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The Progessive Campus Anti-Speech Movement

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There was a point, not so very long ago, when students and outside speakers advocating gay legal equality might not have been welcomed on campuses. That model of closed-mindedness isn’t something you might suppose those calling themselves “progressives” would aspire to emulate.

Later, when being gay was no longer anathema but support for same-sex marriage was a decidedly minority position (even on liberal campuses), discussions of marriage equality weren’t closed down. An open engage of conflicting ideas was viewed as central to a liberal education.

But today, progressives believe it is their responsibility to make sure no views outside their echo chamber, including conservative speakers and student op-eds, are permitted, lest they mislead those whose minds are not completely closed. Two cases in point, from Wesleyan University and at Williams College, expose the barely concealed authoritarianism that lurks behind much of progressive activism.

More. Feminist pioneer and committed leftist Germaine Greer is the wrong kind of feminist/leftist (not supportive of transgender rights). So:

While debate in a University should be encouraged, hosting a speaker with such problematic and hateful views towards marginalised and vulnerable groups is dangerous.

Brendan O’Neill responded:

The Cardiff censors say Greer’s ideas are ‘problematic’. That is what the PC say instead of ‘haram’.

Furthermore. The Williams student group that invited and then disinvited conservative author Suzanne Venker later reinvited her after being embarrassed over the fallout that followed their caving in to the student censors. At that point, Venker had apparently had enough and declined.

Late addition. Robby Soave writes at reason.com, citing Colorado College’s student newspaper, The Catalyst, that LGBT student activists at the college are demanding that the movie “Stonewall” is too offensive to be shown on campus by the college’s Film and Media Studies Department, which wanted to moderate a discussion about the controversy. Instead, they are demanding that the administration cancel the upcoming screening.

“I think Colorado College should cancel the screening because the safety and well-being of queer and trans students surpasses the importance of a critical discussion,” one student told The Catalyst. Said another: “If CC is really as dedicated to diversity and inclusion, they would never have agreed to screen a film that queer students have repeatedly stated is a threat to our identity and our safety. … It is fallacious to equate the rights of students to view a movie with the rights of students to exist free of violence.”

Soave comments regarding the students’ response to the film, directed by openly gay filmmaker Roland Emmerich, which positively depicts gay people fighting for equality in 1969:

That’s right: the film isn’t merely offensive to gay and trans students (despite having a truly gay-affirming message), it’s actively dangerous to their physical well-being…. This is a complaint emotionally-coddled students often make: that some kind of expression is so triggering that allowing it to proceed constitutes an act of violence. Such complaints are usually pure hyperbole, but hyperbole doesn’t even begin to cover the opinions of Colorado College’s precious snowflakes.

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A Good Fight

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Via National Journal: Group Aiming to Change GOP’s Anti-Gay-Marriage Platform Plank Expands:

American Unity Fund, a well-funded Republican group supporting same-sex marriage, is absorbing Young Conservatives for the Freedom to Marry’s effort to change the party platform.

Good luck to them, but:

Social conservatives, led by Family Research Council president Tony Perkins, are expected to staunchly oppose any changes to the party’s marriage platform.

Gay GOPers and their supporters may not succeed this time, but a generational change is underway, even in conservative circles.

That the pace of change on the right has slowed somewhat following the Supreme Court ruling in favor of same-sex marriage is probably in response to the linkage of the right to marry with the denial of the rights of small businesses not to be forced to provide their services to same-sex weddings.

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Eric Fanning’s Sexual Orientation Should Be Inconsequential, but It’s Not

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Everything is now hyper-politicized. President Obama nominated Eric Fanning, a specialist on national security issues, to be the new Army Secretary, the service’s top civilian leadership post at the Pentagon. For good or ill, the coverage has led with the news that Fanning would be the first openly gay secretary of a military branch.

Of course, GOP presidential wannabe (but never will be) Mike Huckabee blasted the move. “It’s clear President Obama is more interested in appeasing America’s homosexuals than honoring America’s heroes,” said Huckabee.

But issues with the coverage, and the way the announcement was handled, were also raised by Richard Grenell, a leading foreign policy wonk who during the last presidential election cycle had been selected to be Mitt Romney’s foreign policy advisor, before social conservatives erupted and pressured Romney to drop him (technically, to facilitate his resignation) because he is openly gay.

Grenell tweeted “The White House has successfully announced Eric Fanning as the most qualified gay leader for the Army. It’s so offensive” and “I can’t complain about the media defining a nominee by his sexuality because it’s how the White House characterized it. #Irrelevant=Offensive,” and then “issuing press releases on someone’s sexuality is offensive because it’s irrelevant. Is he the most qualified or the most qualified gay?”

Grenell, it’s worth noting, has worked to educate conservatives on gay issues. For instance, in June he penned (at Foxnews.com) The Conservative Case for Gay Marriage.

It’s not as if the press wasn’t going to make a big deal over Fanning being gay, and it would be unreasonable to expect LGBT rights groups not to celebrate it. But I think Grenell raises a point worth considering. Similar to what those who benefit from affirmative action preferences in academia and jobs face, Fanning now has to contend with second-guessing over whether he was appointed because he was the best candidate (who happens to be gay), or because Obama wanted to make a point about gays and the military.

In that sense, the press and advocate statements haven’t done Fanning any favors.

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Kim Davis Aftermath

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From an AP story:

“There are no winners. Everybody’s been hurt,” said Lois Hawkins, a Morehead native who works as the executive secretary to the county’s top elected official. “It’s going to be different. It can’t go back the way it was.” …

Protesters and supporters alike have come to Rowan County as well, adding to the stress for locals who want to get back to normal. Ante Pavkovic, a pastor from North Carolina, stood in the lobby of the county clerk’s office Wednesday with a sign demanding that Davis’ employees be fired for disobeying their boss by licensing same-sex marriages, even though they too face the threat of jail or fines if they defy the judge.

If Davis moves to fire her deputy clerks who issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, this could all blow up again. But for now, the dust is settling. The social conservatives have gotten a heroine who will fill their fundraising coffers.

But they’ve also lost an important advantage: Making the case for the freedom not to be compelled to act against religious beliefs, when defending self-employed services providers such as bakers, photographers and wedding planners who wish not to lend their efforts to same-sex marriages, had the support of a majority of Americans, including many who support same-sex marriage. But the social conservatives have now conflated that with Kim Davis and a handful of others who don’t want to recognize same-sex marriage as government officials.

That stance makes the religious right swoon, but it’s not a winning position with most Americans. Yet it’s now the battle they’ve chosen to engage.

More. David Boaz writes that while religious right activists aren’t giving up, they have failed to provoke the backlash they sought—with Kim Davis being that rare exception that proves the rule:

Unlike the continuing divide over abortion, public opinion has been moving rapidly toward support of same-sex marriage. … The obvious difference is that abortion involves the termination of a life. Many Americans regard that as murder, while others think it is at best morally troubling. Gay marriage, on the other hand, means people promising to love and support another person. It’s a lot harder to organize a campaign against that, or even to sustain people’s original opposition once they learn that some of their friends and family are gay and want to get married.

Furthermore. Via Slate, New Poll: Kim Davis May Have Seriously Damaged the Cause of Anti-Gay “Religious Liberty”. A similar point to mine above, although Mark Joseph Stern I assume thinks this is entirely a good thing, and I don’t.

And separately, David Blakenhorn draws an important distinction between “principled civil disobedience” and “principled lawlessness.”

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Being Reasonable

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Rod Dreher has a good post about the martyrdom of Kim Davis.  He is concerned about the effect of her case on religious freedom in general.  But he’s ignoring the central protection Kentucky itself has instituted to protect religious liberty.

Prof. Eugene Volokh has the best analysis of the actual law, and the Kentucky religious freedom protection statute seems very clear that the state would make a reasonable accommodation for Davis if she were interested in being reasonable.  In fact, the religious freedom laws passed by both the state and federal governments in the last two decades, are weighted — sometimes unreasonably (in my view) — in favor of religious freedom.  Despite my feelings, that is a policy choice elected officials have made, and it is the law.

Davis’ best argument is that she doesn’t want to have her name on state marriage certificates if they will be issued to same-sex couples, because the use of her name in those circumstances violates her religious beliefs.  The statute only requires her beliefs to be sincere, not objectively reasonable or even consistent.  Under the Kentucky law, if it is not unduly burdensome on the state to remove her name, she could continue to serve in her job.  That would require either reconfiguring how Kentucky marriage certificates look and perhaps having to reprint all of them going forward, or perhaps somehow scratching her name (if not her office title) from them.  These options may or may not be reasonable given the specifics of what processes are in place, which ones are required by state statute, etc.

Volokh says this is a “modest” request. That might be true, though “modest” might not be the word I’d use. If one elected official in one Kentucky county can bring lawful marriages in her jurisdiction to a virtual halt because of her religious beliefs, and demands that her view of religion be accommodated countywide, and possibly statewide depending on the statutory rules for marriage forms, that seems to me immodest in the extreme.

Davis’s case is extraordinary because she has insisted that her personal religious belief should govern, not just her own actions, but those of her entire office, including (in her view) all of the people who work for her.

Compare the extent of her preferences to those of Judge Vance Day in Oregon.  Judge Day has announced that he will not perform same-sex marriages due to his religious beliefs. Unlike the office of a county clerk, the performance of marriages is entirely discretionary for a judge. In fact, Judge Day specifically told his staff that they should forward any requests for same-sex marriages to other judges who do not share his religious objections.  Judge Day has at the very least made it clear that his religious objections are his own, and made an accommodation to the same-sex couples who might have approached his office to make sure that their rights are protected at the same time that his religious beliefs are respected.

Here is another example, one cited by Dreher that works in the opposite direction.  Gavin Newsom, as mayor of San Francisco, announced in 2004 that he felt California’s law prohibiting same-sex marriage was unconstitutional, and that henceforth City Hall would be happy to provide marriage licenses to same-sex couples, which is did, to great joy.  Dreher calls this “lawlessness,” and implies that those who supported Newsom are hypocrites if they oppose Davis.

Newsom went beyond his authority as mayor, but he was not, as a NYTimes editorial quoted by Dreher suggests, defying a court order.  In fact, the California Attorney General challenged the mayor’s political grandstanding, and when the California Supreme Court ruled against Newsom, the marriages ended.  Dreher’s comparison of Newsom to Davis would hold only if the mayor had truly disobeyed the court ruling and maybe gone to jail for that.

Moreover, while Newsom was indeed acting (or more accurately overacting) on a moral principle, it was one grounded in the civil law, not God’s.  The prior year, the Massachusetts Supreme Court had ruled that the state constitution protected the rights of same-sex couples to get married.  While Newsom was in grave error about his own authority, he also knew when the stunt was over.

Davis now has to make that same determination.  She can be a martyr for as long as she likes.  Kentucky officials can determine whether it makes sense to accommodate her religious beliefs and remove her name from marriage certificates.  The question is whether she is going to be reasonable enough to accept the terms she, herself, offered.

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The Kim Davis Circus

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(Continuing the discussion from the prior post….)

Legally correct, perhaps, but “jailed for refusing to marry the gays” is like giving anti-gay-marriage Ky. county clerk Kim Davis the religious right martyrdom prize, sure to cause a surge in their fundraising. Apparently, there is no way just to remove Davis from office for failing to carry out her duties.

Walter Olson offers some pertinent observations, including that:

Among Republican White House candidates, Carly Fiorina seems to be among the few willing to draw appropriate public-private distinctions: “when you are a government employee, I think you take on a different role.” Also from a conservative perspective, Dan McLoughlin has a thoughtful what-goes-around-comes-around view on lawlessness and the pervasiveness of double standards.

Huckabee, of course, is a complete embarrassment.

On the other hand, it is also true that if this were a liberal clerk citing her Quaker faith to refuse to sign gun permits, conservatives would be up in arms (not literally, at least in that county) while at least some progressives would defend her right to ignore the law.

More. Kasich on Ky. clerk: ‘She has to comply.’ GOP presidential contender Gov. John Kasich (R-Ohio) said on Sunday that state marriage clerks should issue same-sex marriage licenses even if they morally oppose the practice. “She’s not running a church,” Kasich said.

There is now a real split between Fiorini, Kasich, Bush, Graham and (with greater equivocation) Trump and (via second-hand reports) even Carson, versus Davis-defenders Huckabee, Cruz, Walker, Jindal, Santorum and Paul.

Some progressive sites play up GOP support for Davis, but the real story is how many of the contenders have come out against her.

Furthermore. Sprung! It’s a good thing — yes, she should be removed from office. But making her a martyr plays into our opponents’ hands.

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Freedom Means Freedom for Everyone

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Out actress Ellen Page has garnered much publicity for her impromptu debate over gay rights with GOP presidential candidate Ted Cruz at the Iowa State Fair. But what did she choose to go on the offensive about? No, not Cruz’s support for a constitutional amendment to roll back gay marriage, but his defense of religious freedom for conservative Christian bakers, florists and other service providers.

I’m continually shocked at how tone deaf activists-minded gays and lesbians of the leftish persuasion are on this issue, cavalierly dismissing religious freedom as nothing put an attempt to allow discrimination against gays, period, end of story. If only we can get rid of religious freedom, well, then we’d be set. Progressive government would tell everyone what to do and, you know, that would be keen.

But a majority of Americans don’t believe small, independent business owners should be forced to provide services to same-sex weddings against their religious beliefs (that is, self-employed private business people, not government civil servants. And there is, or once was, a difference here). Many of those supporting religious freedom for those who have religious objections to same-sex weddings are themselves ok with same-sex marriage. They’re not bigots. The intolerance is on the other side.

 More. John Corvino writes in the New York Times Gay Rights and the Race Analogy:

When civil rights laws were passed, discrimination against blacks was pervasive, state-sponsored and socially intractable. Pervasive, meaning that there weren’t scores of other photographers clamoring for their business. State-sponsored, meaning that segregation was not merely permitted but in fact legally enforced, even in basic public accommodations and services. Socially intractable, meaning that without higher-level legal intervention, the situation was unlikely to improve. To treat the lesbian couple’s situation as identical — and thus as obviously deserving of the same legal remedy — is to minimize our racist past and exaggerate L.G.B.T.-rights opponents’ current strength.

John comes down somewhere between my view that no one self-employed in the private sector should be forced to provide services that violate their religious beliefs and the activists who believe they should. He writes:

Currently, the jurisdictions most likely to prohibit sexual-orientation discrimination are those where such laws seem least needed; cities where rainbow banners far outnumber Confederate flags. But what about places where being openly gay is literally unsafe? There it’s much harder to rely on market forces and social pressure for ensuring equality.

How pervasive or intractable does discrimination need to be before we should invoke the long arm of the law to solve it? I don’t have a simple formula for answering that question. I’m wary of those who do.

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