Here’s how his diatribe against the latest from the delusional gay Republicans starts:
Every four years gay Republicans slime out from under their rocks to remind us that the Democratic candidate wasn’t always perfect on LGBT issues. They then implicitly (and sometimes explicitly) pivot to this nonsensical argument: Since your guy/gal wasn’t always perfect on LGBT issues, the LGBT community should vote for the Republican who was terrible on LGBT issues then, is terrible on LGBT issues now, and who has pledged, if elected, to remain terrible on LGBT issues forever.
And then he gets angry and starts smashing things. You should read it all.
1) actually the log cabin republicans forced every bodies’ hand with the DADT court case and it’s gross to ignore that.
2) we have no idea how much worse the GOP.
3) I feel terrible for log cabin republicans. There’s no reason why one’s sexual orientation should entail, say, one’s tax policy position. It has to be awful to be perpetually caught between social identities like that.
4) I think every queer person can feel the intuition that we would be better off if we were left alone by the state. Sadly that intuition doesn’t fit in with the Democrats.
5) I’ll take honest hate over cynical manipulation of our pain. The shit the Democrats pulled in response to Orlando is far more disgusting than the GOP platform.
6) Savage’s notion of self harm via politics is frankly offensive. It assume bad faith on the part of all gay Republicans. Log cabin republicans do in fact withhold endorsement.
7) it us not a good thing that LGBT are a captured voting block of the democrats.
1. That time the Log Cabin Republicans took action to oppose Republican policies is not an argument to vote Republican.
2. An imaginary worse Republican party means the Republican party we have should be considered? Did you even read Savage’s article?
3. When you consider that having a regressive tax policy unduly affects underprivileged members of society, no, I have no sympathy.
4. Again, did you read the article? If that’s what bugs you, then the Republicans ought to bug you even more — over and over again, they show an eagerness to police the bedroom.
5. Even the Log Cabin Republicans say that the Republican platform is virulently anti-LGBT. Your assumption of ‘cynicism’ among Democrats is more disgusting than actual anti-gay policies? WTF?
6. “Withhold endorsement” of some, while endorsing the whole.
7. That’s the one thing I agree with you on. It is not a good thing that we have one moderate, centrist party that supports equal rights for all vs. an actively evil, broken party that holds odious views that should not be taken seriously. I’d like to have a choice someday…a real choice.
I’ve never understood why any gay person would support a party that just shits on them time after time. Sure, the GOPers might have a financial policy that such a supporter likes, but that doesn’t make up for the great, steaming stoolfuls of turds poured over their head.
yeah, the LCR were correct that the best way to change the party that opposed their very existence, would be from the inside. To get the Repubs who happen to be gay to get their colleagues to reconsider.
Yet Dan is quite correct that given 40 yrs of futile efforts, they should just switch parties to one more accommodating.
..
so what if Hill was against gay marriage 20 yrs ago, are politicians not allowed to change their opinions, ever? There is a difference between ‘consistency’ and ‘rigidity’.
.
maybe I give Clintons [plural] too much allowance, I still think DADT was forced on Clinton by the Repub Congress, which he didn’t veto in order to get a budget bill passed (that it was a Rider on). [any correction to that misinformation should probably be redirected to the Political Madness thread]
Though FSM knows why. The current Republican fiscal policy is one of wasting money on policies that don’t work, from abstinence only education to repealing the money saving ACA to blowing money on drug testing welfare recipients. If your only motive is getting the most from the government for your money–and giving as little money to the government as possible–then the Democrats are your party. No, the only reason to vote Republican is to make life harder for “them” (whoever your particular “they” are), despite the damage that the same policy does to you.
Considering how vicious the opposition to the LGBT community is in the Republican party – even the Log Cabin Republicans were surprised by how awful this year’s platform is – I could not imagine ever supporting them if I was gay. Well, I could not imagine ever supporting them now, either, but that’s besides the point. Maybe this is a bit too simplistic, but if I look at the priority of needs, I’d always rank freedom, life and rights higher than the chance to pay less taxes. Isn’t survival a more important, basal value than comfort and success on that pyramid thing somewhere or something?
Indeed someone not determined to think badly of Clinton might consider her ability to change her position after listening to the rational arguments of the LGBT movement a good quality: she listens to her constituents and changes her opinions appropriately. She wasn’t born perfectly enlightened on the subject of LGBT rights and still isn’t perfect on the issue but she’s demonstrated ability and willingness to learn. That strikes me as more a good than a bad thing, overall.
@Professor Myers
1) this was not an argument to vote for Republicans. It was an argument, contra Savage, that the LCR have actually done something. Their court case is the main reason why DADT fell when it did and in the manner it did. They were also instrumental on getting Republicans, like Ron Paul and Mark Kirk, to vote for the repeal. DADT repeal needed nominal support among senate Republicans because if cloture. LCR were completely necessary to the end.
2) I didn’t finish my thought there. Sorry for the confusion. Savage claims that the LCR is ineffective. I was pointing out that the GOP might be even worse without the pressure if the LCR.
3) Don’t be coy. I was using tax policy as a placeholder for any number of issues that a queer person could legitimately disagree with democrats on, from say religious liberty (or “liberty” if you prefer) to drug policy to foreign policy. Furthermore party identification is as much about social grouping as it is politics. There is already a ton of strain on queer people to not further damage family ties; I really feel for the queer person who remains Republican as a matter of family. I’m not a republican but virtually everyone in my family is and k have to keep my views secret to get along. I’m not going yo condemn a queer who has to go one step further.
4) yes I read the article and several of the ones connected to it. I didn’t say the Republicans were better on this point; I only said the Democrats were not good on it. I’m queer, I wish to be left alone in the bedroom and outside of it. It’s gross I’m being forced to pick which aspects of life are damaged.
5) I’m not denying that GOP hates queer folks, or that their policies are very damaging. But they are known enemies. The Democrats in power, recently and you yourself complained about this, have shown themselves to nbe nothing more than vipers in our midsts.
They tried and failed to pass an awful due process violating bill on gun control while ignoring the queer phobia implicit in the Orlando attack. This also validated the false notion that Orlando was primarily a terrorist.
This action was the purest distillation of democrats in power using queer lives and blood as mere tools. So yes I rather have my life damaged because some one hates my guts and wants me dead, then have my life damaged because a person finds my existence politically useful.
It wasn’t a Republican that conducted the single most damaging act to happen to the community in the usa for the last 10+ years to score cheap law and order points and/or punishment for have rights finally recognized. No it was a Democratic DoJ that shut rentboy down.
6. LCR routinely deny endorsing candidates that do not support the community. They should do so more often but they, for example, famously denied endorsing Bush in ’04 over marriage. Bush even made a hail Mary pandering attempt the week before the election to try to get them to reverse course. I’m glad they are at least trying even through there is zero chance theg will get me to vote GOP
7) good. Now how do you expect the GOP to reform and/or get broken up?
I don’t for a second believe Clintons’ positions on LGBT issues are sincere. It’s not political viable for either of them to reject marriage rights and there’s every reason to think they actually don’t.
A person doesn’t praise Nancy Reagan for starting a national conversation on AIDS (which is false BTW 20,000 of us were dead before either fucker even said AIDS in public) if they actually gave a shit about queer lives.
Likewise Obama’s long standing opposition to marriage was entirely a craven act of realpolitik cowardice. His evolution was poll driven back to what he originally thought back in ’96.
Don’t should be do at the end if the first paragraph.
1. Why not?
2. So what?
3. Do you believe Trump’s anti-LGBT rights positions are sincere? (Whatever “sincere” means when you’re talking about Trump.)
I think it needs pointing out that “the LGBT community” is far from monolithic. In particular, different strands are affected to very different degrees by the discrimination that exists in society.
Wealthy white gay men tend to be far less affected by anti-LGBT policies than other groups, and also tend to have benefitted much more from social progress on LGBT issues. I can well imagine that a substantial number of them might think that bigotry and discrimination are minor issues in the constellation of political factors at work today, where less fortunate LGBT people – especially poorer, ethnic minority and trans- people – don’t have that luxury. The former, I imagine, are where this Republican gay group tends to draw its members from. It is similar with LGBTory in the UK, although compared to the US Republicans our Nasty Party are a bunch of woolly progressives.
Does it really matter whether Clinton is sincere in her support of LGBT rights or the Republicans are sincere in their anti-LGBT bigotry? The policies they institute are what you should really care about. Even if the Democratic party only gave more rights and freedoms to the LGBT community because of opportunistic calculation, I’d still consider that worth supporting over the Republican party’s denial of such rights and freedoms, regardless of whether their bigotry is opportunistic (pandering to their bigoted base) or sincere (bigoted themselves). I don’t trust any politician, Democratic or Republican, but I do care about the results.
Mike, bringing up the Log Cabin response to DADT is a very poor example. Yes, the LCRs deserve credit for bringing down DADT, but they did so against the fervent efforts of the Republican Party.
Here’s the history in a nutshell.
1992 Pres. Clinton proposes legislating to allow people to serve in the military regardless of their sexual orientation
1993 The DADT directive is implemented because it is the only compromise Clinton can wheedle out of Congress and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. At this time, the party lines are blurred with high-profile Democrats and Republicans to be found on both sides of the debate, and the obstructionist Congress was Democrat majority.
1998 McVeigh v. Cohen shows that the military were actively investigating the sexual orientation of a navy officer in his off-duty activities, thus violating the “Don’t Ask” part of the DADT.
2006 Witt v. Air Force ends up confirming that DADT needs “heightened scrutiny” to avoid constitutional violations. In 2010 Pres. Obama decides not to appeal this decision, thus leaving DADT alive but in a coma.
2010 Log Cabin Republicans v. USA finally forces the end of DADT, with support from Pres. Obama. While the appeals are still active over DADT, Obama pushes through the DADT Repeal Act thus making all further appeals moot. DADT is dead and although legislation does not specifically endorse it, in practical terms gays can now serve openly in the military.
Now if you end your history here, and if you only look in the context of DADT then it’s quite reasonable to laud the LCRs for their action. But that wasn’t Dan Savage’s point. His argument was that the LCRs had not achieved any softening of the Republican platform against gays. And Savage is completely right.
Let’s look at the process for the DADT Repeal Act. Introduced to the House of Reps by Jason Altmire (DEM). Passed by the House: yeas DEM 235 : REP 15, nays DEM 15 : REP 160. Passed by the Senate: yeas DEM 54 : REP 7, nays DEM 0 : REP 31. Signed into law Pres Obama (DEM).
Then, in the 2012 presidential campaign, around half of the Republican nominee candidates advocated reintroducing DADT, including Bachman, Perry, Santorum, and Gingrich. Of the candidates opposed to reintroducing DADT, only one (Ron Paul) openly defended the rights of gays to serve in the military openly; the others argued that it wasn’t worth reopening the can of worms.
Now we are in the 2016 presidential campaign and every single one of the Republican candidates wanted to reintroduce DADT or appoint judges who will overrule the findings of unconstitutionality to bring in a new ban on gays in the military.
In summary: Savage was absolutely right. Not only have the LCRs failed to soften the Republican anti-gay agenda, it’s actually hardened in the last 20 years and the biggest achievement of the LCRs was only possible because of the support of Democrats against the overwhelming resistance of Republicans (remember, 191 Republicans in the House and Senate voted against the DADT repeal and only 22 voted for it — or to put it another way, the Republicans threw 90% of their vote against the LCRs…this is not what I would call party support).
I suppose the real issue here is not that there exists an LGBT (well, lGB at least, I don’t think they have a very good record on the T) lobbying group within the US Republican party, or even that said group has very little influence indeed. The problem raised by Savage is that this group doesn’t just stick to just lobbying for change within the party, it actively tries to sell the party on LGBT issues to the public. Thus forming a fig leaf to conceal the arseholes underneath.
Their loyalties seem to be to the Republican party first and to the LGBT community second. If they truly had the best interests of the LGBT community at heart then they would refrain from any attempt to get people to vote for the Republicans until such a time that their LGBT policies were genuinely as good as those of the other parties. It is hypocritical to try to change your party’s stance on an issue while simultaneously promoting that as yet unchanged stance to outsiders and using your stake in the issue to give it credibility.
Mike Smith is a good example of why the Log Cabin Republicans exist. There are, in fact, LGBT people who have no ability to rationally evaluate various risks and threats, and for whatever reason have learned some seriously fucked-up, convoluted “logic.” I feel sorry for the guy. I hope he recovers some day.
chris@14:
I think this is a very underappreciated point when considering Bill Clinton’s record on LGB issues (though not necessarily on trans or other genderqueer issues): Bill’s initial position was a very LGB friendly one. He initially was proposing full integration and no legal discrimination based on sexual orientation. He eventually proposed DADT because he was looking to get what he could, when he couldn’t get the best thing. DADT was a step up from the old system where a person could be harassed over their orientation and dismissed if there were any evidence that they were gay or lesbian. Looking back on it now, it seems terribly regressive, but at the time it was actually a tiny little step forward.
@dianne
Clinton is an older, deeply religious southerner. Demographicly she among the lest supportive social groups. Further she seems profoundly uncomfortable discussing the issues and runs from the. She was also extremely late getting here.
I care because I’m sick of my life being used as a football.
And no I don’t think Trump is sincere but some one like Cruz is. Dishonest hatred is the worse.
Hmm. So am I, if you count unbelief as a form of religious belief, which I kind of do (thought that’s a different argument…) And yet I support LGBT rights. Almost as though even older southern women (yeah, don’t bother pretending that demographic wasn’t implicitly in there) can think for themselves and learn throughout their lives.
@artor
I’m not a gid damn republican. I’m not voting for any if those assholes. And yet I’m still glad LCR are trying.
@chris
Do lecture me about queer history. I love it when my community is explained. Savage point is that the LCR are completely ineffective because the party pkTfirm has gotten worse. The thing is that is both a stupid standard and in fact not true.
1) we have no idea how much worse the platform would be sans LCR. There are prominent members of the draft committee, ie tony Perkins, that think Sodomy should be made illegal. I would put even money the LCR curtailed that impluse
2) platforms are not the be all end all of political parties. The very existent of the LCR provided the necessary cover to allow people like Senator Kirk to defect on this point.
Yes its true that the LCR couldn’t get 90% of Republicans to vote for the DADT repeal but the thing doesn’t happen without the 10% that the LCR.
Until such time as the Republican party us not in power at all it is vital that a pro queer internal voice is present. Even if all it does is prevent the worst of the conceivable worse.
LCR needs to be taken to task for putting Republicans first. They don’t need to be demeaned for trying to do such thankless work.
@dianne
The odds through are against it. Especially when you add the religious angle. And no unbelief doesn’t count here.
Sure on old southern woman can learn to be less bigoted. But the evidence is that the generally don’t. The general public is less bigoted today mainly because of deaths.
Besides the demographic profile is the least if the reasons I think Clinton is lying. She praised Nancy Reagan as good on AIDS. A person who actually gives a fuck about queer people doesn’t make that mistake.
I’m sure the Clinton’s gave gay friends. They probably even let us use the bathroom!
I notice that this discussion keeps saying “LGBT”, but in fact the only issues that Dan Savage or the commenters mention are the ones that affect the LG community, and mainly the well-off gay male community.
I’m trans, and I’m acutely aware that the Republican Party platform and candidates are if anything more hostile to trans people than to gay and lesbian people, and in ways that more directly impact our survival. We trans people are frequently urged to support the efforts of the “LGBTQ” community, but as in this case, we don’t seem much interest on the part of the so-called “LGBTQ” community in helping the TQ. (And maybe not the B, either.) And at times, we face outright hostility and invalidation from lesbian and gay groups. Given that, I can’t help wondering if maybe the Log Cabin Republicans and Dan Savage are actually both okay with the Republican Party’s policies with respect to trans and queer people.
Looking at the previous comments, I realize I should clarify that by “queer” I meant “genderqueer.”
No biases here. Nope. Not a one.
As for Trump vs. Clinton: for me, it’s a matter of reduction of harm.
I don’t know whether Trump is actively transphobic or homophobic, but I know he will do nothing to stop the rest of the Republican party from implementing whatever bigotry comes into their heads, starting with the stuff in their platform. With Clinton, whether she’s sincere or not, at least there’s a good chance she will support reasonable policies and oppose at least the most extreme stuff.
Artor @ 16
I thought that the Log Cabin Republicans existed because even LGBT can be greedy capitalist shits, willing to throw their poorer brothers and sisters to the GOP’s Jesus-freaks so long as they the economic means to buy their own freedom.
AMM @ 26
Sadly that probably going to be the political standard from now on: a choice between the status quo or further decline.
Ah! The joys of living in a dying empire.
@Dianne
I can read surveys. It’s not a bias to acknowledge that 60+% of people in Clintons’ demographic profile are homophobic. Does it follow from that Clinton is homophobic? If course not. But add in every other factor, that she has long supported anti gay policies. That she only switched after it became politically unsustainable. That she is visibly preturbed to mention lgbt folks, that she fuvks big time on issues (again Nancy Reagan) are all highly suggestive that she is insincere.
As late as 2012 she was expressing grave doubts on marriage because think of the children in pvt email.
I don’t think Bill is sincere as well.
How? I mean this seriously. I can’t see how they could possibly be worse. Rachel Hoff was so shocked by her interactions with the rest of the Republican Platform Committee that she contemplated leaving the party:
(Contrast this with the Democratic draft platform.)
They’re not the Taliban or ISIS, but they refuse as a party to condemn their violence against LGBT people, or even to explicitly recognize the human rights of LGBT people (or even, as Hoff found, to recognize that some Republicans have different views of LGBT people). Three Republican presidential candidates attended an event hosted by a preacher ranting about how he wants gay people rounded up and killed. This is after 40 years of Log Cabin activism within the Party.
LOL.
It’s also worth pointing out that Savage is both transphobic and biphobic. Also he flat out trolls fat people every 6 months or so.
Glass houses and all that.
I can’t think of a worse issue on which to base this claim.
This is after 40 years of Log Cabin activism within the Party.
And that’s not even to talk about the progress that could have been made if they had chosen long ago to leave the party and devoted their efforts to independent activism that would call out and challenge both parties and the public at large.
@SC
1) the platform doesn’t call for Lawrence to be overturned or for Sodomy to be made illegal.
Given the nature of the process this time around, that’s a win. I’m half suprised that didn’t occur.
I’m aware that Cruz etc have rubbed elbows with people who want me dead. That gas fuck all to do with LCR as they explicitly condemned them for it.
2) it’s also 40 after the religious right steadily losing power and as such getting more extreme in its death throws. The Republicans party is not a monolith; the LCR has been invaluable at influencing the business wing if the party as well as corporate culture.
It’s worth noting that business wing has basically written this election off because of Trump.
I don’t see the game in them trying.
Game = harm
Well, that should certainly give them cause for optimism in their continued efforts to work within the party. Break out the champagne!
The various nondiscrimination policies that a fair number of super corporations have are the result of a partnership amongst the HRC, LCR, the taskforce and a couple of other groups. The LCR is it at least was an invaluable link to business interests that are malleable to helping Lgbt folks.
Harvey Milk could have been a LCR in a slightly different set if circumstances.
Yes, to great effect.
Also, can anyone tell me what the connection between log cabins and LGBT people is? Is it some American stereotype from the 70s that a lot of gay men are bluff outdoorsmen who enjoy long country hikes and camping?
Oh, wait, no, I missed it on my first trip to their Wikipedia page. Something to do with Abraham Lincoln apparently. I wasn’t aware he had a thing for camping, but then again I never was much of a one for US history.
Mike Smith:
Are you even listening to yourself? The Republican platform not actually calling for the illegalization of gay sex is a “win” but the Democratic platform which calls for discrimination against LGBT people to be made a hate crime, full rights for LGBT couples, and increased funding for research into HIV is somehow just “insincere” window dressing? I don’t see how anyone can consider the two equivalent in any way.
@SC
I don’t see the point to conceding the ground entirely. How would you go about making the Republican party less evil on this issue? Failing that how do you cause the republican party to collapse and not be a thing?
I see a lot if arm chair quarterbacking here. And very little in way of construction criticism.
The republican party needs to reform or die in thus and several other issues. I don’t see how to get the party to moderate with some thing like LCR. And I don’t see how the Republican party isn’t going to be in power for fair amount time still.
The gay vote is too small and too spread out to prevent a republican majorities. Tell me what is a better way to protect from the eventual regaining if power.
Well, they’re likely the result of broader cultural shifts (themselves the result of years of dedicated activism) and laws moving in that direction (again due to the work of activists and despite the opposition of Republicans generally),* both of which they recognized as potentially affecting their bottom line. I doubt the LCR were “invaluable” here, but in any event I imagine they would have been just as effective promoting their case as pro-capitalist, pro-corporate LGBT activists rather than as Republicans.
*Of course, the ideal is solid nondiscrimination policy that applies to everyone.
@dianne
Find where I said the two platforms are equal. They are clearly not.
Also find me a place where I said a queer person should be voting Republican. I haven’t said that.
Find when I’ve said all democrats are insincere. I again haven’t said that.
I have said I prefer for a person to hate me honestly as opposed to being a mere tool for someone else. Sadly many of the democrats in power treat me as a mere tool. Which is why I called them vipers in our midst.
Someone like Shoebat the younger wants me butchered; that is greater recognition of my humanity than say a center left politico pinkwashing thiet civil rights abuses by pointing to their queer rights record.
The LCR stopped prop 6 in CA as well.
I don’t see the moral difference between trying to push business interest via a conservative think tank vs an organ of the Republican party. The two groups are basically the same.
I don’t see why pro-capital gay inc! Is inoffensive but LCR us offensive.
Die, rethugs die. RIP.
Now do you get it?
I don’t see it as conceding ground, as the LCR have won preciously little ground (and arguably lost some) by trying to work within the party. I don’t believe this could necessarily have been predicted when the organization started, but it’s been evident for some time. The strategy of working from within while continuing as “proud” Republicans has been a failure, and has put them in a pitiful and ridiculous position. Outside the Republican party and its religious base, in contrast, LGBT movements have been extraordinarily successful (this isn’t to say there isn’t still a lot to do or that everything is perfect).
I’d say that the most effective action the LCR could take at this moment is to publicly, explicitly disassociate themselves from the Republican Party, declaring that they cannot in good conscience continue to belong to or support a party that’s so actively hostile to LGBT people. Then continue to pressure Republicans from without, working with other activists. (They can of course continue to identify organizationally as supporters of various conservative, capitalist, rightwing causes or policies if this is what binds them together.)
Well, it’s not inoffensive to me. :) My point was that, acknowledging for the sake of argument that your claims about their effectiveness in some areas are true, they would have been and would continue to be just as effective or even more effective acting as an independent organization outside the party. Which is in addition to the…abjectness of their belonging to and even cheering an organization that won’t even recognize their basic rights or value and advocates policies of violence against them.
Mike Smith @18:
Chicago is in the South?
Trump chose Mike Pence as his running mate. Pence opposes LGBT rights.
Excerpt:
@49
No. But AK is. Clinton wasnt raised in Chicago.
@nerd
OK. Fine tell me how we can reasonably get there from here. Withv steps and evidence.
@SC
I don’t consider getting ~10% of public officials to be less anti-gay to be nothing. I don’t believe a cloture vote on DADT happens sans LCR.
You are putting to much stress on the platform this time around. The business wing of the part has written this election off given the forth coming ass kicking Trump is about to take. I don’t consider it full set back when much of the institutional weight hasn’t actually been brought to bare.
I don’t know; it seems absurdly dangerous to depend on keeping republicans out if power. Eventually they will get through.
Pull up stakes is just going to purify the GOP of competing ideologies. WD need both parties to be less pure.
Mike Smith @51: Oh, FFS. There’s a whole big internet out there to look stuff up. Born in Chicago, raised in a Chicago suburb, undergrad in Massachusetts, then Yale law school.
@ #51
Clinton grew up and graduated high school in Park Ridge, Illinois, suburb of Chicago. She attended Wellesley College, graduating in 1969, and earned a J.D. from Yale Law School in 1973, and moved to Arkansas after marrying, in 1975.
#49: Chicago is south…of Minnesota.
And she deepened those Southern roots by going off to college at Wellesley, which is in the deeply southern state of Massachusetts.
If you’re doubting her southern bona fides, after that, she did move south from Boston…to Connecticut, for law school.
That’s about as un-Yankee as you can get, I guess.
Mike Smith: you are once again getting punchy, sloppy, repetitive, and obnoxiously comment-happy. When I see practically no one but you in the recent comments, and you’re making one comment after another, it really is time for you to sit down and shut up for a while.
Time out for Mike Smith. Take a break and come back tomorrow.
Why bother, you aren’t listening or are knowing, which is as long as the religious right controls the rethug social policies with an iron fist, they can’t change. And the RR justify their hatred of LGBTQ based on their holy book. There will be no compromise.
@Professors Myers
Fair enough. And I think got my Clintons mixed up. My bad. Starch Southerner. Thank you for the corrections.
I’ll let this thread go and come back tomorrow for the nice conversation I am having in the body image thread.
Have a nice day everyone.
I will be submitting thus only once. I just want to clear the air.
TTFN
But this doesn’t respond to what I said (again, even if your claims were true, which I don’t believe).
What are you trying to say here? Please take me through the steps of how this works to show the LCR strategy as successful. Look, even if I believed the business wing of the Republican Party was very pro-LGBT and that this was due entirely to LCR activism (which I don’t), they didn’t sit out the last two midterm elections or the last two presidential elections. So they’ve been either unwilling or unable to bring this supposed pro-LGBT institutional weight to bear for many years running.
No one’s suggesting that this be the only prong of the strategy. You asked me above what I thought the LCR should do and I answered you. I think their strategy should be to publicly disaffiliate with the party – and make it as newsworthy an event as possible; be active in advancing LGBT rights outside the party; keep up pressure on Republicans from without through activism; and generally work with other groups to change the culture. But keeping Republicans out of power at every level of government remains important, for this and many other reasons.
(Hey, what about that pro-LGBT business wing? You mean their support is fickle? Say it ain’t so!) The Republican Party as an organization is largely purified of competing ideologies. Over the years the LCR have been plying their strategy, it’s become increasingly dominated by anti-LGBT extremists. The LCR have failed. What’s needed is a strategy that will bring less hateful Republicans into greater contact with the broader society and isolate the most hateful voices.
If they weren’t, then the LCR’s tactic would be doomed from the start, yes? Nobody can support both what the LCR is doing and believe that politicians don’t really change their minds.
Look, even if I believed the business wing of the Republican Party was very pro-LGBT and that this was due entirely to LCR activism (which I don’t)
Case in point:
http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2015/11/18/3723273/koch-brothers-still-not-social-liberals/
http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/who-more-hypocrite-gay-rights
http://unitedliberals.blogspot.com/2016/04/nc-bathroom-bill-has-even-more.html
Mike:
you know I think it is really a good idea and we should support those like LCR with the intention of reforming the repub’s from within and they are having such success that maybe we could extend that idea and try to infiltrate the KKK so we can help change them into a real force for cultural advancement!
We might be able to reduce cross burnings by 10%
hurray!!
uncle frogy
Christ. When I tell someone to leave, all they have to do is stop posting. But no, always with the excuses.
Yeah, Bill’s the Clinton from the south.
dianne, #7:
She’s 68 years old now* and running for president. Even since the last time she ran, the political climate on that front has shifted quite a bit. She also (until recently) had a lot of pressure in the form of Sanders on her left, which raised the bar above simply saying nothing or otherwise being more acceptable than the ludicrously awful Republican platform.
So, does it honestly strike you that way? Or do you think she has the “ability and willingness” to win a presidential campaign? (That, I’ll note, is different from actually doing something effective once in office, assuming that happens.) Just to make sure we’re on the same page, you don’t need to persuade me to vote against Trump — besides, on a lot of things Clinton is okay, so I’m not trying to rail on her right now. You could say whatever you really think, criticize her very harshly if you wanted, and it would be okay. But hopefully the response won’t be about selling the idea of Hillary Clinton to me, because that’s not actually what I want to know. I’m sort of surprised that some people seem to believe things like what you said above (it doesn’t seem so different from the LCRs, really), and I’m guessing they just have other motivations for saying things like this, whether they realize it or not.
*Not to stereotype older people (or older “Southern” women like Mike Smith). That’s to point out how much of her life has not been spent learning whatever she may have learned. If she were still relatively young, then okay, I could probably buy “wasn’t born perfectly enlightened” as some kind of a legitimate excuse in certain cases. (Doubt anyone’s literally born hating gays, but whatever.) She’s had all sorts of time to think about it, with all sorts of exposure to these issues, as a privileged career politician who’s been influential at the national level for decades. So I don’t buy it that she just so happened to see the light at a very convenient moment in her career. Maybe if she had been struck by lightning or something … is there some story like that which I haven’t heard about?
Hopefully Clinton will pass whatever purity test is required before the American left self-sabotages again and hands the White House to the Orange Gasbag and Johnny Gay-Hater.
That article was written back in February. He has a new article up today, and it is even less polite.
The Utter Failure of the Log Cabin Republicans excerpt (intemperate language follows):
The first sentence here doesn’t go with the other two. You are completely stereotyping older people as being unable to learn. So what’s the cutoff after which any changes of heart are no longer valid? Twenty? Forty? Is it really impossible for a 68 year old to consider things, decide she was wrong, and change her mind? I’d like to know, because I’m 48 and I must admit that I never thought about people who were non-binary and the problem of pronouns until it was pointed out to me in the last year or so and I want to know whether now if I try to use the pronouns people prefer and not make assumptions about their gender, have I really learned something or is it too late because I spent 47 or so years not learning it and therefore any changes in opinion I have now must be only for political gain?
Sorry about the double post, but just to point out, when Clinton was born being gay or lesbian, not to mention trans or genderqueer, was considered a disease to be cured. Not an alternate sexuality but a disease. There is an old medical literature on how to “cure” gays. Clinton grew up in that environment and she’s straight so she never suffered for it. Can you really not understand how she ended up absorbing society’s values and not thinking too much about the issue?
dianne:
I’m saying that the ones who do learn (in a sense that’s worth talking about, as I discuss below) usually don’t take sixty-something years to do so.
If there are other lessons left to learn (you acknowledged there are in #7), how long will that take? What are the chances it will happen in the next four or eight years? Wouldn’t it be a bad thing for us overall if her learning skills and motivation to learn, such as they are, take significantly longer than the presidency? At best it wouldn’t be a very positive thing, maybe just neutral.
I didn’t say they’re invalid or impossible. I think she probably hasn’t really had much of a change of heart at all, because there are some much more plausible (and obvious) alternative explanations for why she’s saying the things she’s saying, as I tried to describe before.
And/or it’s an abomination unto the Lord. Sometimes they don’t talk like they’re fighting a disease but more like a literal crusade. Anyway, yes, some people did and some still do think like that.
I know perfectly well that lots of straight mostly-progressive people don’t personally face the consequences of their regressive views on LGBT issues. But right here, you’re telling me she was just absorbing and not thinking too much, for a significant amount of time. We’re not talking about someone who just came out of that environment, someone who just fell of the turnip truck and hasn’t had much of a fair chance to become less ignorant and make better judgments on her own. She went to Wellesley and Yale Law, for fuck’s sake, and now she’s 68 and running for president. She hasn’t been sheltered in the 1950s in her parents’ kitchen all this time.
Anyway, that claim in bold above isn’t how I’d characterize someone who’s genuinely willing and able to learn and make good decisions based on what she’s learned. You’re saying there are reasons why she wasn’t willing or able, which may well be the case. I believe you’re probably right about that. But there are people who grew up in that environment, who also never suffered from it personally, who didn’t come out of that simply “absorbing” and “not thinking too much” until (at best) they were in their 60s. There are people who see through that bullshit and start fixing their messed-up views in their teens or twenties. Those people have a willingness and ability to learn which is to some extent remarkable. It’s remarkable at least in the sense that it would be appropriate to advertise them that way, because that’s one way in which they stand out from other people. But someone having a view which they might have reconsidered sincerely and thoughtfully, especially in circumstances like this where there are more plausible ways to describe what actually happened, certainly isn’t a very convincing piece of evidence of that.
I’m not gonna hypothesize about Hillary’s real intentions, but I do think it’s fair to be wary of someone who spent most of her political career supporting homophobic legislation and calling us unnatural, only to suddenly change her opinion in like 2013.
Well, that’s the question you didn’t answer: What’s the cutoff? How old can someone be and still change their views? Later you said teens and twenties, so maybe that’s it. So I guess anyone over 30 is just an old fossil who should be euthanized for the good of society since they can’t change their minds any more, right? Or perhaps only women, since no one seems concerned about whether Trump’s views are exactly the same as they were 20 years ago and I seem to recall people praising Sanders for his “evolving” position on minorities throughout the campaign.
dianne:
Actually, it was answered: “I didn’t say they’re [changes of heart for a 68 year old] invalid or impossible.”
No. CR in no way implied that.
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I know you can do better than that, Dianne. Why not be an honest interlocutor?
Did you miss the next few paragraphs where CR went on to explain that actually changes of heart at 68 are invalid or impossible because any person with a real change of heart would have had it long before then?
dianne, I did read the entire comment-stream; in that comment, CR then went on to opine about Hillary specifically.
Care to quote the specific text which makes you think that “CR went on to explain that actually changes of heart at 68 are invalid or impossible”?
JM @75: You have a point. I jumped to conclusions too quickly on reading CR’s response. It’s really more a bit of special pleading about how, while it’s possible for someone to change their minds in their 60s, it’s clear that Clinton can’t possibly have done so because…um…well, I’m not real clear on that one yet. Because she went to Yale? Alma mater of the Bushes? Something tells me that’s not a real hotbed of liberal thought. Because she’s running for President? So’s Trump. Basically, CR seems to be saying that Clinton should have figured things out sooner. Okay, yeah, she probably should have. But why does that mean that she can’t possibly have figured them out now? The only explanation that appears to be offered is that she’s 68 and that’s too old to possibly make a real change. So…what am I missing? And why is it so impossible that CR and you might have a little unexplored sexism/ageism? It’s not like either prejudice would be unusual in this society.
Thanks, dianne. I do appreciate it.
I’d rather let CR speak for themself.
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Neither of us claimed to be free from such.