Nagging at Me for Some Time

 

It is more or less accepted as gospel by the left that Trump is vigorously anti-gay. We’ve all heard on more than one occasion the recording of some imbecile asking if he was “going to put people like me in a camp.” The charge is not so self evidently as absurd as accusations of anti-Semitism that are frequently leveled against the President, but it is self evidently absurd.

It may be that I’m looking for consistency where there is none, but I can’t help it. This drives me nuts.

Bill Clinton was President when the idea of gay marriage took a place on the national debate stage. He said no. He not only affirmed that marriage is a heterosexual endeavor, he signed the Defense of Marriage Act. He enjoyed overwhelming support from the gay community.

George W. Bush came into office officially and, I suspect personally, opposed to the idea of a bride kissing the bride. But his Vice President seemed to very much want to walk his daughter down the aisle and hand her off to her long time girlfriend. Not much was said of the subject during the second Bush’s Presidency. He wasn’t a gay marriage advocate by any means, but, I suspect largely because of Cheney, his administration was less hostile than had been the supposedly gay-friendly Clinton coterie. He was reviled by the gay community.

Barack Obama doubled down on Clinton’s assertion that if you are gay, you can co-ordinate but not participate in nuptials. He went further than the knuckle-dragging troglodyte of an evangelical George W. by claiming that his God told him that marriage is between a man and a woman. You’d think that would send a few wannabe husbands into a fury. But no. Eventually, a Biden gaffe (I repeat myself) forced a re-evaluation of the stance and some fawning media moved the needle enough that gay marriage was A-okay once it was deemed not politically suicidal, and always had been. But Obama ran twice as staunchly anti-gay marriage, because his God said so, candidate and gay voters supported him. Twice.

Enter Trump. He was the first successful Presidential candidate to not oppose gay marriage. I don’t know that he specifically endorsed it, but he did declare the matter settled. The new status quo is that men can marry men and women can marry women and candidate Trump had no issue with that. At a campaign event someone threw a rainbow flag on to the stage and candidate Trump wore it like a cape and danced as his supporters cheered him, the deplorable bigots. How does the first President to openly endorse gay marriage get treated by the homosexual community? They love him.

Obviously I’m kidding.

They hate him because he’s anti-gay, even though there’s evidence to the contrary.

I’ve been told that the selection of Pence as his Vice President is a major reason why anti-gay ideas are ascribed to him. But Pence’s hatred of homosexuality can be reduced to a series of people who predetermine his reaction to their presence being treated graciously and misquoted text about the need for condom use being held up as evidence for support of conversion therapy. It is confusion.

It’s frustrating when opinion runs contrary to fact, but when it gets so entrenched that objections to the narrative are met with derision it’s infuriating. The basis of any political conversation must start with a basis. But on this point, as with many others, a separate conversation has to take place first to establish the basis from which we make our arguments. So frustrating.

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  1. WillowSpring Member
    WillowSpring
    @WillowSpring

    I heard an interview the other day with Matt Schlapp – the head of the American Conservative Union.  They run the annual CPAC conference for conservatives.  He was talking about the number to times that Trump had spoken at CPAC, both before and during his presidency.  The first time he spoke, he came at the invitation of a Gay conservative group.

    I think Trump pretty much takes people as they are.  It is a shame that others won’t treat him the same way.

    • #1
  2. DrewInWisconsin, Influencer Member
    DrewInWisconsin, Influencer
    @DrewInWisconsin

    Ben Sears:

    How does the first President to openly endorse gay marriage get treated by the homosexual community? They love him.

    Obviously I’m kidding.

    They hate him because he’s anti-gay, even though there’s evidence to the contrary.

    Oh yes. All this terrible suffering these people claim is happening to them under President Trump keeps failing to actually happen. Of course, they’re sure it’ll happen during his second term when he’ll “have more flexibility.”

    Who needs evidence when you have a quiver full of ready-to-shoot smears?

    It’s stuff like this that ultimately drove me to support President Trump. I kept hearing about these awful things he said or did, and never finding any evidence of them. I was defending him from his dishonest attackers so much that I ended up voting for him, even though I swore I was NEVER going to that.

    • #2
  3. PHenry Inactive
    PHenry
    @PHenry

    Republicans generally opposed gay marriage ( including Pence).  Trump is a Republican.  So he hates gays and wants them in camps.  It is no more logical than that.

    Add to that the attitude that those who believe in the scriptures are hate filled homophobes, and you have defined the homosexual agenda.

    Either you support, enable, and celebrate the most extreme demands of LGBT ( men in women’s bathrooms, etc) or you are an unredeemable hate filled Nazi who wants to purge the world of LGBT’s.  No in between, in between is the same as opposition.

    Doesn’t that describe the Democrat policy positions for everything?  Against terminating babies born alive?  Woman hater.  Against drag queen reading time with kindergarteners?  LGBT hater.  Object to anything Barack Obama did?  Racist.

    But Republicans are so. . . extreme!

    • #3
  4. The Reticulator Member
    The Reticulator
    @TheReticulator

    PHenry (View Comment):
    Republicans generally opposed gay marriage ( including Pence). Trump is a Republican. So he hates gays and wants them in camps. It is no more logical than that.

    Yup. It’s an easy application of the guilt-by-association branch of intersectional theory.  

    • #4
  5. MarciN Member
    MarciN
    @MarciN

    Peter Thiel spoke for Trump at the 2016 Republican National Convention:  

    Billionaire tech investor Peter Thiel knew he just had to get to the end of the line. Don’t slow down, don’t give the audience a chance to react until he had delivered the whole point.

    “I am proud to be gay. I am proud to be a Republican. But most of all I am proud to be an American,” Thiel said Thursday, drawing Republicans to their feet in cheers of “USA, USA” on the final night of their nominating convention.

    The words made history — the first time a Republican convention speaker noted his sexual orientation — but also left the party stuck in something of a contradiction. Donald Trump’s acceptance speech mentioned gay rights and it drew cheers too. “I have to say, as a Republican, it is so nice to hear you cheering for what I just said. Thank you,” Trump said, straying slightly from an otherwise closely scripted speech. It was an uneasy moment inside the hall, with those who disagreed choosing to stay silent.

    After all, days earlier, the party adopted as part of its platform ideas that gays and lesbians can be made into heterosexuals through “conversion therapies” and that marriage should be limited to straight couples — setting aside the Supreme Court ruling that rendered opposition moot with a ruling that all couples can marry. If the GOP platform were enacted, some of Thiel’s rights would be rolled back.

    Trump is certainly not against gay people. And in this convention gesture, he went out on a political limb to say so given how fresh the wounds were from the anti-gay marriage political wars. 

    • #5
  6. Annefy Member
    Annefy
    @Annefy

    I spent election night 2016 with a male, gay married couple. The night went well and we all hugged each other good night. The final words of one (a nurse, vet, child of Mexican immigrants) were “let’s get to work”.

    I found out later that he was absolutely devastated, cried for three days. When he told me recently that he’d believed the rhetoric, that DT was anti-gay and would probably put him in a camp, I simply replied: what in the name of God made you think that we would stand for that?

    Anyway, he and his husband (Australian immigrant) are now pro-Trump and can’t wait to vote for him in November (much to the horror of their families and most of their friends)

    That said, they’re terrified of Pence.

    Both are Catholics and seem to have a reflexive fear of evangelical Christians. Also, they don’t know any.

    Until they met my family, they didn’t know any Republicans. So there’s hope …

    • #6
  7. Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patrio… Member
    Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patrio…
    @ArizonaPatriot

    Ben Sears: Barak Obama doubled down on Clinton’s assertion that if you are gay, you can co-ordinate but not participate in nuptials. He went further than the knuckle dragging troglodyte of an evangelical George W by claiming that his God told him that marriage is between a man and a woman. You’d think that would send a few wanna be husbands into a fury. But no. Eventually a Biden gaff (I repeat myself) forced a re-evaluation of the stance and some fawning media moved the needle enough that gay marriage was A-okay once it was deemed not politically suicidal, and always had been. But Obama ran twice as a staunchly anti-gay marriage, because his God said so, candidate and gay voters supported him. Twice.

    This is not correct.  Here is a timeline by Time Magazine.

    Obama was anti-SSM in his 2008 campaign.  In Feb. 2011, he instructed the Justice Department to stop defending the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), because he thought it was unconstitutional.  In May 2012, he announced his support for SSM.  This was before the 2012 election.

    According to David Axelrod’s book (as reported here by The Guardian), Obama was lying about this in 2008.  Axelrod was Obama’s chief strategist in the 2008 campaign.  According to The Guardian:

    Marriage equality activists weren’t the only ones frustrated with Barack Obama when during his 2008 presidential run he opposed same-sex marriage “as a Christian”.

    Obama himself was frustrated about it, if a description in a new book by his former top adviser, David Axelrod, is to be believed. The presidential candidate was so frustrated, in fact, that after one event in which he had to say he was against same-sex marriage, Obama complained: “I’m just not very good at [REDACTED]ting.”

    According to the Time article linked above, in a May 2008 interview with Pastor Rick Warren (a famous Christian pastor from California), Obama said: ““I believe that marriage is the union between a man and a woman. Now, for me as a Christian — for me — for me as a Christian, it is also a sacred union. God’s in the mix.”

    But he was lying, according to Axelrod.

    I thought he was lying at the time.  Both about his position on SSM, and about his being a Christian.

     

    • #7
  8. Gary McVey Contributor
    Gary McVey
    @GaryMcVey

    Clinton went along with “Don’t ask, don’t tell” and was roundly reviled for it among the gays. They did not love Clinton. GWB went along with Karl Rove’s shrewd calculation that getting the issue of anti-gay marriage laws into the 2004 election would be good for Bush’s chances, and he was right…for one election only. Since then, despite the fevered wailing of Kathryn Lopez and other SoCons, the issue didn’t give the GOP a permanent advantage, and what seems to frustrate both left and right is, most people don’t care. In 2012 every voter in America knew which party was pro-SSM. Obama won anyway. 

    For about 40 years, social conservatives have promised again and again that minorities would flood into the conservative movement just as soon as blacks and Latinos realized that the Dems were more pro-gay. It didn’t happen, but the promises just keep coming. They continue today. I ceased finding those promises credible many years ago. If you’re against same sex marriage on religious grounds, no one is going to convince you otherwise. But if you think it’s going to work magic at the polls, you’re increasingly alone in that belief. 

    Trump is not anti-gay; if anything he fits today’s typical American profile: he doesn’t really give a damn either way. If it weren’t for the fact that Republicans are generally more socially conservative, the issue would not be brought up. 

     

    • #8
  9. Stad Coolidge
    Stad
    @Stad

    Being anti-gay “marriage” does not make one anti-gay.  If Trump was truly anti-gay, he would not have appointed one to a high-level position . . .

    • #9
  10. Eridemus Coolidge
    Eridemus
    @Eridemus

    There’s not much evidence that he is racist or anti-woman, either. There was that locker-room style talk recorded without permission episode but he has promoted many women in his organizations and listens to Ivanka. The only “racist” thing might be the comment about Mexico sending rapists and murderers across the border (with the second part “but I’m sure many are decent people” lopped off) and his reference to “S**thole” countries and the travel ban. Those countries weren’t named and even Obama had a travel ban on much the same list.

    But of course he’s a “white nationalist” because he didn’t cite only one of the guilty sides of Charlottesville and said something too generic, failing the official progressive comment formula.

    • #10
  11. The Reticulator Member
    The Reticulator
    @TheReticulator

    Eridemus (View Comment):

    There’s not much evidence that he is racist or anti-woman, either. There was that locker-room style talk recorded without permission episode but he has promoted many women in his organizationsand listens to Ivanka. The only “racist” thing might be the comment about Mexico sending rapists and murderers across the border (with the second part “but I’m sure many are decent people” lopped off) and his reference to “S**thole” countries and the travel ban. Those countries weren’t named and even Obama had a travel ban on much the same list.

    But of course he’s a “white nationalist” because he didn’t cite only one of the guilty sides of Charlottesville and said something too generic, failing the official progressive comment formula.

    The only allowable way to repudiate white nationalists is to associate himself with them. He didn’t do that.  

    • #11
  12. OmegaPaladin Moderator
    OmegaPaladin
    @OmegaPaladin

    Gary McVey (View Comment):

    Clinton went along with “Don’t ask, don’t tell” and was roundly reviled for it among the gays. They did not love Clinton. GWB went along with Karl Rove’s shrewd calculation that getting the issue of anti-gay marriage laws into the 2004 election would be good for Bush’s chances, and he was right…for one election only. Since then, despite the fevered wailing of Kathryn Lopez and other SoCons, the issue didn’t give the GOP a permanent advantage, and what seems to frustrate both left and right is, most people don’t care. In 2012 every voter in America knew which party was pro-SSM. Obama won anyway.

    For about 40 years, social conservatives have promised again and again that minorities would flood into the conservative movement just as soon as blacks and Latinos realized that the Dems were more pro-gay. It didn’t happen, but the promises just keep coming. They continue today. I ceased finding those promises credible many years ago. If you’re against same sex marriage on religious grounds, no one is going to convince you otherwise. But if you think it’s going to work magic at the polls, you’re increasingly alone in that belief.

    Trump is not anti-gay; if anything he fits today’s typical American profile: he doesn’t really give a damn either way. If it weren’t for the fact that Republicans are generally more socially conservative, the issue would not be brought up.

    That is not enough.  You have to hate every person who does not support all of the LGBT agenda with the fury of Mt. St. Helens.   I doubt you are sufficiently pure to satisfy the outrage mob.  You don’t seem to hate the rest of us here, for one. 

    I think the activists have created a lot more resentment by how aggressively they responded to Obergefell.   The trans rights side has gone into totalitarian territory.  I think that is a very strong motivator.

    • #12
  13. Gary McVey Contributor
    Gary McVey
    @GaryMcVey

    OmegaPaladin (View Comment):

    Gary McVey (View Comment):

    Clinton went along with “Don’t ask, don’t tell” and was roundly reviled for it among the gays. They did not love Clinton. GWB went along with Karl Rove’s shrewd calculation that getting the issue of anti-gay marriage laws into the 2004 election would be good for Bush’s chances, and he was right…for one election only. Since then, despite the fevered wailing of Kathryn Lopez and other SoCons, the issue didn’t give the GOP a permanent advantage, and what seems to frustrate both left and right is, most people don’t care. In 2012 every voter in America knew which party was pro-SSM. Obama won anyway.

    For about 40 years, social conservatives have promised again and again that minorities would flood into the conservative movement just as soon as blacks and Latinos realized that the Dems were more pro-gay. It didn’t happen, but the promises just keep coming. They continue today. I ceased finding those promises credible many years ago. If you’re against same sex marriage on religious grounds, no one is going to convince you otherwise. But if you think it’s going to work magic at the polls, you’re increasingly alone in that belief.

    Trump is not anti-gay; if anything he fits today’s typical American profile: he doesn’t really give a damn either way. If it weren’t for the fact that Republicans are generally more socially conservative, the issue would not be brought up.

    That is not enough. You have to hate every person who does not support all of the LGBT agenda with the fury of Mt. St. Helens. I doubt you are sufficiently pure to satisfy the outrage mob. You don’t seem to hate the rest of us here, for one.

    I think the activists have created a lot more resentment by how aggressively they responded to Obergefell. The trans rights side has gone into totalitarian territory. I think that is a very strong motivator.

    A typically clever Omega trick…he’s being reasonable and persuasive! Damn, is there anything he won’t resort to? Yeah, you got me: I wouldn’t pass muster with the hate mob any more than you would (there are no partial credit points in that exam) and (this is tough for a PIT habitue to admit) I don’t hate the rest of you. Far from it. 

    Your second paragraph is also reasonable. It echoes the past couple of years of that noted “anti-LGBT firebrand”…wha??…Andrew Sullivan, the gay rights pioneer who has been consistent over the years in saying that trans ideology makes no sense and is not compatible with what the gays have been saying for decades: this isn’t something that changes like a thermostat. 

    • #13
  14. kedavis Coolidge
    kedavis
    @kedavis

    Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patrio… (View Comment):

    This is not correct. Here is a timeline by Time Magazine.

    Obama was anti-SSM in his 2008 campaign. In Feb. 2011, he instructed the Justice Department to stop defending the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), because he thought it was unconstitutional. In May 2012, he announced his support for SSM. This was before the 2012 election.

    According to David Axelrod’s book (as reported here by The Guardian), Obama was lying about this in 2008. Axelrod was Obama’s chief strategist in the 2008 campaign. According to The Guardian:

    Marriage equality activists weren’t the only ones frustrated with Barack Obama when during his 2008 presidential run he opposed same-sex marriage “as a Christian”.

    Obama himself was frustrated about it, if a description in a new book by his former top adviser, David Axelrod, is to be believed. The presidential candidate was so frustrated, in fact, that after one event in which he had to say he was against same-sex marriage, Obama complained: “I’m just not very good at [REDACTED]ting.”

    According to the Time article linked above, in a May 2008 interview with Pastor Rick Warren (a famous Christian pastor from California), Obama said: ““I believe that marriage is the union between a man and a woman. Now, for me as a Christian — for me — for me as a Christian, it is also a sacred union. God’s in the mix.”

    But he was lying, according to Axelrod.

    I thought he was lying at the time. Both about his position on SSM, and about his being a Christian.

    And about not being good at [REDACTED]ting!

    • #14
  15. TBA Coolidge
    TBA
    @RobtGilsdorf

    Stad (View Comment):

    Being anti-gay “marriage” does not make one anti-gay. If Trump was truly anti-gay, he would not have appointed one to a high-level position . . .

    We speak of ‘courting voters’; the courted love being showered with gifts and dramatic gestures that show a developing depth of love. 

    Obama’s change of heart, however feigned, was  better received by Democrats than Trump’s support from the beginning, because for some people romance and passion will beat reliable stability every vote of the year and twice in the General. 

     

    • #15
  16. Jon1979 Inactive
    Jon1979
    @Jon1979

    Gary McVey (View Comment):

    OmegaPaladin (View Comment):

    Gary McVey (View Comment):

    Trump is not anti-gay; if anything he fits today’s typical American profile: he doesn’t really give a damn either way. If it weren’t for the fact that Republicans are generally more socially conservative, the issue would not be brought up.

    That is not enough. You have to hate every person who does not support all of the LGBT agenda with the fury of Mt. St. Helens. I doubt you are sufficiently pure to satisfy the outrage mob. You don’t seem to hate the rest of us here, for one.

    I think the activists have created a lot more resentment by how aggressively they responded to Obergefell. The trans rights side has gone into totalitarian territory. I think that is a very strong motivator.

    A typically clever Omega trick…he’s being reasonable and persuasive! Damn, is there anything he won’t resort to? Yeah, you got me: I wouldn’t pass muster with the hate mob any more than you would (there are no partial credit points in that exam) and (this is tough for a PIT habitue to admit) I don’t hate the rest of you. Far from it.

    Your second paragraph is also reasonable. It echoes the past couple of years of that noted “anti-LGBT firebrand”…wha??…Andrew Sullivan, the gay rights pioneer who has been consistent over the years in saying that trans ideology makes no sense and is not compatible with what the gays have been saying for decades: this isn’t something that changes like a thermostat.

    You’re already seeing the activists crash into each other on the rights issues, most prominently when it comes to the question of transgendered males identifying as females participating in women’s sports. Within the LGBTQ movement, that’s set the Ls up against the Ts because you can’t intersectionality away biological differences between females and males (though some activists are going “Problem? What Problem?” sort of in the same way Democrats are ignoring Joe Biden’s senior moments).

    • #16
  17. Sweezle Inactive
    Sweezle
    @Sweezle

    Trump is not anti-gay, he’s not racist, he is not a Russian asset. 

    • #17
  18. Gumby Mark (R-Meth Lab of Demo… Coolidge
    Gumby Mark (R-Meth Lab of Demo…
    @GumbyMark

    Test

    • #18
  19. Gumby Mark (R-Meth Lab of Demo… Coolidge
    Gumby Mark (R-Meth Lab of Demo…
    @GumbyMark

    The Reticulator (View Comment):

    Eridemus (View Comment):

    But of course he’s a “white nationalist” because he didn’t cite only one of the guilty sides of Charlottesville and said something too generic, failing the official progressive comment formula.

    Actually he did.  In the press conference he twice specifically said that “good people on both sides” did not refer to white nationalists and neo-nazis.

    • #19
  20. Gumby Mark (R-Meth Lab of Demo… Coolidge
    Gumby Mark (R-Meth Lab of Demo…
    @GumbyMark

    Gary McVey (View Comment):

    Trump is not anti-gay; if anything he fits today’s typical American profile: he doesn’t really give a damn either way. If it weren’t for the fact that Republicans are generally more socially conservative, the issue would not be brought up.

    Absolutely right.  Trump simply doesn’t care about gay or not-gay, or what color you are.  You come at him, he’ll come back at you regardless of who, or what, you are.  He won’t be polite and will not be sensitive even if you are in a group that wants to be seen as oppressed.

    What’s happened in reaction to his election is an oppression sweepstakes among every group in our society which wants to claim special oppression privileges.  It’s a competition among them.  Each group is worried it will lose cred in the sweepstakes if it isn’t seen as oppressed.  The goal of the leaders in each group is to instill a sense of fear and panic in every member of the group.  They’ve had a lot of success.

    • #20
  21. TBA Coolidge
    TBA
    @RobtGilsdorf

    Gumby Mark (R-Meth Lab of Demo… (View Comment):

    Gary McVey (View Comment):

    Trump is not anti-gay; if anything he fits today’s typical American profile: he doesn’t really give a damn either way. If it weren’t for the fact that Republicans are generally more socially conservative, the issue would not be brought up.

    Absolutely right. Trump simply doesn’t care about gay or not-gay, or what color you are. You come at him, he’ll come back at you regardless of who, or what, you are. He won’t be polite and will not be sensitive even if you are in a group that wants to be seen as oppressed.

    What’s happened in reaction to his election is an oppression sweepstakes among every group in our society which wants to claim special oppression privileges. It’s a competition among them. Each group is worried it will lose cred in the sweepstakes if it isn’t seen as oppressed. The goal of the leaders in each group is to instill a sense of fear and panic in every member of the group. They’ve had a lot of success.

    @jon1979’s comment regarding them crashing into each other gives me an idea; demolition monster truck rally! Last minority still driving is the minority and everyone else gets to shut up for a year. 

    • #21
  22. Fake John/Jane Galt Coolidge
    Fake John/Jane Galt
    @FakeJohnJaneGalt

    Trump is a homophobe, anti gay, homosexual hater because he does not actively support the gay agenda and use federal force to forward its goal.  It is as simple as that.  
    if you do not actively, full throatily, celebrate and push the gay agenda you are a hater.  That is how things work now. 

    • #22
  23. Ontheleftcoast Inactive
    Ontheleftcoast
    @Ontheleftcoast

    Trump has been, among other things, a hotelier. WEB Griffin has one of his characters say about  his hotelier grandfather, “The only thing he had against a paying guest coupling with an elephant in his room was that it was sometimes hard to clean the carpet.”

    • #23
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