The Republican Party hates homosexuals. They hate gay men, they hate lesbians, and they can’t summon enough hatred from a very deep well to properly express their utter disgust of transgender people. The wave of anti-LGBT legislation passed last month across the South is only the most recent evidence of a political party intent on excluding a group of Americans from the rights and liberties meant to be enjoyed by the entire citizenry. The Republican Party favors, practices, and legislates – at the federal and state levels – blatant and aggressive homophobia as part of its prime directive. The Grand Old Party is not limiting itself to the LGBT community when it comes to trivializing and marginalizing other groups of the American citizenry either. In addition to the LGBT community, Latinos, African Americans, Muslims, women of all backgrounds, as well as the whole of the middle and lower classes are under constant attack. The GOP's weapons are policies which have been contentious, prohibitive and out of line with the thinking of the majority of Americans. This is not the place from which the Republican party was born, however. The earliest version of the Republican Party saw it poised for greatness as a champion of human rights, of liberty and of freedom.
In the middle of the 1850s, the nation struggled over the prospect of slavery spreading westward as the US expanded. Democratic Senator Stephen Douglas of Illinois promoted the Kansas-Nebraska act of 1854 which opened the door for the use of slave labor on farms and in factories in areas where the practice was previously prohibited. Perhaps the most famous American political discourse, the Lincoln-Douglas debates, which took place for hours at at time over the period of several days, reflected the nation's differing views on the human slave trade. Abraham Lincoln, who became the first Republican President, did so arguing that our great nation ought to recognize the institution of slavery for what it was: one group of people exerting humiliating power over another, thereby disenfranchising them from the opportunity to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
In its earliest incarnations the GOP enjoyed a fairly diverse membership – this was a party of both black and white, educated and uneducated, skilled and unskilled. The main platform on which the earliest Republican Party rested promoted business both big and small, supported banks, and backed the railroads. It busted open the stranglehold of slavery, opened doors, and forced America to reexamine and reinvent. The GOP held a commanding grip on the Presidency for the next seventy years. Teddy Roosevelt was instrumental in expanding the nation's foreign policies as well as preserving and conserving natural resources here at home. Under Roosevelt's presidency focus grew on placing aside unique natural treasures, places like Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon, and protecting them for all who would follow.
Republican President Herbert Hoover and his "Hooverist" economic policies (similar to today's trickle down theory), ushered in the Great Depression, and with it the demise of the GOP's ongoing grip on the White House. The party shifted around across the decades, and by the 1970s had settled itself pretty far out on the right. With the inauguration of President Reagan in 1980, who started what many Republicans would herald as a new golden age, the party had solidified its base as both fiscally and socially conservative. Yet between then and now, the GOP has veered so far right one has to wonder if Reagan would recognize it.
The party’s establishment is backing Senator Ted Cruz as its hopeful nominee for the general election. It is quite fair to label the senator an extremist given Cruz's outspoken and clear platform, which is anti-women, anti-LGBT, anti-trans, anti-middle class, anti-reproductive freedom (even in cases of rape and incest), anti-social programs such as Medicaid, anti-Wall Street reform, anti-global warming (as in, “I don’t believe in it” despite its generalized acceptance throughout the scientific community). Cruz does believe in the Bible (literally. Word for word), and believes you should too. As incongruous as it may be, he equally believes in your right to purchase a military style assault rife capable of taking out dozens of people in a matter of seconds without a significant multi-day background check. With Cruz as their new standard-bearer, the 2016 Republican Party is significantly out of step with average Americans. As the American people continue in greater numbers to recognize and support human rights, demand equity in pay, and call for action on climate change, the GOP remains distant, jaundiced, and indebted to the gun and oil lobbies, and to their small but vocal evangelical base.
On June 26, 2015 the Supreme Court settled one major issue of American civil rights when its opinion recognized the Constitutionality of same-sex marriage. Justice Anthony Kennedy spoke of love, family, and most importantly, he spoke of liberty. The decision in Obergefell v. Hodges should have put the issue to rest, and the Republican Party should have turned its collective attention to other matters of pressing national import, such as security both social, physical and cyber, and to working with Democrats to bolster an already strong economy. Instead the GOP chose to the path of obstructionism.
I submit that it is their inaction that has given rise to the anger we now see from those predominantly white, middle-class men at Trump rallies. Republicans in congress could have worked together with their Democratic colleagues along with the President to craft meaningful legislation addressing immigration reform or the burgeoning student debt crisis. President Obama and his colleagues attempted to negotiate such legislation for the better part of the last half decade. Instead, congress has virtually shut down for the last four years, stalemating the sitting President, stalling out negotiations, refusing to work collegially across the aisle. Consequently, the sitting Congress looks childish and petty. Nothing gets accomplished in D.C. as the GOP's primary mode of attacking their Democrat enemies is by advancing purely symbolic votes to defund the Affordable Care Act, or by simply doing nothing at all. They then deflect attention away from their inaction by pointing fingers at immigrants or by raising terrorist threat levels to suit their own political needs.
A case in point is the refusal of Senate Republicans to consider Merrick Garland, President Obama's Supreme Court nominee. The GOP argues that since this is an election year the people ought to weigh in on who is granted hearings for the position on the big Bench. The President, with nearly a year remaining in office, did his job and offered up a moderate federal judge with extensive experience. Liberals, myself included, were somewhat deflated given Garland’s moderate nature, yet Republicans refused to even meet with him. The GOP is gambling that it will win the Oval Office this November, because if it does not it will have to deal with the likelihood that a more liberal judge will be selected by a President Clinton or a President Sanders.
And it is exactly Clinton or Sanders who will take the White House in November. The GOP is handing a win to the Democrats. Initially18 candidates lined up to be the Republican’s choice for president. While three candidates remain, it seems that Cruz or Donald Trump (of all people) are – barring the emergence of an as yet unnamed “white knight” – will be the nominee. Trump has urged supporters to beat the shit out of people who disagree with him, calls women dogs and bitches, threatens to go isolationist by pulling out of NATO, wants to ban Muslims (all 1.8 billion) from entering the US, insists global warming is a trick China is trying to play on the world in order to hurt the the US economy, and has promised any Supreme Court Justice he would nominate would be conservative enough to overturn Roe v. Wade.
And yet Senator Cruz makes Trump look like a lefty getting back to the land on Yasgur’s farm. The exceptionally conservative Christian who is riding out allegations of multiple extra-marital affairs considers the use of common birth control to be abortion. He is adamant that when it comes to a woman's right to control her own uterus and manage her own health there is no protection for her under the Constitution.
The Donald and Lyin' Ted, have been quite clear regarding their positions with respect to LGBT issues: if you are in the LGBT community you are second or third rate, and you have no rights. Trump, who at one point threatened that women who had unsanctioned abortions should do jail time, has disqualified a transgender person from keeping the title she had won from the Miss Universe Pageant, in which Trump was the controlling investor. Cruz is on record stating gay people have made a "choice" to be gay, and they can make a "choice" to be not gay. He supports so-called conversion therapy, a practice the American Psychological Association calls extremely harmful, a that has been outlawed in many states. During such “therapy” one is shamed and coerced into changing one’s sexual orientation, as if this were in fact possible.
If you happen to be straight, do you believe your heterosexuality is a choice? Were you born straight, or did you try women and men for a while and then decide? Of course, you were born who you are, which is of course a beautiful thing. Yet the Party of Lincoln could be hitching its proverbial wagon to a candidate that wants to legislate your sexuality. If Trump promises a conservative SCOTUS nominee, who will be Cruz's? Josef Mengele?
There’s been nearly a half-century of progress on the path to ensuring LGBT rights since the riots at the Stonewall Inn in 1969. The following year a handful of Gay Pride Parades were held in a few large US cities. My sister, a lesbian living in New York at that time, marched in the first ever Pride Parade in NYC. That day hopes were high even though the numbers of marchers and supporters were low. In 2015 the NYC Pride Parade attracted hundreds of thousands of marchers, with approximately two million more onlookers lining the streets, while celebrations of LGBT Pride happen every year in hundreds of places across the country, including the Charlotte Pride Festival, and the Mississippi Pride Celebration.
Still, across the country states such as North Carolina and Mississippi have recently enacted sweeping discriminatory legislation designed to hijack all rights, equality and legitimacy away from anyone in the LGBT community. Even liberal Massachusetts, home to the first ever same-sex marriage, is considering serious anti-LGBT legislation. There is one common denominator connecting these states: they each have Republican governors. The irony here is that much of these laws are passed in a closet, behind closed doors and with little public input. In our system it often takes months or years to get approval to pave a road or to fix a bridge. But in less time than it takes to bake a cake the North Carolina legislation promoting the discrimination of the LGBT community made it out of the legislature and onto the governor’s desk, where it was quickly signed.
To fully understand the implications, it’s important to look at the four components of the law in North Carolina. First, it disallows a transgendered person from using the restroom aligning with their gender identity. Second, the law prevents cities and towns and counties within the state from adopting their own anti-discrimination ordinances. Third it prohibits cities or towns from imposing any LGBT equality policies on any vendors or contractors to the cities or the state as a whole. And fourth, the new homophobic legislation eliminates the ability of an LGBT employee to sue an employer in a state court for a discriminatory firing. So, to boil it down, this is a showcase of the modern day Republican Party at its legislative worst. The law now makes it totally legal to refuse service to an LGBT person at a bakery or to deny them equal access to housing or employment, while also denying the right of an LGBT person to pursue legal action against such discrimination.
Back in October each of the original 6 Democratic candidates for President publicly expressed their support for the LGBT community. Secretary Clinton and Senator Sanders each have a long history of legislative support for the LGBT community and for women's health care issues and reproductive freedom. Based on their voting history on the senate floor, each of these candidates are allies to the LGBT community. Conversely, not one of the original 18 Republican candidates supports LGBT equality nor do they support women's health issues or reproductive freedom. In not one GOP debate or town hall, of which there were nearly twenty, has even one Republican candidate expressed support for the LGBT community. Instead they continue to stand on the wrong side of history, supporting instead so-called “religious freedom,” which is merely code for giving the right for anyone to discriminate against any LGBT person in the name of their personal God.
It’s unbecoming to a nation known globally as a Beacon of Hope, the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave. Because when you break it down, legislating discrimination runs contrary to the concept of freedom, and homophobia – or any phobia – runs contrary to the concept of bravery. It’s time for the GOP to find the center it lost when it made its bargain with the Nation’s right wing. It’s time for the Grand Old Party to step away from fringes and to get in step with the rest of the nation by supporting the liberties of all Americans, not only some Americans.
Because as it stands, policy-wise, the GOP demonstrates every day in every way that it hates gay and trans people. Indeed, it seems the party would rather LGBT people be locked in the closet, forced into conversion "therapy," or buried in the ground.
In the middle of the 1850s, the nation struggled over the prospect of slavery spreading westward as the US expanded. Democratic Senator Stephen Douglas of Illinois promoted the Kansas-Nebraska act of 1854 which opened the door for the use of slave labor on farms and in factories in areas where the practice was previously prohibited. Perhaps the most famous American political discourse, the Lincoln-Douglas debates, which took place for hours at at time over the period of several days, reflected the nation's differing views on the human slave trade. Abraham Lincoln, who became the first Republican President, did so arguing that our great nation ought to recognize the institution of slavery for what it was: one group of people exerting humiliating power over another, thereby disenfranchising them from the opportunity to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
In its earliest incarnations the GOP enjoyed a fairly diverse membership – this was a party of both black and white, educated and uneducated, skilled and unskilled. The main platform on which the earliest Republican Party rested promoted business both big and small, supported banks, and backed the railroads. It busted open the stranglehold of slavery, opened doors, and forced America to reexamine and reinvent. The GOP held a commanding grip on the Presidency for the next seventy years. Teddy Roosevelt was instrumental in expanding the nation's foreign policies as well as preserving and conserving natural resources here at home. Under Roosevelt's presidency focus grew on placing aside unique natural treasures, places like Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon, and protecting them for all who would follow.
Republican President Herbert Hoover and his "Hooverist" economic policies (similar to today's trickle down theory), ushered in the Great Depression, and with it the demise of the GOP's ongoing grip on the White House. The party shifted around across the decades, and by the 1970s had settled itself pretty far out on the right. With the inauguration of President Reagan in 1980, who started what many Republicans would herald as a new golden age, the party had solidified its base as both fiscally and socially conservative. Yet between then and now, the GOP has veered so far right one has to wonder if Reagan would recognize it.
The party’s establishment is backing Senator Ted Cruz as its hopeful nominee for the general election. It is quite fair to label the senator an extremist given Cruz's outspoken and clear platform, which is anti-women, anti-LGBT, anti-trans, anti-middle class, anti-reproductive freedom (even in cases of rape and incest), anti-social programs such as Medicaid, anti-Wall Street reform, anti-global warming (as in, “I don’t believe in it” despite its generalized acceptance throughout the scientific community). Cruz does believe in the Bible (literally. Word for word), and believes you should too. As incongruous as it may be, he equally believes in your right to purchase a military style assault rife capable of taking out dozens of people in a matter of seconds without a significant multi-day background check. With Cruz as their new standard-bearer, the 2016 Republican Party is significantly out of step with average Americans. As the American people continue in greater numbers to recognize and support human rights, demand equity in pay, and call for action on climate change, the GOP remains distant, jaundiced, and indebted to the gun and oil lobbies, and to their small but vocal evangelical base.
On June 26, 2015 the Supreme Court settled one major issue of American civil rights when its opinion recognized the Constitutionality of same-sex marriage. Justice Anthony Kennedy spoke of love, family, and most importantly, he spoke of liberty. The decision in Obergefell v. Hodges should have put the issue to rest, and the Republican Party should have turned its collective attention to other matters of pressing national import, such as security both social, physical and cyber, and to working with Democrats to bolster an already strong economy. Instead the GOP chose to the path of obstructionism.
I submit that it is their inaction that has given rise to the anger we now see from those predominantly white, middle-class men at Trump rallies. Republicans in congress could have worked together with their Democratic colleagues along with the President to craft meaningful legislation addressing immigration reform or the burgeoning student debt crisis. President Obama and his colleagues attempted to negotiate such legislation for the better part of the last half decade. Instead, congress has virtually shut down for the last four years, stalemating the sitting President, stalling out negotiations, refusing to work collegially across the aisle. Consequently, the sitting Congress looks childish and petty. Nothing gets accomplished in D.C. as the GOP's primary mode of attacking their Democrat enemies is by advancing purely symbolic votes to defund the Affordable Care Act, or by simply doing nothing at all. They then deflect attention away from their inaction by pointing fingers at immigrants or by raising terrorist threat levels to suit their own political needs.
A case in point is the refusal of Senate Republicans to consider Merrick Garland, President Obama's Supreme Court nominee. The GOP argues that since this is an election year the people ought to weigh in on who is granted hearings for the position on the big Bench. The President, with nearly a year remaining in office, did his job and offered up a moderate federal judge with extensive experience. Liberals, myself included, were somewhat deflated given Garland’s moderate nature, yet Republicans refused to even meet with him. The GOP is gambling that it will win the Oval Office this November, because if it does not it will have to deal with the likelihood that a more liberal judge will be selected by a President Clinton or a President Sanders.
And it is exactly Clinton or Sanders who will take the White House in November. The GOP is handing a win to the Democrats. Initially18 candidates lined up to be the Republican’s choice for president. While three candidates remain, it seems that Cruz or Donald Trump (of all people) are – barring the emergence of an as yet unnamed “white knight” – will be the nominee. Trump has urged supporters to beat the shit out of people who disagree with him, calls women dogs and bitches, threatens to go isolationist by pulling out of NATO, wants to ban Muslims (all 1.8 billion) from entering the US, insists global warming is a trick China is trying to play on the world in order to hurt the the US economy, and has promised any Supreme Court Justice he would nominate would be conservative enough to overturn Roe v. Wade.
And yet Senator Cruz makes Trump look like a lefty getting back to the land on Yasgur’s farm. The exceptionally conservative Christian who is riding out allegations of multiple extra-marital affairs considers the use of common birth control to be abortion. He is adamant that when it comes to a woman's right to control her own uterus and manage her own health there is no protection for her under the Constitution.
The Donald and Lyin' Ted, have been quite clear regarding their positions with respect to LGBT issues: if you are in the LGBT community you are second or third rate, and you have no rights. Trump, who at one point threatened that women who had unsanctioned abortions should do jail time, has disqualified a transgender person from keeping the title she had won from the Miss Universe Pageant, in which Trump was the controlling investor. Cruz is on record stating gay people have made a "choice" to be gay, and they can make a "choice" to be not gay. He supports so-called conversion therapy, a practice the American Psychological Association calls extremely harmful, a that has been outlawed in many states. During such “therapy” one is shamed and coerced into changing one’s sexual orientation, as if this were in fact possible.
If you happen to be straight, do you believe your heterosexuality is a choice? Were you born straight, or did you try women and men for a while and then decide? Of course, you were born who you are, which is of course a beautiful thing. Yet the Party of Lincoln could be hitching its proverbial wagon to a candidate that wants to legislate your sexuality. If Trump promises a conservative SCOTUS nominee, who will be Cruz's? Josef Mengele?
There’s been nearly a half-century of progress on the path to ensuring LGBT rights since the riots at the Stonewall Inn in 1969. The following year a handful of Gay Pride Parades were held in a few large US cities. My sister, a lesbian living in New York at that time, marched in the first ever Pride Parade in NYC. That day hopes were high even though the numbers of marchers and supporters were low. In 2015 the NYC Pride Parade attracted hundreds of thousands of marchers, with approximately two million more onlookers lining the streets, while celebrations of LGBT Pride happen every year in hundreds of places across the country, including the Charlotte Pride Festival, and the Mississippi Pride Celebration.
Still, across the country states such as North Carolina and Mississippi have recently enacted sweeping discriminatory legislation designed to hijack all rights, equality and legitimacy away from anyone in the LGBT community. Even liberal Massachusetts, home to the first ever same-sex marriage, is considering serious anti-LGBT legislation. There is one common denominator connecting these states: they each have Republican governors. The irony here is that much of these laws are passed in a closet, behind closed doors and with little public input. In our system it often takes months or years to get approval to pave a road or to fix a bridge. But in less time than it takes to bake a cake the North Carolina legislation promoting the discrimination of the LGBT community made it out of the legislature and onto the governor’s desk, where it was quickly signed.
To fully understand the implications, it’s important to look at the four components of the law in North Carolina. First, it disallows a transgendered person from using the restroom aligning with their gender identity. Second, the law prevents cities and towns and counties within the state from adopting their own anti-discrimination ordinances. Third it prohibits cities or towns from imposing any LGBT equality policies on any vendors or contractors to the cities or the state as a whole. And fourth, the new homophobic legislation eliminates the ability of an LGBT employee to sue an employer in a state court for a discriminatory firing. So, to boil it down, this is a showcase of the modern day Republican Party at its legislative worst. The law now makes it totally legal to refuse service to an LGBT person at a bakery or to deny them equal access to housing or employment, while also denying the right of an LGBT person to pursue legal action against such discrimination.
Back in October each of the original 6 Democratic candidates for President publicly expressed their support for the LGBT community. Secretary Clinton and Senator Sanders each have a long history of legislative support for the LGBT community and for women's health care issues and reproductive freedom. Based on their voting history on the senate floor, each of these candidates are allies to the LGBT community. Conversely, not one of the original 18 Republican candidates supports LGBT equality nor do they support women's health issues or reproductive freedom. In not one GOP debate or town hall, of which there were nearly twenty, has even one Republican candidate expressed support for the LGBT community. Instead they continue to stand on the wrong side of history, supporting instead so-called “religious freedom,” which is merely code for giving the right for anyone to discriminate against any LGBT person in the name of their personal God.
It’s unbecoming to a nation known globally as a Beacon of Hope, the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave. Because when you break it down, legislating discrimination runs contrary to the concept of freedom, and homophobia – or any phobia – runs contrary to the concept of bravery. It’s time for the GOP to find the center it lost when it made its bargain with the Nation’s right wing. It’s time for the Grand Old Party to step away from fringes and to get in step with the rest of the nation by supporting the liberties of all Americans, not only some Americans.
Because as it stands, policy-wise, the GOP demonstrates every day in every way that it hates gay and trans people. Indeed, it seems the party would rather LGBT people be locked in the closet, forced into conversion "therapy," or buried in the ground.
Header art by T. Guzzio. Original photo via Randall Hill / Reuters
CONNECT WITH CHRISTOPHER:
Christopher Mattera, Ed.D. has been descending and photographing technical canyons on the Colorado Plateau for twenty-five years. His photography appears in Moab Canyoneering: Exploring Technical Canyons Around Moab, the newest guide book to technical canyoneering on the Colorado Plateau, recently published by Sharp End Publications. In addition he is an educator, and writer. Contact Chris at chrismattera@hotmail.com.
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