Discussion"Conservatives" are no longer the 'enemy', and here's why...

submitted by jjdub7TERF (Trans Exterminating Reactionary Fascist) from (self.LGBDropTheT)

The parties flipped (...again, depending on who you ask). Or did they?

If you need proof (beyond the fact that we're all literally here after having to migrate platforms due to "progressive" agendaship in the tech space) that Conservatives are not the enemy, to start:

Check which justice wrote the majority opinion in both Bostock v. Clayton County and R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes Inc. v. EEOC, this year's pair of SCOTUS rulings that granted employment protections on the basis of sex to LGBT+ people.

Notice how the mainstream media either did not or only quietly and begrudgingly acknowledged Neil Gorsuch's contribution, let alone his leadership in writing these majority opinions.

The person who appointed that particular justice, Donald Trump, has never done anything homophobic in the public eye (because otherwise you'd have never heard the end of it).

He did not have to "evolve" regarding his position on same-sex marriage.

He has campaigned for the global decriminalization of homosexuality, and he has allocated funding to make PrEP more affordable in an attempt to completely eradicate HIV/AIDS in our lifetime.

On the contrary, remember which president signed the so-called Defense of Marriage Act and the homophobic military Don't Ask Don't Tell policy into law. Remember how this was all forgotten by the media and the LGBT activists when his wife ran for the same office, even as Democrats declared their intent to decriminalize intentional transmission of HIV at last October's LGBT Town Hall debate.

What, exactly, have Democrats ever legislated for the lasting, material benefit of LGB people? And no, don't bother citing the failed Equality Act, because the last thing we needed was to amend the Civil Rights Act to supersede sex as a protected, immutable class with the farce of gender self-ID (as we all well know here).

Don't buy the narrative that Democrats and the media are selling you for November..it's fake, it's empty, and it's designed to make you feel like you need them in order to live your life, when in the end, in reality, despite nearly 30 years to rectify their actual passed-into-law legislative actions, Democratic legislators haven't done jack-shit for LGB folks, when any progress made has been through the courts.

Do you think that Joe Biden, of all people, really gives two damns about LGB rights? That incoherent shyster is likely still under the impression that Sodomy Laws are still a cornerstone of American public policy, let alone aware and in support of marriage equality and other recent victories for LGB rights in this country.

But Democrats sure put on a great show of pretending to try in the face of all irony.

WalkAway

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[–][deleted] 23 insightful - 3 fun23 insightful - 2 fun24 insightful - 3 fun -  (1 child)

From your first link:

The decision is a direct rebuke to the Trump administration, which sided with the employers in these cases

From your second link:

Conservative legal scholars — who were instrumental in persuading Mr. Trump to select Justice Gorsuch and lobbied heavily for his confirmation — denounced his opinion, calling it a travesty of conservative legal thought.

You are also ignoring Trump's other appointee, Kavanaugh, who sided with the conservative justices. All this really proves is that SCOTUS justices can act independently of who appointed them. Or that legal matters before SCOTUS are often more about more legalistic disagreements than the particular outcomes of the cases.

Trump only entered politics when he ran for president in 2016, so not having to "evolve" on gay marriage is rather faint praise.

Biden got out ahead of Obama and pushed him and the Democratic Party to endorse gay marriage in 2012, and in 2015 Obama's SCOTUS justices, and the other liberal justices, were key in getting gay marriage in a 5-4 decision over the conservative justices.

The position that LGB people only got wins from the judiciary and not legislation from Democrats is a nonsensical position to take given that you start by parading about a judicial decision that, by the same logic, Trump and Republicans had nothing to do with. Regardless, it is also a false position. The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act and the Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Act of 2010 were passed by Democrats over Republicans under Obama/Biden.

You can debate about where people should be voting now, but trying to rewrite history is just not the way to go about it.

[–]jjdub7TERF (Trans Exterminating Reactionary Fascist)[S] 5 insightful - 3 fun5 insightful - 2 fun6 insightful - 3 fun -  (0 children)

Nobody's rewriting anything, particularly given that I've gone ahad and used all liberal-leaning sources here.

Both opinion pieces mentioned RE: SCOTUS decision ("quietly" & "begrudgingly") are from very progressive outlets - NYT and NPR, so naturally they were going to highlight the perceived folly of Trump's appointment.

Note that Kavanaugh's dissent was not a rebuke of the affirmation of equal protections or the theme of the majority opinion itself, but rather an acknowledgement of exactly what I've spelled out here - essentially, that protections ought to have come from the legislature rather than be decreed per the court's interpretation of what the scope of "sex" entails (similar to the interpretive Title IX guidance on gender identity issued in the Obama admin's second term). In short, Kavanaugh's dissent was not an anti-LGBT vote, but rather a strict constitutionalist one.

I'm not "parading" any decisions from last month, but rather just pointing out that conservatives are not a unanimous solid boogeyman voting bloc when it comes to policy protections for minorities. If anything, the need for the Democrats to be "pushed" to endorse gay marriage (and then fail to introduce any bills) is even more damning because that's not a show of allyship but rather a play of opportunistic pandering.

As for the two pieces of legislation you cite. Matthew Shepherd and James Byrd Jr.'s deaths were both tragedies, but murder is and always has been illegal regardless of motive; this, and given that hate crimes against majorities as well as hate crime hoaxes are not prosecuted or sentenced under the same standards, essentially grants special protections over equal protection for minorities. Furthermore, there's no empirical standard to be able to judge the efficacy of such laws in reducing bias-motivated incidents, making these types of legislation symbolic at best and censorious at worst once extended to the speech-as-violence model that's gathered us here.

DADT Repeal of 2010...Democrats made that mess, so of course they should be the ones to clean it up.

You can debate about where people should be voting now

To an extent you are correct, and this is where I think we find some common ground. Yes, obviously the Republican party's track record on LGB rights is spotty, but do I think the GOP can take a leaf from Democrat's pandering playbook and recognize a prevailing public opinion? I do.

Do we agree that the current legal state of affairs for LGB people in this country is essentially victorious per the objectives of the LGB equality movement of the past decades?

If we have achieved equal rights, what motivation is there left to spearhead progressivism as the prevailing public policy direcive? As the Left drags the Overton window further down into identity politics, I fear that we actually run the risk of losing what's been achieved in the past 10 years, whether by the TRA insanity that's discussed here becoming law, a concerted drive toward censorship and cancel culture for "disfavorable" opinions (e.g. "TERF views"), or through a larger, macro-level destabilization of the country.

To some extent, you need the conservatives to maintain that status quo, lest we allow progressivism to drag the discourse down into St. George in Retirement Syndrome in a never-ending pursuit of evermore banal inequities to extinguish when we, as LGB folks, ostensibly have what we've petitioned for at this point.

[–]MezozoicGayoldschool gay 23 insightful - 1 fun23 insightful - 0 fun24 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I am not american, but from here it seems that if previously only Republicans were enemies, then now both Republicans and Democrats are enemies for LGB folks. Republicans still a bit worse, as I see it, thought. And because in USA there is monopoly on power with bi-party system, there is no way to get over it with new party of politician, so only way left is fight for yourselves, make yourselves heard, like it was hundred years ago.

[–][deleted] 9 insightful - 1 fun9 insightful - 0 fun10 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

This is how I see it as well.

[–]JulienMayfair 12 insightful - 2 fun12 insightful - 1 fun13 insightful - 2 fun -  (2 children)

On the contrary, remember which president signed the so-called Defense of Marriage Act and the homophobic military Don't Ask Don't Tell policy into law

As a gay man in his fifties, I'm calling major bullshit. Don't try that with me in the room.

When Bill Clinton ran for president in 1992 (which I remember clearly), he was the first serious contender for the office to have as part of his platform allowing gay soldiers to serve openly. At the time, the military was actively hunting down gay service members and kicking them out, including ROTC cadets at my college.

However, when Clinton tried to implement this policy, he ran into major opposition from Congress, including Republicans like Newt Gingrich and conservative Democrats like Sam Nunn. It became clear that it was not going to happen, so they came up with the Don't Ask Don't Tell compromise, which at least stopped the purges.

The Defense of Marriage Act passed the House & Senate by a veto-proof majority, so it wouldn't have matter if Clinton signed it or not. He did and later said he regretted doing so.

And, yes, I do think Joe Biden cares about gay rights. It's widely thought that he brought Obama around to declaring publicly his support for same-sex marriage, and I believe Biden has presided over at least one gay wedding.

The far-left has gone off the rails, but considering the Republicans' views on the environment and healthcare, I still have to vote Blue. Especially the environment. Republicans in my state have gutted environmental protection laws to the point where real estate developers can do just about anything they want. We all need clean water, gay, straight, trans, or whatever.

Edit: The worst thing about Bill Clinton and gay rights was his inability to keep his pants zipped. In the climate of the 90s, that cost him pretty much all his moral authority on anything having to do with sex.

[–]jjdub7TERF (Trans Exterminating Reactionary Fascist)[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I'm not disagreeing with any of what you've said; the point of my post was to have everyone admit that there's much more nuance between the two sides than many would like to admit.

healthcare

Out of curiousity, what exactly are you worried the GOP will do with healthcare? They've already reaffirmed their commitment to maintaining coverage for pre-existing conditions, but I'm wondering what else you have weighing in there?

[–]SeasideLimbs 10 insightful - 1 fun10 insightful - 0 fun11 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I suggest a two-pronged approach in which people take identities (e.g. political ones) into consideration while remembering that what matters in the end are actions, not identities or necessarily even opinions.

The fact that people put so much focus on identity is one of the exact reasons why we are were we are now. The democratic has successfully painted itself as "the party of the minorities." The mere idea that the democratic party could somehow do anything homophobic, sexist, racist or otherwise bigoted was laughable in many people's eyes for a long time. That's where identity (and the generalizations that necessarily come with identities) get us.

We are now in the middle of a flux state. Radical feminists rub shoulders with the far-right (in terms of which spaces they are in.) Mainstream feminists rub shoulders with incels. Perverted straight men tell lesbian women what to do. The left is against freedom of expression and the right is becoming increasingly warm toward LGB people. Things are nuts. In such a time, identities are even less important than they would be otherwise. So I wouldn't spend too much time thinking about them and instead focus more on judging each person individually.

[–]xanditAGAB (Assigned Gay at Birth) 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (5 children)

I think all of us here can what's coming from the far left as far as free speech and the TRA's having so much power over women, and lgb. Free speech is becoming less popular on the left (you can't say that it hurts a marginalized) and since they control social media we get pushed off those platforms. Seems like the right is more interested in preserving free speech, if only for their own self preservation. We here and the right have a common fight it seems

[–]Archie 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

Dude, the right wing is fighting to make it harder to get an abortion. They're still doing that in 2020. This is much more important than the TRA bullshit and affects a lot more people. I can't be a feminist and support the right-wing, at the end of the day I still prefer the left.

Making Democrats become more sane about trans issues will be much easier than making Republicans become sane about every other social issue.

[–]xanditAGAB (Assigned Gay at Birth) 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

when you lose free speech you lose your voice, and then you won't be able to fight for anything... whats going on with the far left is much worse imo. I understand the abortion arguments and why it is important, but when you can be silenced on all social media, or fired, or doxxed, or worse, because you have the wrong opinion, or they deemed your speech hate speech, that has much greater negative implications for the country imo. The TRA's are part of the larger sjw movement that is about silencing those who don't agree with their dogma.

[–]Archie 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

The far left has little political power in America. The next democrat candidate is joe biden, a centrist, arguably center-left.

Meanwhile, Donald "grab them by the pussy" Trump is POTUS. Being harassed on twitter is less oppressive than letting this guy naming even more supreme court judges.

And if you post here with sincerity, you are part of what most of his online support calls a SJW. Don't confuse TRAs with SJWs, all feminists are part of the latter for them.

[–]xanditAGAB (Assigned Gay at Birth) 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Far left controls social media, which is why we are here. They certainly control the trans narrative in major media. Joe biden is increasing moving to the far left because he wants to win. Do you think people who they call the gang of four will shut gown the TRA nonsense? I don't think so. They are more likely to push the trans women are women narrative into the schools like Mermaids u.k. does. All Libfems are SJW's.

[–]Archie 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Biden crushed the far-left in the primary even in states where he did not campaign. He doesn't need them, almost all sanders supporters are going to vote for him even if he did not compromize on their most pressed issue (healthcare).

Democrats are indeed more likely to let TRA bullshit go through - but it isn't anywhere close as important than the feminist advances we will lose with more republican judges in the supreme court.

All radfems also are SJWs.

[–]notdelusionalbased faggot 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Matt Taibbi just wrote about this: https://taibbi.substack.com/p/the-left-is-now-the-right

"The Left is Now the Right We laughed at the Republican busybody who couldn't joke, declared war on dirty paintings, and peered through your bedroom window. Now that person has switched sides, and nobody's laughing"