The General US Politics Thread

Every single person who claimed that Trump would defend LGBT rights better fucking admit that they’re partly to blame for us losing our legal protections. I’m so angry right now. We never did anything to deserve this.

Who were these people claiming that? Republicans? I think it's already established that means nothing.

In good news, Democrats are up in both the Senate and Gubernatorial races in Florida.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/21/politics/cnn-poll-florida-senate-governor/index.html

My guess is that the people who are mostly likely to make such claims are.

• Republicans, natch
• People in the Denial stage of grief (post election only)
• Trolls, liars and charlatans (which can overlap with all other categories)
• Trans Conservatives, which as oxymornic as it sounds likely still exist

Though I also think that Trump's campaign focus on boarder walls might played a role in the false notion that he would leave the LGBT demographics alone, but even then that would had been quickly dispelled by his association with Purin (who himself had approved homophobic and transphobic laws in Russia) or the recent nomination of Kavinaugh (who would likely have the Gay Marriage ruling in his crosshairs if not for the fact that its still too recent for the SC to contest that)

Edited by MorningStar1337 on Oct 21st 2018 at 1:04:48 AM

That is good news indeed. Me and my family will send in our ballots tomorrow.

See Caitlyn Jenner. It's not really surprising; there are hundreds of millions of people in the country, look hard enough and you're going to have people of all wakes of life believing things, even if their general demographics say they're very unlikely to do so.

Trump has photo of him holding a rainbow flag. That totally means he is in favor of LGBT+ rights. Totally, his rampant homophobic vice president and his the support from the religious conservatives have don't mean anything, really.

It is like looking at Ben Carlson and saying the Republicans don't endorse racist policies, because they have black people among their representatives, while ignoring how the minorities represented by the Go P are either the token participation or believe that their due to the one of them status, it applies automatically to everyone else.

Edited by AngelusNox on Oct 21st 2018 at 5:47:56 PM

Presumably, trans Republicans care more about racism or tax cuts then they do about trans rights.

Can't say it surprises me, after all, there is no special obligation for a person to care about a demographic group they may belong too.

Pretty much.

The Republicans are back to strip civil rights from people again, and now we're on the chopping block. Can't say I'm surprised, far from it. This is just the latest in a set of moves they've made, and anyone with a functioning brain (so, not Caitlyn Jenner) could have seen this coming.

That said, I'm with Smokeycut on the anger department.

I just said I wasn't surprised. You can find something unsurprising and still be p...d off about it.

I wasn't a posting member of the forums at the time, but you can be sure I was enraged then too.

Edited by AzurePaladin on Oct 21st 2018 at 4:40:34 AM

I'm not angry at this point, I mean, was this such a surprise at all after the rescission of protections for transgender students, the fixation on transgender people on the military, denying of visas for same-sex partners of diplomats, etc?

This was obviously going to be the next step after ethnic minorities.

Thing is, this is a much bigger deal than the stuff with the students, the military, etc.

Those could be reversed because it was considered to be discriminatory against transgender people. But with this? You can’t discriminate against transgender people if we “don’t exist”. And when the bathroom bills case reaches the SCOTUS, even if there wasn’t a Republican majority, they’d rule in favor of the bathroom bills because trans people “don’t exist”, and therefore it’s just men entering the women’s rooms.

If this goes through, it will be the USA denying the legitimacy of Trans people's existence. There are all sorts of 'worst case' scenarios that action could lead to that I'm trying not to think about right now, but even in the best case, its a horrible thing. It would *at best* lead to legalized discrimination, if not outright persecution by state or even Federal Governments.

Edited by AzurePaladin on Oct 21st 2018 at 6:32:33 AM

Didn't Margaret Thatcher try this with gay people?

What is the point of even having a Constitution that implies your rights are granted even if not stated within the Constitution if someone can just twist their interpretation of it around to oppress you and your marginalized group?

She didn't quite try to make gay people non existent but she did try to block public health warnings about the aids virus,which was just as harmful

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/dec/30/thatcher-tried-to-block-bad-taste-public-health-warnings-about-aids

Essentially she thought explicit descriptions of sex would harm teenagers somehow

Native Americans, Blacks, women, Irish....

A lot of people have asked that question.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Oct 21st 2018 at 4:38:48 AM

Don't forget Italians.

The best part of Assassins Creed III is the not at all subtle, "They're not fighting for your rights, Connor."

I mean, (if I could vote in US elections) I am having a hard time thinking of any remotely likely Democratic nominee that I wouldn't vote for over Trump (and the vast majority of the modern GOP). There are a few (Tulsi Gabbard comes to mind) that I'd probably get wasted after voting for them, but that's it.

Considering the news we've just been discussing earlier today, everyone better vote blue in 2020 regardless if Harris is the candidate or Sanders. He may have bernt through this thread's collective goodwill (including mine), but to use that to throw away your vote would be to betray everyone we want to protect, and make you no different than the Bernie or Busters of 2016.

Obviously, this does not apply to the primary. Go to town opposing him there. I'll probably join you.

To be fair, almost every country with a constitution also has lofty ideals which in practice are twisted and skewed in their enactment. The US is actually among the more better off in that regard.

Just look at China, where the constitution technically permits and supports freedom of speech and press so long as the freedom is not abused to spread lies and mistruths.

Sort of. She presided over the introduction of Section 28, which is probably what you're thinking of.

By all accounts, she didn't have a problem with LGBTQ+ people that she knew (i.e., on an individual basis). However, the anti-LGBTQ+ policies she presided over, and actively used as a tactic to discredit the Labour Party (the 1987 General Election was infamous for the Tories embarking on a campaign to discredit the Labour Party by painting them as creating a world where everyone's gay and good, wholesome children are perverted and corrupted by predatory AIDS-infected homosexuals), had far reaching effects for the LGBTQ+ community and legitimised years of hatred, misunderstanding and persecution.

The Labour Party started the process of repealing Section 28 when they got into power in 1997 — it was opposed most stringently by David Cameron in 2000 before Cameron had even become an MP. Once he did become an MP, he campaigned rigorously against repealing it and voted against the repeal in 2003 (the repeal won). In 2009, a year before the General Election, David Cameron (now party leader) apologised to the LGBTQ+ community for the introduction of Section 28 as if he'd played no personal part in attempting to prevent its repeal.

Once his party was in power and he was prime minister, his MPs kept lobbying for the return of Section 28. In 2011, Cameron's government introduced 'Clause 28' which emphasised, without mentioning LGBTQ+ at all, teaching the benefits of marriage (only marriage between a man and a woman was legal at the time) in academy and free schools.

There's an article here, which was written on the 30-year anniversary of Section 28's activation, about it:

Section 28: What was Margaret Thatcher's controversial law and how did it affect the lives of LGBT+ people? (Independent, 24th May 2018).

This is an opinion-piece written by a gay writer in 2013 when Thatcher died; his experience the impact Section 28 had on his life and his response to the LGBTQ+ people mourning Thatcher's death because they thought she was a bastion of LGBTQ+ rights just because she voted to decriminalise homosexuality in 1967:

Margaret Thatcher was no poster girl for gay rights

I think it's not quite the same as what Trump is trying to do with Title IX. I think Trump's gone one step further than Thatcher or Cameron did, but only because I think a lot of Tories are still struggling with the L and G of LGBTQ+ to really understand the rest. As with the US, however, the issue isn't as consigned to the past as it should be.

I unfortunately think, (and especially with this bigoted Transgender harm measure) that what Trump provides American Conservatives with most is catharsis. They want to see Trans people hurt and suffer, they want to see gay protection rolled back, they want to not ever have to see backlash against a cop when they decide to shoot a surrendering black man in the back, they want to brag about sexual harassment and assault with no backlash, and most of all they want to not ever have to think about Illegal immigrants, (and lets be honest Hispanics) except in terms of "what they deserve" for even trying to get into the country, or even being not white. They think Trump will allow that and is saying what most of them are thinking.

So I fear that if we are to have any chance we absolutely need someone who will fight on the Republicans level. Personal insults, "implications", (as in the Trump "not saying, just saying" thing) and resorting to Internet level arguments. It is the only way to get the rural votes that matter and to inspire our largely apathetic average American citizen.