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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
Trump's racism is one of the defining tropes of his presidency. With the LGBT community, he flip-flops, or at least he did before Pence signed on. Remember, him holding the LGBT flag was prior to Pence signing on.
Edited by tclittle on Jul 21st 2019 at 9:45:39 AM
"We're all paper, we're all scissors, we're all fightin' with our mirrors, scared we'll never find somebody to love."I don't think anybody is really trying to call Trump "innocent". Any lack of blame would be due to his being an idiot, true, but he's still the President and the one who could/would/should say "no".
It's not that he's saying "yes", it's that he doesn't give enough of a damn to say "no".
Edited by sgamer82 on Jul 21st 2019 at 8:52:07 AM
Context, people. The point here isn't "Trump secretly loves the LGBTQ community and is innocent of wrongdoing." The topic is whether or not shifting Pence from Vice President to President would cause more harm than good, and this particular point of contention is a disagreement as to which of these two positions is true:
- As a consequence of only being Vice President, Mike Pence is powerless to enact his anti-LGBTQ agenda. If Trump were to be removed, Pence would take the reins of power and we would see a massive shift towards anti-LGBTQ activity coming out of the Executive.
- As Vice President, Mike Pence already holds a great deal of power and influence to enact his anti-LGBTQ agenda. Trump has never been passionate about screwing the LGBTQ community; his preferred form of hate is racism. Given the anti-LGBTQ actions the administration is already undertaking under Pence's influence, one wonders what harm he could do in the President's chair that he is not already doing.
Not to be all centrist but I do think the answer's probably a bit of both. Pence still needs to enact his agenda through Trump, and that makes Trump a filter of sorts - not because Trump doesn't want to screw LGBTQ people, but because they're just not his priority. There's only so much time in the day and only so many people you can screw in that time, and Trump has his priorities set on brown people.
I don't think the cruelty or malice of the administration would end if Pence were to take office in Trump's place. I do, however, think we would see a shift in the administration's targets. I expect Pence would dial back the clearly obvious racism and move back towards more publicly acceptable levels of racism, while ramping up the anti-LGBTQ efforts.
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.The only reason Trump ever positioned himself as an ally to the LGBT+ community WAS for the sake of race-baiting. After the shooting on the Orlando night club in 2016, he tried to use it as an argument to the effect that his immigration policy was really to protect LGBT+ rights. It was pretty shameless opportunism and nothing more. All it indicates is that Trump presumably views race-baiting as a more reliable vote getter than queer bashing if he has to choose just one.
One thing to keep in mind about a hypothetical President Pence is that for him to take power Trump would need to be impeached and removed. Which would require a few Republican defections, which would require them to either go against the will of the base and media ecosystem or have the aforementioned groups go against Trump.
Which would require some incredible dirt on Trump, so I can't imagine a situation in which that massive awfullness wouldn't taint Pence too and turn him into a lameduck President. And would almost certainly destroy his chances of winning.
So no, President Pence would be significantly less dangerous than President Trump.
"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji YangUh. Trump was not really a friend to the LGBTQ community at any point. He only ever really brought LGBTQ issues up when he could use it to make attacks against Muslims. We were a prop, nothing more. Its like how he still criticizes Iran for their treatment of gay people while ignoring Saudi Arabia.
If it was him or Pence who spearheaded all the attacks on Gay and Trans rights, its almost immaterial. Both of them use the rhetoric, both of them have taken harmful actions. I know its common to say that Trump isn't really queerphobic, the people around him are, yet he's pretty clearly doesn't care about our lives himself. Akanesarumara is right here, influencibility only goes so far.
Now, there are shades of hatred, he has not begun targeting LGBTQ folks generally as much as he has people of color (though there is overlap, ICE for one has had a few Trans people die in their custody). But to say that he isn't really queerphobic erases the fact that he's been perfectly willing to feed us to the sharks.
Edited by AzurePaladin on Jul 21st 2019 at 12:03:52 PM
The awful things he says and does are burned into our cultural consciousness like a CRT display left on the same picture too long. -Fighteer![]()
Nobody is absolving Trump here.
Him being willing to go along with Pence's suggestions would not really be any better than if he came up with the ban all by himself.
The point is that Pence being VP may be all that he needs to still hurt the LGBT community.
The point isn't that Trump is any less blameworthy. The point is that Pence is also to blame.
The LGBT community is already under the bus with Pence as VP.
Edited by M84 on Jul 22nd 2019 at 12:20:04 AM
Disgusted, but not surprised![]()
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We might already be under the bus, but that does not mean things could not get worse. Pence has the zeal of his faith driving him, and he seems to be dead set on attacking LGBTQ folk.
I'd argue impeachment is necessary at this juncture due to the concentration camps, and if Pence doesn't deconstruct said camps, that he would need to be impeached too. But it would be prudent to take a hard look at the risks and not just write off the possibility of more anti-LGBTQ action in a "what could go wrong" sense. Things can always get worse.
I find myself agreeing with Charles. Pence would need to be fought back immediately. Getting Trump impeached is not the end of the story.
This is unrelated from the question of whether Trump is queerphobic or just influenced into being so (which is the same thing, but that's another topic). If one removed Pence, would he repeal all the discriminatory policies? No. Because he did say yes to them, approved them, helped get them through.
The awful things he says and does are burned into our cultural consciousness like a CRT display left on the same picture too long. -Fighteer
But a lot of people did dismiss the idea that things would be worse under Pence because he could already get what he wants. When its entirely possible that once he has the Presidential Pen he could immediately make life significantly more difficult for LGBTQ folk.
Anyway, on complacency, its not Tropers I'm worried about being complacent, certainly no one in this thread. But there are a lot of people out there, exemplified best by Joe Biden, who think Trump is the only issue and once he's gone everything will be sunshine and roses again. Those are the people I'm worried about.
The awful things he says and does are burned into our cultural consciousness like a CRT display left on the same picture too long. -FighteerYeah nobody has called for complacent, the point has just been that removing Trump isn’t going to result in a greater evil in the form of a super-powered Pence, removing Trump would weaken Pence (as he’d get dragged into the political fallout) even though it would technically empower him (by making him president).
Still it’s a valid point, right now the administration is pretty busy running concentration camps for asylum seekers, they can probably only run one set of concentration camps at once due to logistics, under Pence the focus might shift from asylum seekers to the LGBT+ community.
Edited by Silasw on Jul 21st 2019 at 5:01:22 PM
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranA little uplifting news, with a small negative that surprises nobody:
Most Americans disagree with Trump's "go back" tweets — CBS News poll – Most Americans disagree with the president's incendiary tweets about four Democratic congresswomen of color. A majority of Republicans agree with him
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/most-americans-disagree-with-trumps-go-back-tweets-cbs-news-poll/
If Pence became president, then I suspect we would get a quiet and effective president. There wouldn't be a national outrage every day, and I think a lot of people would see it as a relief and he would probably get a bump from that. Combine it with his religious right appeal and some other conservative points of view, then selecting a conservative businessman for his run, I think he could be very electable and would put up a pretty hard fight. Especially if he was the one who was seen as leading the Republican senators against Trump.

Edited by akanesarumara on Jul 21st 2019 at 4:36:51 PM