“At times he has been on the liberal side of certain issues, including abortion, taxes and equal rights for gays and lesbians”, said D’Antonio, a former Newsday reporter. Maybe I would feel differently had I ever identified as a Republican, but as a lifelong political independent, it tastes like the weakest of teas.
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And the lack of actual platform shift is particularly disappointing because next week, when the Democratic Party has its convention, I know full well they’re going to be running so far in the other direction I’ll end up frustrated for completely different reasons. It adopted the platform, but invited Thiel to speak.
Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, speaks during the final day of the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. Yet, despite the successful deployment of women in combat forces in a majority of modern nations, Republicans still believe that women are inferior to men and need to be protected.
“I think it was a step in the right direction”.
The party also now has a nominee who has shown little appetite for litigating social issues. What Trump doesn’t acknowledge is that the LGBTQ community is made up of undocumented immigrants, Mexicans, Muslims, women, African Americans, people with disabilities and other communities that the reality star has railed against with his virile rhetoric. Thiel described the transgender bathroom panic behavior as a “distraction,” but did so in such a vague way that it’s not clear whether he thinks state-level laws like those in North Carolina are bad or whether he thinks people just shouldn’t get upset about it. He later said that states should be able to pass the laws they want. NY different than Iowa.
You and I were offended by the bashing of transgender people but most of America did not understand what he was referring to.
“These people were screaming at me and looking at me with such anger in their eyes”, he said. And even then, the omissions were often jarring: Don’t forget Florida Governor Rick Scott’s distasteful speech ignoring the LGBT victims of the Pulse shooting in Orlando last month. Far from defending the rights of LGBTQ Americans, Trump merely stated the obvious: that gay people do not deserve to be gunned down by terrorists.
“I will do everything in my power to protect our LGBTQ citizens from the violence and oppression of a hateful foreign ideology”, Trump said, talking about how the Islamic State executes gay people.
Earlier in the week, the group took out a newspaper ad critical of Trump.
“And I have to say as a Republican, it is so nice to hear you cheering for what I just said”, he said. “It doesn’t matter if you are black, white, gay or trans”, he said. Thiel also used his speech to offer up another switcheroo commonly used by LGBT conservatives as justification for their stance. Trump said that was “no good” and that he “would stop it”.
“Who cares?” he asked of the bathroom issue.
On same-sex marriage, the platform condemns the Supreme Court’s rulings in United States v. Windsor, which led to the federal government’s recognition of gay couples’ marriages, and Obergefell, calls for passage of a “Constitutional amendment returning control over marriage to states”, and supports passage of the First Amendment Defense Act (FADA), a controversial bill before Congress that would protect opponents of marriage equality.
Askey said she was not surprised that Thiel received a warm reception. But although it’s tempting to see Trump’s words as a hallmark of progress, when compared to his party’s openly anti-gay platform, they ring hollow. “The voters motivated by these issue appeals are now the most openly hostile toward Trump’s candidacy”.
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Perkins said he’d to wait and see what Thiel said, and that he expected it would stay “respectful” and wouldn’t “attack core issues and values”.
