How Trump Played the Log Cabin Republicans for Fools

As a former GOP activist and sitting GOP city committee member for 8 years before I left the GOP in the face of the Christofascist takeover, I continue to be amazed at the delusions that predominate among the Log Cabin Republicans who somehow incredibly believe that they can somehow turn the GOP toward a more gay friendly stance.  The reality is that such a change will only happen literally over the dead bodies of the Christofascists.  And then there are the duplicitous GOP candidates who play the Log Cabin crowd for complete suckers.  The sad reality is that, if one is gay, being gay and supporting the GOP is about as insane as being a Jew in 1930's Germany and supporting the Nazi Party.  It is simple insanity.   A piece in Huffington Post looks at how Donald Trump played the Log Cabin Republicans for utter fools.  Here are article highlights: 

Back in December, the Log Cabin Republicans (LCR) were absolutely giddy about the idea of Donald Trump as president. 

Yes, he'd called Mexican immigrants "rapists." Yes, he'd made vile remarks about women. And yes, he'd said Muslims should be banned from entering the country. But as far as the gay GOP group was concerned, compared to most of the other GOP candidates, with their fire and brimstone, Trump was including gays in the straight white men's club merely by seeming to accept the Supreme Court's ruling on marriage equality, even if he disagreed with it. So, everyone else be damned.

Gregory T. Angelo, president of LCR, told Reuters in December, "He is one of the best, if not the best, pro-gay Republican candidates to ever run for the presidency."

But only a month later, Trump happily accepted the endorsement of evangelical leader and Liberty University president Jerry Falwell, Jr. -- about as close to an "enemy to the gay community" as you can get -- and Falwell now energetically campaigns for Trump. And then this past weekend, courting evangelicals in Iowa, Trump said he will work to reverse the Supreme Court's marriage equality ruling, promising to put "certain judges on the bench" to make it happen.  And suddenly, LCR has gone silent on Trump. Woops!

But they've not been silent on Hillary Clinton. In fact, the group launched an ad over the weekend that attacks Clinton as someone who hasn't been there for the LGBT community "when it counted" and which promotes... Bernie Sanders!

Yes, the Log Cabin Republicans really think LGBT people should support democratic socialist Bernie Sanders and want him to win the presidency, right? Yeah, and Donald Trump is not a fascist.

LCR, in fact, got dumped by Trump as soon as Trump saw that many evangelicals would back him even though he's thrice married, can't quote bible verses accurately and owns and operates casinos. And now, trying to nail that vote down further -- and knowing that he'll need that constituency in South Carolina and beyond -- Trump has thrown gays under the same bus he threw Latinos and Muslims.

It doesn't matter what Donald Trump really believes . . . . He will say whatever it takes to get elected, knowing there are so many people so driven by anger and cult of personality that they'll support him, and he has no problem whipping up hate against other people in the process, emboldening those who discriminate.

The idea that any LGBT people could support Trump while he demagogues other minorities is not just sad; it's repellant. But the Log Cabin Republicans' thinking that he'd actually be "good for the gays" was also just plain deluded.

Co-Founder of GOProud Quits GOP

I have long said that being gay and supporting the Republican Party in its current state is akin to a Jew supporting the Nazi regime in the early 1930's.  Why support a party that hates you and seeks to make you a second class - or in Virginia third class - citizen.  I reached this conclusion many years ago.  Now, this reality seems to have finally sunk in with GOProud co-founder Jimmy LaSalvia who quit the GOP and now is registered as an independent.  Gay Star News looks at this common sense move.  Here are excerpts:

GOProud co-founder Jimmy LaSalvia has quit the US Republican Party over the party’s tolerance for homophobia and a leadership that he says is controlled by ‘big government conservatives.’

GOProud was founded in 2009 by former Log Cabin Republicans Christopher R Barron and LaSalvia because they felt that group was not conservative enough.

But on Monday LaSalvia posted on his blog, ‘So I changed my voter registration today – “No Party”’

‘Today, I joined the ranks of unaffiliated voters. I am every bit as conservative as I’ve always been, but I just can’t bring myself to carry the Republican label any longer. 

The other reason I am leaving is the tolerance of bigotry in the GOP. The current leadership lacks the courage to stand up to it – I’m not sure they ever will.

‘I have worked hard to help to create an atmosphere on the right where conservatives can openly support gay Americans and even support same-sex marriage. In that effort, we have won, but there is more work to do to root out the anti-gay and other forms of bigotry in the party.

‘Now I feel huge sense of freedom. I am an independent conservative. That sounds much better than “gay Republican.”’ 

I get chided by those who say one should work from within to change the GOP, but masochism has its limits.  I am glad that LaSalvia has seen the light.

GOProud co-founder Jimmy LaSalvia

GOProud co-founder Jimmy LaSalvia

Why Is the New York Times Promoting "Ex-Gay" Therapy?

I nearly spit up my morning coffee this morning when I saw a ridiculous piece in the New York Times that on its face is supportive of the psychologically tortured and disturbed "ex-gay" crowd and even makes the statement that "thousands of men across the country, often known as “ex-gay,” who believe they have changed their most basic sexual desires through some combination of therapy and prayer." Yes, and I think I am Queen Victoria and that my partner is Prince Albert.  That claim would have the same legitimacy as the claims of the "ex-gay" crowd.  Perhaps the biggest lie in the piece is that it regurgitaes the claim that thousands believe they have "changed" their orientation even though time and time again NONE of the proponents of the witch doctor like "ex-gay" programs have EVER produced names to back up the claims.  That's right, NEVER.  Fortunately, the story does include some coverage of the positions of legitimate medical and mental health experts who say claims of "change" are at best self-delusion.  My advice to the "ex-gays" is to find a different denomination that doesn't embrace ignorance and bigotry and which accepts modern knowledge and stop torturing themselves.  Remaining in an anti-gay religious tradition is nothing more than than a form of self-flagellation and masochism.  Here are some article highlights that look at the truth about these bogus claims:

Ex-gay men are often closeted, fearing ridicule from gay advocates who accuse them of self-deception and, at the same time, fearing rejection by their church communities as tainted oddities. Here in California, their sense of siege grew more intense in September when Gov. Jerry Brown signed a law banning use of widely discredited sexual “conversion therapies” for minors — an assault on their own validity, some ex-gay men feel. 

Signing the measure, Governor Brown repeated the view of the psychiatric establishment and medical groups, saying, “This bill bans nonscientific ‘therapies’ that have driven young people to depression and suicide,” adding that the practices “will now be relegated to the dustbin of quackery.”

Major mental health associations say teenagers who are pushed into therapy by conservative parents may feel guilt and despair when their inner impulses do not change. 

Reparative therapy suffered two other major setbacks this year. In April, a prominent psychiatrist, Dr. Robert L. Spitzer, publicly repudiated as invalid his own 2001 study suggesting that some people could change their sexual orientation; the study had been widely cited by defenders of the therapy.

Then this summer, the ex-gay world was convulsed when Alan Chambers, the president of Exodus International, the largest Christian ministry for people fighting same-sex attraction, said he did not believe anyone could be rid of homosexual desires. 

Critics like Wayne Besen, the executive director of Truth Wins Out, which fights antigay bias, liken such therapy to faith healing, with apparent effects that later fade away.   They also point out that the failures of such therapy are seldom reported. 

S. Marc Breedlove, a neuroscientist and psychologist at Michigan State University, said there was overwhelming evidence that sexual orientation is affected by both biology and environment. Clearly, he said, reparative therapy helps some people alter sexual behavior. But that is far different, he noted, from transforming instinctive sexual desires, something never proved in scientific studies.

Religion has damaged so many lives.  It is sad that these want to be "ex-gays" cannot see that they are being sold a false bill of goods and that they might just as well consult a voodoo practitioner as to enroll in an "ex-gay" program.  In view, proponents of reparative therapy make snake oil merchants look reputable and make Mitt Romney look like an honest person.