Are First Amendment Rights Now At Risk?

Throughout his campaign Donald Trump attacked the media - usually for reporting the truth about him.  Moreover, he made pronouncements about changing the libel laws to stifle critics.  On the freedom of religion front, he has pledged to sign federal legislation granting special rights to Christian extremists who would be permitted to discriminate at will and trample on the religious freedom rights of others.  Some are saying that they hope Trump's calm appearance on 60 Minutes last night shows that he is "making a pivot" toward normal, acceptable behavior.  But how does one trust a man who flip flops constantly and seems to say whatever he sees as expedient at any moment in time.  And then there is the reality of the extremists being give positions in Trump's transition team and thereafter in his administration. Don't actions speak louder than words?  A column in the Washington Post stresses the need for vigilance and opposition to whatever erosion of civil rights may be in the offing.  Here are highlights:

What really makes America great?

It’s the meaning of 45 words found in the Bill of Rights. Here they are, the entire First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

Everything we have — everything that makes us unlike any other nation — flows from those words and the protections they offer for free expression.

Donald Trump’s presidency is very likely to threaten those First Amendment rights.

If they are damaged or removed, we’ll be like a lot of unenviable places.

“Freedom of speech is a rare thing, after all. It’s one of the big differences between the United States and a place like Cuba,” wrote John Daniel Davidson last March in the Federalist. “Cuba has no freedom of the press — or rule of law. Libel is whatever the regime says it is.”

These are rights that allow us to march in the streets, to worship freely, to publish tough stories about the government.

Trump has made it clear that he has no intention of protecting or defending those rights. He has said repeatedly that he wants to change the laws that allow the press to publish news — however imperfectly — without fear of punishment.

He has called journalists “scum” and encouraged his followers to abuse and hate them. He would like to see his political opponent locked up.

Nothing but campaign rhetoric? Clean slate time? No way. . . . . It’s already happening. Trump barred reporters from his first official act as president-elect — his visit to the White House. Then, in a tweet, he blamed the media for “inciting” street protests, when there was no evidence of that.

Meanwhile, Corey Lewandowski, who carried out Trump’s press blacklist and reportedly roughed up a female reporter, was preparing for a possible role in the Trump administration. And Steve Bannon, chairman of the alt-right Breitbart News, was named chief strategist on Sunday.

“We’re facing a moment that threatens equal protection, due process, free expression, democracy — not just press freedom,” wrote Brian Beutler in the New Republic. “It’s not a drill.”

Americans should be confronted, he said, with whether they “really want a state-controlled Ministry of Information under the thinly veiled guise of a Pravda-like press.”

Indeed, in countries where the government controls the press, and which lack other speech protections, journalists are jailed, even killed, as they try to do their work. Citizens are afraid to express their views publicly or to assemble. Until now, the United States has been a beacon for them.

Look the situation in the eye; know how bad it is. That’s the pessimism of the intellect.

As for the optimism-of-the-will part? For journalists, it’s writing and reporting aggressively and fearlessly, and being willing to fight for access. For citizens, it’s being well-informed, including subscribing to newspapers and supporting the best journalism. It’s helping to debunk and call out fake news. It’s donating to, or getting involved with, civil rights and media rights organizations. And it’s backing public officials committed to protecting free expression.

Americans certainly shouldn’t move to Canada, but they should heed the words of the Canadian songwriter Joni Mitchell: “Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone?”

We’ve still got our precious First Amendment rights. Now it’s time — high time — to protect them from the fire.

A White Nationalist Anti-Semite Will Be Trump's Senior Counselor

While Donald Trump temporarily played nice with the LGBT community during a 60 Minutes interview by saying that he is "fine" with marriage equality because "it was already settled," he said nothing about his promise to sign a "First Amendment Defense Act" already pending in Congress that would exempt Christofascists from obeying non-discrimination laws if motivated by their religious beliefs.  He also admonished protesters in various cities to "stop it" but said nothing to condemn the threats and intimidating acts being done by his supporters against minority groups and Clinton supporters. (I blocked four nasty comments to posts on this blog from a aggressive Trumpkin.)   And for further proof that we are headed down an ugly road, today it was confirmed that Trump has name alt-right provocateur Steve Bannon as his senior White House counselor.  For those not aware of it, Bannon supports an alt-right, white nationalist agenda and is an anti-Semite based on various published reports.  Media Matters looks at the development.  Here are highlights:

President-elect Donald Trump’s first White House hire tells you everything you need to know about his commitment to his campaign’s bigoted message. Stephen Bannon, an anti-Semite who ran the white nationalist “alt-right” website Breitbart News before taking a leave of absence to become the Trump campaign CEO, will be Trump’s chief strategist and senior counselor.

On November 13, Trump released a statement announcing Bannon’s hiring. The same statement noted that Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus would become Trump’s chief of staff. While White House chief of staff is typically the most senior position in the White House, the press release named Bannon first and described the two as “equal partners” in the Trump administration.

Bannon has been a key figure in leveraging this bigotry to aid Trump’s rise to power. Bannon bragged during the Republican Convention to nominate Trump that Breitbart News had become home to the “alt-right” -- which is just a racist code word for white nationalists. Under Bannon’s leadership, Breitbart News has featured racism, misogyny, anti-Semitism, and anti-LGBT rhetoric. The site recently made a “noticeable shift toward embracing ideas on the extremist fringe of the conservative right. Racist ideas. Anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant ideas -- all key tenets making up an emerging racist ideology known as the ‘Alt-Right’” according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. Before he died, Andrew Breitbart himself reportedly called Bannon “the Leni Riefenstahl of the tea party movement.”

Bannon’s Breitbart News especially has come under fire for its rampant anti-Semitism. . . . As CNN’s Jake Tapper noted on Twitter after today’s announcement, Bannon’s ex-wife swore in court that “he said he doesn’t like Jews” and didn’t want his children to go to school with Jews. Indeed, Esquire politics contributor Charles Pierce even compared Bannon with David Duke.

As note before, it may not be easy for them, but many of those who voted for Trump need to take a good look at what they have helped set in motion. Like it or not, they own what is happening because of their vote. They cannot duck responsibility.  They are just as responsible as Trump because them put him in the position to mainstream hate and extremism. 

Monday Morning Male Beauty - Pt 1

Sunday Male Beauty - Pt 2

Did Russia Just Install Trump As President of the USA?

This post follows up on previous ones and links to a piece in Newsweek written by an expert cyber security research and asks the disturbing question: did Vladimir Putin just install Donald Trump to the presidency?  It's a question that one would think more would be investigating, yet most of the media seems blind to the possible significance.    America's allies around the world must be mystified by the fact that nothing is being done to further investigate and address this concern.   Here are article highlights:

From Iran to Chile, covert CIA-backed operations were responsible for installing leaders friendly to the U.S. in countries around the world in an attempt to gain supremacy over the then-Soviet Union during the Cold War. Russia seems to have taken a page from the U.S. playbook and one upped it, as it may have significantly contributed to the election of Donald Trump as the next president of the United States.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has been vocal in his support of Trump, calling him the “absolute leader in the presidential race” in a December 2015 news conference. Many of Trump’s positions—including his expressions of admiration for Putin and his July 2016 comments that he “would be looking at” recognizing Crimea as Russian territory and lifting sanctions—have curried the favor of the Russian leader.

The KGB mastered the use of propaganda during the Cold War, and its successor the FSB has become adept at using these same tactics in the digital realm. Russia regularly makes use of “cyber proxies,” or hacker groups that act with some level of state sponsorship, for its information operations. The proxy group CyberBerkut, for instance, typically claims to have hacked a site and then disseminates the stolen information (generally a mix of fact and fiction that supports the Russian narrative in Ukraine and elsewhere) via a Kremlin-backed Twitter and social media army.

What is clear is that in a close race in which—despite losing in the electoral college, Clinton appears to have won the popular vote at 48 to 47 percent at the time of publication—the information leaked in the emails was a serious disadvantage to Clinton and may have been the deciding factor in putting Trump over the top.

Russia’s role in the election of Trump is significant because, at a time in which the relationship between the U.S. and Russia has been at its most strained since the end of the Cold War over Russia’s annexation of Crimea and other issues, Moscow has helped ensure that the only candidate that will be friendly to Russia has gained office. While this may have the advantage of making the outbreak of outright hostilities between the U.S. and Russia less likely, it also means that the future U.S. president now owes a debt of gratitude to Russia, once the principal adversary of the U.S.

This may make Trump even more conciliatory to a country whose illegal occupation of Crimea has drawn the widespread condemnation of the international community. It also means that Russia, buoyed by its successful use of cyber theft and propaganda in order to install its supporters in key political roles, is likely to further ramp up its use of cyber means to influence elections, both in the U.S. and around the world.

I have zero trust in Mr. Trump and based on interactions with some of his outspoken supporters, they are ready and waiting to become modern day brown shirts who want to quash any opposition or criticism of their new Fuhrer.  All I can say about Trump is #NotMyPresident.

Why Is the Media Ignoring Wikileaks' and Russia's Aid to Trump?

One of the many factors that I find so distressing about Donald Trump's election victory is the manner in which the mainstream media basically ignored a frightening story: the effort of Russia and Putin's apparent puppet, Wikileaks' Julian Assange, to make sure Trump was elected.  While constantly reporting on Hillary Clinton's e-mail "scandal," this much more significant story was for the most part ignored.  Rather than engaging in investigative reporting and informing the American public of this highly unusual situation - can you imaging how the media would have acted if Hillary Clinton had been conspiring with Putin? - Trump's lies and denials were docilely accepted and the media moved on to other GOP manufactured scandals and memes.  Two pieces are worth a full read. The first is in Huffington Post and looks at the evidence of Trump/Russia ties ignored by the pro-Trump FBI.  The second, in The Hill, asks why this media silence has been allowed.  First, these highlights from Huffington Post:

President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden are reviewing the Democratic Coalition’s investigative report highlighting 10 “clear links” that the FBI failed to investigate about our President-elect’s business ties to Russia, and to the Putin regime.

It’s named “The Dworkin Report.”

“The FBI missed at least 10 key connections between President-elect Trump and Russia when they conducted their investigation and concluded that our President-elect had no links to the country,” said Scott Dworkin, Senior Advisor to the Democratic Coalition and author of the report. “It is imperative that the American people be made aware of this information.”

The Dworkin Report shows that Donald Trump has incorporated almost 250 registered businesses in Russia.

This hard evidence directly contradicts Trump’s prior statements about having no business ties to Russia over the summer.

Additionally, the evidence shows that Trump has travelled to Russia dating back to 1987, before the end of the Soviet Union.

In particular, a visit in 2010 included a tour of St. Petersburg’s Hermitage Museum led by a Russian government official of sufficient ranking, that he earned a personal photo and award from Vladimir Putin earlier this year.

The Democratic Coalition also revealed a 2013 video recorded interview with Donald Trump to MSNBC’s Thomas A. Roberts - which he has confirmed as authentic - where he claimed twice to have a relationship with Putin.

Also in 2012, Donald Trump Jr. told Latvian interviewers in a video recorded interview, that he had been to Russia many times and that the Trump Organization has a significant business there.

The Dworkin Report was also shared with Democratic Congressional leaders Senator Harry Reid, Senator Dianne Feinstein, Senator Patrick Leahy, Senator Elizabeth Warren, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, and Congressman Keith Ellison on Thursday evening.

Russian government officials told the New York Times that they had direct contact with Trump’s closest allies this week, after polls closed.

“I’m surprised that - if not shocked - that the FBI claims to have found no “clear link” of Trump’s Russian ties when it’s right in front of us and stretches back decades,” said Dworkin about the federal agency’s investigation exclusively in a telephone interview, “You can learn more about Trump’s Russian ties from Google, than you can from the FBI’s public purported investigation.”

Then there are these highlights from The Hill:

In the excitement — some might say panic — surrounding Donald Trump's upset victory, many people are forgetting what helped propel him there.

In addition to an Electoral College system that Trump had previously criticized, an inept FBI, and a poorly executed campaign by the Democrats, there was, of course, Julian Assange and WikiLeaks.

the television news media is somehow not obsessed with the hacking of emails and the threats against our cybersecurity.

Think about this: Here we have an agency bent on anarchy, fueled by Russian hackers who are very possibly supported by the Russian government, and the story is getting hardly any coverage whatsoever.

As reported in The Washington Post, Trump and a number of his surrogates have had extensive business dealings in Russia. In 2007, Trump said that "Russia is one of the hottest places in the world for investment." His son, Donald Trump Jr., told a real estate conference in 2008 that "Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets," adding, "we see a lot of money pouring in from Russia."

Trump's former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, also had extensive ties to Russia through his work in Ukraine. A recently unearthed ledger found his name listed alongside large cash payments.

And, of course, Assange, that anti-Clinton cyber-terrorist who may have been Trump's second-best ally (after FBI Director James Comey), had his own Russian TV show not too long ago.

Meanwhile, Interfax is reporting that the Russian deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, has stated that the Russian government was in contact with the Trump campaign throughout the election.

And so we have a story here that plays like a James Bond movie — Russian oligarchs; a smart, but immoral anarchist bent on destroying the U.S. government in Assange; a president-elect with suspicious business ties; Russian hackers; and a Russian dictator who literally even looks like a Bond villain.

Yet, there's no massive news story here?  Why not?

Why It is Important to Oppose Trumpism

With hate crimes and acts of intimidation escalating - all, of course with no denunciation of such conduct from Donald trump or Mike Pence - one can certainly feel overwhelmed, especially if one falls within one of the favored targets of Trump's frightening base of Christofascists and white supremacists.  But that doesn't mean that we can crawl into a fetal position and try to deny the reality that something terrible has happened to America.  Rather, if one is a true American patriot, it is now time to step up resistance and do all possible to stop the parade of horribles that Trump and the Congressional Republicans have planned for the nation.   A column in the New York Times underscores the need to rally and resist non-stop.  Here are highlights: 

This is a very dangerous man, our next president. Dangerous in his certitude about what he doesn’t know. Dangerous in his ignorance of history, his antipathy toward reading, his inability to sort fact from fiction. The last man to play things by the gut while in control of the world’s most powerful military left a mortal mess.

But welcome, for now, President-elect Donald Trump. It feels, in much of the nation, like the death of a loved one — the sudden, unexpected kind. I haven’t felt this way since the nuns told our second-grade class that John F. Kennedy had been assassinated. Still, grief is an emotion that has little power in politics.

A majority — well, not from the popular vote, which Hillary Clinton won — chose radical change over reasoned predictability. They’re going to get plenty of change, much of it chaotic and cruel. Those who think Trump can be contained, or trained by seasoned K Street hacks to act reasonable, are deluding themselves. He’ll do it his way.

The Republicans will control everything, including the Supreme Court. Washington is theirs, with minimal checks and balances. And if the forgotten, the undereducated, the Rust Belt survivors think they are going to see a renaissance of their communities, consider this headline from Yahoo Finance on the day after the election: “Trump win is a ‘grand slam’ for Wall Street Bankers.” He will not betray his class.

But resistance is not futile. Within the durable strength of the Constitution are many options — peaceful, legal, effective countermoves, not the burn-it-all down schemes of the Trumpsters, had Clinton won. One question is existential: Can the world survive the 45th American president?

When he looks the other way while Russia takes a small country, we can remind him that the United States signed a treaty with war-broken European allies that cannot be dismissed by fiat. When he orders the generals to torture suspects, kill family members of suspected terrorists, they can cite Geneva Conventions — something the generals know much more about than Trump.

When Trump takes away people’s health care, when he tries to reinstate a system that was not, in fact, fabulous for those with pre-existing conditions, he will find a constituency of people who are one medical bill from bankruptcy. They will have to shout to be heard above the lobbyists, but they won’t go away quietly.

When Trump tries to ignore the provisions of a global accord to curb climate change, and charts a path for the United States as a rogue nation, the resistance will come from the millions of young Americans who found a voice in old Bernie Sanders. They will be similarly roused when he attempts to let the despoilers have their way on public land. Millennials will learn the hard way that failure to turn out in sufficient numbers at election time could cost their children a habitable planet.

The strongest resistance should come from the white working class; they will soon find out that Trump will treat them the same way he treated the suckers who signed up for his fraudulent university. When steel mills fail to return to Youngstown, or when new trade deals produce no more magic than the old ones, these economic exiles will wonder how they got betrayed. Look to the euphoria of soon-to-be deregulated Wall Street bankers for your explanation.

Finally, all of us in the American family should never trust anyone from the pollster industrial complex, including those at my own newspaper. 

Sunday Morning Male Beauty - Pt 1

Don't Tell People Not to Be Alarmed by Trump/Pence

As noted in the prior post, the weekend has been difficult as the husband and I try to continue relationships with "friends" who voted for Donald Trump.  Among the things we have been told is that none of the things Trump pledge to do to win the Christofascist vote will happen.  We have also been told by individuals that "they've got our back."  Of course, all of those making such statements are white, heterosexual Christians who have no clue as to what it is like to be gay and to know what it is like to face open animus.  I take no comfort in any of these platitudes and attempts to assuage the speakers' own uneasiness that just maybe they should have done their homework and that perhaps they may have made a horrific mistake.  A piece the Times of Israel makes the case that I and others may not be over reacting or being melodramatic.  And even if we are, no one should be telling us to "get over it" and "move on."  Better to prepare for the worse and hope for the best than to stick one's head in the sand.  Here are article excerpts:

Georg [my grandfather] was Jewish. Elsa [my grandmother] was half-Jewish. The family was not religious in the slightest; they were fully assimilated to the cultural life of the glittering Austrian capital.

When Hitler came in, my grandfather shook his head. “There have always been anti-Semites,” he said. “We’ll stay quiet, and things will get better.”

Georg was an optimist. Hitler was just another colorful rabble-rousing politician. Things would settle down.

Elsa knew better. She knew what was coming, even if she couldn’t fully name it. Within a few weeks of Hitler’s takeover she was working to get the family out of the country. She tried contacts in the US, New Zealand, France, and even India. They all came to naught — until she learned of a special program in the UK that would allow Jewish doctors and engineers to emigrate with their families.

Georg didn’t want to go. Elsa told him she was taking my father (then 3) and my aunt (then 6) and going, and he could stay behind and look for another wife if he liked. My grandfather, protesting all the way that my grandmother was overreacting and having delusions, reluctantly sold his [medical] practice.

My family settled in England, first near Manchester and later in rural Oxfordshire. As you might guess, nearly all the rest of my father’s extended family perished in the Holocaust.

My grandmother’s fear saved the family. My grandfather’s sweet confidence and optimism would have killed them.

So when you tell me, a noted soother and calmer of others, that I should tell Muslims and women and people of color that they have nothing to fear from Trump, I think that perhaps you want me to be like my grandfather.

People are scared. They have every right to be. Trump’s words speak of an intent to violate fundamental liberties; Trump’s words inveigle violence; Trump’s words abrogate a social contract that says that we should quietly respect election results.

Perhaps Trump will be a better leader than we thought. The burden is entirely on him to prove that his campaign was an act, and that he and his followers pose no threat to women and minorities. Until then, suspicion. Until then, fear. Until then, anger.  Until then, I’m thinking like Elsa, not Georg.

The Trump/Pence Assault on LGBT Equality Has Already Begun

This weekend has been the beginning of what for LGBT Americans - or at least the 86% who realized the threat Donald Trump and Mike Pence pose to them and voted for Hillary Clinton - will likely be an ongoing travail: socializing with "friends" who voted for Trump/Pence and in the process began what most of us believe will be a huge assault on LGBT rights and equality under the law.   Personally, it has been difficult and while I have been able to go through the motions of feigned normalcy, the reality is that my relationships with many people will never, ever be the same.  I will never trust them as I once did now that they have shown themselves to be a Judas (whether knowingly or not) and the warm of the relations has cooled.  Should my and the fears of others in the LGBT community come true, I can only wonder if the relationships can survive.  Candidly, I suspect not.   Platitudes of "let's hope for the best" and/or "I don't feel that way about gays" simply not make up for the harm done and danger before us.  As a piece in the Huffington Post lats out, the truth is that the Trump/Pence assault on LGBT citizens and their rights under the law have already begun, much to the jubilation of those I call the Christofascists.  Here are article highlights: 

I’m not going to sugar-coat this at all. We are in for a full-blown assault on LGBTQ rights the likes of which many, particularly younger LGBTQ people, have not seen. Progress will most certainly be halted completely, likely rolled back. And it’s already underway.

First, forget any of your thinking that Donald Trump is from New York City, probably has gay friends, sent Elton John a congratulatory note on his civil union in 2005, used the term “LGBTQ” (in pitting gays against Muslims at the Republican National Convention, when he vowed only to protect us from a “hateful foreign ideology”) or any other superficial things you may have read or heard.

Ronald Reagan was from Hollywood, and he, too, had many gay friends, including legendary actor Rock Hudson. Reagan even came out against an anti-gay state initiative while he was governor of California. But once Reagan made his pact with the religious right in his run for the presidency ― for him it was Jerry Falwell, Sr., for Trump it’s Jerry Falwell Jr.― he had to bow to them if he wanted to get re-elected. 

That was then, and this is now: Earlier in the year, before Mike Pence was chosen as Donald Trump’s running mate, former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, using Trump’s analogy of running a business to explain how he’d run the country, told HuffPost’s Howard Fineman that the vice president of the Trump administration would really be the “CEO” or “COO” ― or, the president of the company ― while Trump would be more like the “chairman of the board.”

That person turned out to be Pence, and, before and after the election, there’s been some analysis and commentary suggesting that Mike Pence could be “the most powerful vice president ever.” And now, just days after the election, his power has increased tenfold as he is replacing Chris Christie as chairman of Trump’s transition team, filling all the major positions in the incoming Trump administration.

Mike Pence is perhaps one of the most anti-LGBTQ political crusaders to serve in Congress and as governor of a state. Long before he signed the draconian anti-LGBTQ “religious liberty” law in Indiana last year, he supported “conversion therapy” as a member of Congress, and later, as a columnist and radio host, he gave a speech in which he said that marriage equality would lead to “societal collapse,” and called homosexuality “a choice.” Stopping gays from marrying wasn’t biased, he said, but was rather about compelling “God’s idea.”

And right on cue, already appointed to lead domestic policy on the transition team is Ken Blackwell, formerly the Ohio secretary of state. Blackwell compared homosexuality to arson and kleptomania, which he called “compulsions.” In an interview with me at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul in 2004, he explained:

“Well, the fact is, you can choose to restrain that compulsion. And so I think in fact you don’t have to give in to the compulsion to be homosexual. I think that’s been proven in case after case after case...I believe homosexuality is a compulsion that can be contained, repressed or changed…[T]hat is what I’m saying in the clearest of terms.”

Expect each of these individuals and more bigots to have prominent positions in the Trump administration.

As I‘ve written over and over again throughout the election campaign ― as the media had bizarrely and irresponsibly portrayed Trump as “more accepting on gay issues” ― Trump met with religious extremists, and made promises to them. He promised he would put justices on the Supreme Court who would overturn marriage equality (and the list of 20 candidates he has offered, certainly fit the bill), which he’s consistently opposed himself since 2000. He promised that he would sign the First Amendment Defense Act (FADA), which would allow for discrimination against LGBT people by government employees and others.

It may or may not be difficult or unrealistic to overturn marriage equality over time, though the anti-LGBTQ National Organization for Marriage has sent Trump a plan. But by passing bills like FADA ― already introduced in the Republican-controlled Senate and House ― and others yet to come, gay marriage can be made into a kind of second-class marriage.

Trump has said he would overturn what he saw as President Obama’s unconstitutional executive orders, and those could include Obama’s orders on LGBTQ rights, such as banning employment discrimination among federal contractors.

Mike Pence, as Dominic Holden at Buzzfeed points out, has already said that he and Trump plan to withdraw federal guidance to the states issued by the Obama administration protecting transgender students . . . .

If Trump treats the presidency the same way he treated the GOP convention in Cleveland, he’ll make gestures ― like giving Thiel a role in his administration or using the term “LGBTQ”― that will feed the media notion that he is somewhat pro-LGBTQ, while giving the nuts and bolts of rolling back or halting LGBTQ rights to others. While Trump was onstage at the convention using the term “LGBTQ” (and had used Thiel’s speaking slot as a bit of window dressing too), the platform committee of the RNC had just hammered out the most anti-LGBT platform in history . . . .  Tony Perkins, head of the anti-LGBTQ Family Research Council, told me at the RNC that he was “very happy” with the platform, which, as a member of the committee, he made sure included the promotion of “conversion therapy.”

[W]hite evangelicals did turn out in huge numbers to vote for him on Tuesday ― comparable to or greater than every other GOP presidential candidate in recent years. He will need them if he wants to get re-elected, and that means he’ll have to give them some big things now. And evangelical leaders told The New York Times this week they expect him to deliver: 

[W]ith Gov. Mike Pence of Indiana, an evangelical with a record of legislating against abortion and same-sex marriage, as vice president, Christian leaders say they feel reassured they will have access to the White House and a seat at the table. “I am confident he will do as president what he said he would do as a candidate,” said Ralph Reed, chairman of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, who helped mobilize Christian voters for Mr. Trump.

If Trump is thus as hands-off on LGBT issues as president as he was at the RNC, letting people like Pence ― again, possibly the most powerful vice president ever ― get his way, along with people like Carson, Blackwell, Gingrich and likely many others, you can bet that the assault on LGBTQ rights is already underway. It’s only a matter of time before we know the full magnitude. 

So I continue to say to "friends"  that I will not" get over" the election, that I will not "move on," and that they need to understand that I have very real reasons to never fully trust them again.  Friends do not vote for someone who has pledge to take away the rights of those they claim to care about.