The 10 Biggest Homophobes and Transphobes of 2018

Homophobes Dallin H. Oaks, Mary Fallin, and Roger Severino.

As is common as December 31st approaches, many news outlets are looking back for significant events of the past year as well as heroes and villains.  In the last category should be included those who peddle hatred of others, especially LGBT individuals, under the smoke screen of religion or political self-prostitution to haters and hate groups.  A piece in The Advocate looks at some of the worse homophobes and and purveyors of hate towards those who are transgender.  Not surprisingly, the faux "Christian" Alliance Defending Freedom, the Roman Catholic Church, the Mormon Church and Republican politicians and apparatchiks that the prizes as the most hate-filled groups/individuals domestically.  The following are article highlights that look at these hate merchants and religious zealots:

LGBTQ people have made great strides toward equality in the U.S. and around the world, but we still have homophobes and transphobes trying to roll back our progress, and unfortunately some of them are running the country. We of course have had the usual suspects to deal with -- Mike Pence, Tony Perkins, Bryan Fischer, Louie Gohmert, Pat Robertson, and many more -- but here we'll spotlight some of those who particularly made news this year. 

Alliance Defending Freedom  The year's top Phobie Aware goes to the Alliance Defending Freedom, a legal nonprofit that specializes in causes important to the religious right. . . . . The ADF is still fighting for the right to discriminate. It's asked the Supreme Court to take up cases where ADF is trying to end a Pennsylvania school district's transgender-inclusive restroom policy and advocating for a funeral home's right to fire a trans employee. Oh, and it's got another case involving Masterpiece Cakeshop, for a refusal to make a birthday cake that celebrates a trans woman's gender transition. The ADF contends that the state of Colorado is harassing Philllips by expecting him to obey the antidiscrimination law.

Dallin H. Oaks [Mormon Chrch]  It's not news that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, known informally as the Mormon Church, isn't accepting of LGBTQ people, but one of its top leaders, Dallin H. Oaks, took the homophobia and transphobia to new heights this year. “Our knowledge of God’s revealed plan of salvation requires us to oppose many of the current social and legal pressures to retreat from traditional marriage or to make changes that confuse or alter gender or homogenize the differences between men and women,” . . . . Those pressures, he said, come from none other than Satan, who “seeks to confuse gender, to distort marriage, and to discourage childbearing, especially by parents who will raise children in truth.” . . . . There's an epidemic of suicide among LGBTQ youth in the church's home state of Utah, and much of the blame can be placed on the denomination's hatred.

Right-wing Catholics  It has been a banner year for homophobia in the Roman Catholic Church. Pope Francis, who once said “Who am I to judge?” about gay priests, said gay people don’t belong in the clergy. Not that the church has ever been truly accepting of gay clergy, but their presence has been an open secret for eons. With the church rocked by sex abuse scandals, Cardinal Gerhard Müller blamed gays for abuse, even though there’s no correlation between homosexuality and pedophilia.

Roger Severino [Trump Appointee] Roger Severino, director of the Office for Civil Rights at the Department of Health and Human Services, is overseeing the Trump administration's effort to define transgender people “out of existence,” as The New York Times put it in an October story breaking the news of a memo circulating among federal government agencies to legally define gender as something immutable and fixed at birth, as indicated by a person’s genitalia. He's also spearheading HHS's "conscience protection" efforts, aimed at aiding health care workers with religious objections to serving certain patients, which could well result in denial of care to LGBTQ people. Severino has a long history of working for far-right groups and opposing LGBTQ rights. He has opposed marriage equality, defended “ex-gay” therapy, and objected to allowing transgender people to serve in the military.

Mary Fallin and Jeff Colyer [GOP Governors]  As governors of Oklahoma and Kansas, respectively, Mary Fallin and Jeff Colyer signed bills into law that will allow adoption and foster care agencies that provide state-funded services to reject prospective parents who offend the agencies' religious dogma. They could be interfaith couples, single parents, or, yes, same-sex couples or single LGBTQ people. That's discrimination funded with tax dollars. For Fallin, the action was one more notch in a long record of anti-LGBTQ governing.

Texas Republican Party  Whenever the Texas Republican Party approves a platform, it's sure to be anti-LGBTQ. This year's may be its most hateful yet, though. At its biennial convention in June, the party adopted a platform that again endorses “ex-gay” therapy, as it has since 2014, as well as opposing marriage equality and supporting business owners’ right to discriminate against anyone who offends their religious sensibilities. It makes a new call for the state to repeal its hate-crimes law and opposes all efforts to recognize transgender people’s identity. 

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O'Rourke and Castro on Collision Course in Texas

Beto O'Rourke and Julian Castro.

Following up on the theme of the last post, two possible 2020 Democrat contenders are on a collision course in their home state of Texas of all places: Beto O'Rourke and Julian Castro.   Ironically, Castro may have hurt himself by not running against the loathsome Ted Cruz, thereby giving O'Rourke the opening to become a surprising darling of Democrats both within and outside of Texas. Where the contest between the two will go is anyone's guess, but should be interesting to watch.  The goal for Democrats, of course, should be selecting a candidate to defeat Trump and/or Pence if  they avoid indictment or impeachment.  A piece on Politico looks at the coming collision course.  Here are excerpts:

The Democratic Party’s dream of a resurgence in Texas has long run squarely through San Antonio and the Castro brothers — Joaquin, the third-term congressman, and Julián, the city’s ambitious former mayor.

But that was before Beto O’Rourke catapulted himself into the party’s national consciousness this year.

Now, O’Rourke and Julián Castro are both inching toward presidential campaigns, an unlikely bounty for Texas Democrats accustomed to near-irrelevance at the statewide and national levels. O’Rourke and Castro would likely run on different platforms and rely on different donors, limiting the likelihood of direct combat.

But assuming they both run and don’t flame out, the presence of the two Texans in the race would test the allegiances of state Democrats in a way that could be a significant factor in the fight for the nomination. Texas will hold its primary relatively early in the 2020 calendar, timing that will likely make the diverse and delegate-rich state a big prize in a competitive contest.

Until now, the two have operated worlds apart despite their home-state ties. In San Antonio, Castro cultivated a local following while steeping himself in policy and traditional fundraising practices. Five hundred miles and one time zone to the west in El Paso, O’Rourke became an instant sensation with his charismatic, closer-than-expected U.S. Senate run and a national following of small-dollar donors.

“They’re not only from two different parts of Texas, they’re from two different parts of the country,” said Colin Strother, a Texas Democratic strategist who has advised Castro in previous campaigns. “This idea that there’s a finite constituency that they’re going to chop up, I just don’t see it … I see them as two completely different types of candidates.”

Castro and O’Rourke have cast each other as nonfactors in their decisions whether to run. But Castro has moved aggressively to climb out from under O’Rourke’s shadow.

But the uphill climb facing Castro has been exacerbated by O’Rourke’s attention-grabbing run against Republican Sen. Ted Cruz. O’Rourke is now soaring in early 2020 polls, often running behind only Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders, while Castro is barely a blip on the national landscape.

Even in Texas, the last time Castro appeared in a University of Texas/Texas Tribune Poll, when he was still mayor of San Antonio in 2013, a majority of Democrats statewide did not know him well enough to form an opinion of him. In the midst of a supercharged Senate race five years later, O’Rourke’s favorability rating among Texas Democrats hit 93 percent.

Jeff Roe, who was Cruz’s chief strategist, said after the November election that Democrats “don’t have anyone of [O’Rourke’s] caliber on the national stage.”

Castro, on the other hand, is “the Bobby Jindal of the Democrat cycle,” Roe said. “He’s pound cake. He’ll run, he’ll raise like $3.2 million, he’ll be out by August and they’ll recruit him to run against [Republican Sen. John] Cornyn” in 2020.

Castro could hardly have foreseen O’Rourke’s rise. Long viewed by Democratic Party activists and donors as an emerging star in Texas, Castro was a significant surrogate for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential campaign and made her shortlist for vice president, while O’Rourke served in relative anonymity as a backbench member of the House minority.

But in a cruelty of political timing, the Castros themselves may have helped open a door for O’Rourke. Many Democrats were courting Joaquin to run for U.S. Senate, and had he opposed O’Rourke in the primary, his appeal in heavily Latino swaths of the state — areas where O’Rourke struggled — might have stamped out O’Rourke.

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Democrats Are Conflicted in Who They Want to Run in 2020

With the 2018 midterm elections not quite two months behind us, the focus now becomes - other than in Virginia where the entire Virginia General Assembly is up for election in November, 2017 - who will be the Democrat standard bearer in the 2020 presidential election.  The number one criteria needs to be who can defeat Trump if he runs for re-election and hasn't been impeached or criminally indicted. Personally, I know who I don't want: Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, neither of whom, in my view, could beat Trump and garner across the board Democrat support. Both meddled in the Virginia 2017 gubernatorial election and backed a primary choice who would have lost the general election and in the process burned enough bridges to may be unable to carry Virginia in 2020.  USA Today surveyed Democrats on their candidate of choice for 2020 and found a mixed bag with some conflicting views.  Most wanted "someone new."  Here are article highlights:

Democratic and independent voters are crystal clear about the candidate they'd be most excited to see in the 2020 presidential field: Someone entirely new. Oh, and also the most seasoned prospect.

Asking voters their pick for president more than a year before the primaries begin typically doesn't tell you much beyond name recognition. Instead of asking about support, a USA TODAY/Suffolk University Poll tested which candidates now seem intriguing to voters, and who turns them off, in an effort to get clues about the dynamic ahead. 

Landing at the top of the list of 11 options was "someone entirely new" – perhaps a prospect not on the political radar screen yet. Nearly six in 10 of those surveyed – 59 percent – said they would be "excited" about a candidate like that; only 11 percent said they'd prefer that a new face not run. 

That said, close behind was Joe Biden, the opposite of someone entirely new. . . . 53 percent said they would be excited about that, while 24 percent urged him not to run. 

"He has the common touch," said Thomas Maslany, 72, a Democratic retiree from Perkiomenville, Pennsylvania, who worked for the Environmental Protection Agency. He thought Democrats might need to nominate an older white male to defeat President Trump for re-election, although he agreed the party needs to move to a new generation of leaders. "The world's changing so fast."

Catherine O'Connor, 63, an artist and a political independent from Lockport, New York, had an idea how to reconcile those conflicting impulses: nominate Biden for president and choose someone like California Sen. Kamala Harris or Texas Rep. Beto O'Rourke as his running mate.

The 'someone new' versus Joe Biden finding illustrates the generational divide within the Democratic Party dating back to Walter Mondale versus Gary Hart in 1984," said David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk Political Research Center. Mondale won the nomination only to lose to the incumbent Republican president, Ronald Reagan. "The test is which candidate can build on their core 'excitement' and not lose the voters of other Democrats who fall by the wayside."

Thirty percent said they would be excited about O'Rourke, 46, running; just 13 percent said he shouldn't, a net positive of 17 percentage points. He also had room to grow: More than a third of those surveyed, 35 percent, said they had never heard of him. 

Also in positive territory was Harris: 29 percent said they would be excited if the 54-year-old California senator ran; 19 percent said she shouldn't. New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, 49, was seen as "exciting" by 28 percent; 19 percent thought he shouldn't run.

Some better-known candidates were more controversial. Asked about Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, 27 percent were excited about the 69-year-old's possible candidacy but 33 percent were against idea, a net negative of six points. And former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg was an "exciting" possibility for 20 percent, but 32 percent urged the 76-year-old not to try, a net negative of 12 points. He re-registered as a Democrat in October for the first time since leaving the party in 2001.

Voters weren't exactly doting on the presidential contenders who ran in 2016.

For Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, 77, 36 percent would be excited if he tried again. but even more, 41 percent, thought he shouldn't run. Just about everybody knew his name: Only 3 percent didn't know who he was. 

Hillary Clinton, 71, won the popular vote against Trump two years ago, but lost the Electoral College. She had the steepest climb of all: 15 percent would be excited if she ran again – a number swamped by the 70 percent who said she shouldn't. Asked recently if she wants to run again, Clinton said "no" but then added, "Well, I'd like to be president."

Americans' Trust in Honesty, Ethics of Clergy Hits All-Time Low

Clergy honesty: click image to enlarge - source Gallup.

According to a new Gallup Survey, Americans are seemingly belatedly waking up to a reality that should have been obvious long before now: most church clergy are not trustworthy or ethical.  Not surprisingly, the view of Catholic clergy has taken a major hit and are seen as significantly less honest and trustworthy than Protestant clergy in general.  That said, evangelical clergy who have tied themselves to the thoroughly immoral Donald Trump have suffered as well - hence the exodus of young evangelicals who disdain the political partisanship and homophobia that now defines perhaps a majority of evangelical clergy.  Here are some survey highlights which found nurses to be the most honest and trustworthy of any profession:

Americans' view of the honesty and ethics of clergy has fallen to an all-time low in a ranking of different professions released by Gallup.

The Gallup poll, conducted between Dec. 3-12 of 1,025 U.S. adults, found that only 37 percent of respondents had a "very high" or "high” opinion of the honesty and ethical standards of clergy. Forty-three percent of people gave them an average rating, while 15 percent said they had a “low” or “very low” opinion, according to the poll that was released on Dec. 21. 

Gallup noted that the 37 percent "very high" or "high" score for clergy is the lowest since it began asking the question in 1977. The historical high of 67 percent occurred back in 1985, and the score has been dropping below the overall average positive rating of 54 percent since 2009.

"The public's views of the honesty and ethics of the clergy continue to decline after the Catholic Church was rocked again this year by more abuse scandals,” Gallup noted in its observations.

Sexual abuse claims, involving both children and adults, have rocked churches across the U.S., South America and Europe this year, affecting both Protestant and Catholic congregations.

In the Gallup poll, 48 percent of Protestants rated clergy positively, compared to only 31 percent of Catholics.

Nurses, meanwhile, came out on top of the rankings, with 84 percent of respondents rating their honesty and ethical standards as "very high" or "high."

Medical doctors, pharmacists and high school teachers followed near the top of the list, while at the very bottom were telemarketers, car salespeople, and members of Congress.

"One notable change this year is that one-third of Americans now rate the honesty and ethics of journalists more highly, marking a 10-point jump since 2016 to a level not seen in four decades,” Gallup observed.. 

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Christmas Morning Male Beauty

Time for GOP to Fire Trump

One has to wonder how bad and debased things in the White House need to become before Congressional Republicans reach the point of telling Donald Trump "you're fired."  Some have conjectured that this will happen only when the financial interests of the very wealthy and big business become significantly harmed.  With the stock market plunging and trade uncertainties rising, that point may be near at hand.  Add to this the rapid degrading of the United States' position in the world, and a perfect economic storm may be on the horizon - a storm that can be averted by restoring sanity and stability to the White House. I have absolutely no desire to see Mike Pence in the White House - hopefully Mueller will implicate him in Trump's treason with Russia - but something must be done to end the rampant chaos and criminality that define the Trump regime.  A column in the New York Times argues why Republicans need to accept the fact that  Trump needs to be removed, preferably sooner than later.  Here are column excerpts:

Up to now I have not favored removing President Trump from office. I felt strongly that it would be best for the country that he leave the way he came in, through the ballot box. But last week was a watershed moment for me, and I think for many Americans, including some Republicans.

It was the moment when you had to ask whether we really can survive two more years of Trump as president, whether this man and his demented behavior — which will get only worse as the Mueller investigation concludes — are going to destabilize our country, our markets, our key institutions and, by extension, the world. And therefore his removal from office now has to be on the table.

I believe that the only responsible choice for the Republican Party today is an intervention with [Trump] the president that makes clear that if there is not a radical change in how he conducts himself — and I think that is unlikely — the party’s leadership will have no choice but to press for his resignation or join calls for his impeachment.

It has to start with Republicans, given both the numbers needed in the Senate and political reality. Removing this president has to be an act of national unity as much as possible — otherwise it will tear the country apart even more. I know that such an action is very difficult for today’s G.O.P., but the time is long past for it to rise to confront this crisis of American leadership.

Trump’s behavior has become so erratic, his lying so persistent, his willingness to fulfill the basic functions of the presidency — like reading briefing books, consulting government experts before making major changes and appointing a competent staff — so absent, his readiness to accommodate Russia and spurn allies so disturbing and his obsession with himself and his ego over all other considerations so consistent, two more years of him in office could pose a real threat to our nation.

The damage an out-of-control Trump can do goes well beyond our borders. . . . Donald Trump has proved time and again that he knows nothing of the history or importance of this America. That was made starkly clear in Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis’s resignation letter.

Trump gloats at the troubles facing the European Union, urges Britain to exit and leaks that he’d consider quitting NATO. These are institutions that all need to be improved, but not scrapped. If America becomes a predator on all the treaties, multilateral institutions and alliances holding the world together; if America goes from being the world’s anchor of stability to an engine of instability; if America goes from a democracy built on the twin pillars of truth and trust to a country where it is acceptable for the president to attack truth and trust on a daily basis, watch out: Your kids won’t just grow up in a different America. They will grow up in a different world.

But this is not just about the world, it’s about the minimum decorum and stability we expect from our president. If the C.E.O. of any public company in America behaved like Trump has over the past two years — constantly lying, tossing out aides like they were Kleenex, tweeting endlessly like a teenager, ignoring the advice of experts — he or she would have been fired by the board of directors long ago. Should we expect less for our president?

That’s what the financial markets are now asking. For the first two years of the Trump presidency the markets treated his dishonesty and craziness as background noise to all the soaring corporate profits and stocks. But that is no longer the case. Trump has markets worried.

The instability Trump is generating — including his attacks on the chairman of the Federal Reserve — is causing investors to wonder where the economic and geopolitical management will come from as the economy slows down.

We are now left with the B team — all the people who were ready to take the jobs that Trump’s first team either resigned from — because they could not countenance his lying, chaos and ignorance — or were fired from for the same reasons.

I seriously doubt that any of these B-players would have been hired by any other administration. Not only do they not inspire confidence in a crisis, but they are all walking around knowing that Trump would stab every one of them in the back with his Twitter knife, at any moment, if it served him. This makes them even less effective.

If America starts to behave as a selfish, shameless, lying grifter like Trump, you simply cannot imagine how unstable — how disruptive — world markets and geopolitics may become. We cannot afford to find out.

Our Worse Fears Are Being Realized

The gift America most needs.

Anyone who followed Donald Trump's real estate career and public life in general - ask New Yorkers who knew he best - and it should have been a foregone conclusion that the man was unfit for the White House or any public office.  Yet by playing the race card and playing to white fears of loss of privilege, Trump convinced 70,000 voters spread across three states to throw away decency, morality and even common sense and vote for him.  Now, we are seeing the spectacle so many of us feared borne out in the form of a dangerous narcissist in the White House who is creating chaos on literally every front.  Wall Street, with its ominous December stock market plunge has belatedly signaled its fear of a madman in the White House. International relations with long time allies are in chaos as well with Trump giving a nod to dictators and enemies of the United States to do as they wish.  NONE of this should be a surprise to anyone not blinded by racism and hatred towards those who are different.  A column in the Washington Post looks at this realization of responsible Americans' worse fears.  Here are highlights:

When the new year begins next week, President Trump will have an acting chief of staff, an acting secretary of defense, an acting attorney general, an acting EPA administrator, no interior secretary, and no ambassador to the United Nations. The officials originally in all those positions have either been fired or have quit in various measures of disgust or scandal. His former campaign chairman, deputy campaign chairman, national security adviser and personal lawyer have all pleaded guilty to crimes. His campaign, his transition, his foundation and his business are all under investigation. The United States’ allies are horrified at the chaos Trump has brought to our foreign policy. The stock market is experiencing wild swings as investors are gripped with fear over what might be coming and what Trump might do to make it worse — a situation alarming enough that the treasury secretary felt the need to call up the CEOs of major banks to assure them that everything is under control.

And, oh yeah, the government is shut down.  This, my friends, is exactly what we were afraid of when Trump somehow managed to get elected president two years ago. This is what we warned you about.

. . . . here’s what happened over the weekend with regard to the departure of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, widely regarded as the sanest of Trump’s national security team and one of the few original members of Trump’s Cabinet who did not show himself to be incompetent, corrupt, or both. . . . . Mattis, who has watched in dismay as Trump has set about to degrade the alliances that have shaped U.S. foreign policy for the last seven decades.

So Mattis tendered his resignation. . . . Trump decided hastily to remove Mattis in reaction to negative news coverage, according to senior administration officials, one of whom said the president was eager to retaliate against Mattis and show up the widely respected former general.

Nothing says “well-oiled machine” like that distinctly Trumpian combination of paranoia and vindictiveness.

Meanwhile, the government shutdown is expected to last into the new year, a shutdown that is happening because a bunch of Fox News and talk-radio hosts criticized the president for not being tough enough in fighting for his ludicrous border wall. Trump, always deeply insecure and eager to feed his base’s endless rage and desire for conflict, responded quickly to the accusation of weakness. “He spends ever more time in front of a television, often retreating to his residence out of concern that he is being watched too closely,” reports the New York Times.

Two years ago, as we were still trying to wrap our heads around the idea that Trump was actually going to be president of the United States, it was not uncommon to hear the hopeful prediction that things wouldn’t work out as badly as we feared. The weighty responsibilities of the office would turn Trump serious, sober, “presidential.”

That has not occurred. If anything, Trump has shown himself to be even more of a despicable human being than he appeared then, and utterly incapable of growing into the office. He is just as petty, just as impulsive, just as narcissistic, just as dishonest and, perhaps, even more corrupt than we realized.

[I]f you’re a Republican, he has done many things that pleased you, such as cutting taxes for corporations and the wealthy, or slashing regulations that protect workers, consumers, and people who enjoy breathing air and drinking water. If you thrill to the sight of immigrant children being ripped from the arms of their parents, then this presidency has been a joy.

[I]n so many ways, he has shown himself again and again to be not just as bad as we thought, but worse. As as we look forward to the next two years, we must realize that there will be no stability, no settling down, no period of calm. The best we can hope for are brief moments when the lunacy pouring from the White House is more comical than terrifying. But most of the time, they’ll probably be both.

A second column adds this summary:

The chaos all around us is what happens when the nation elects an incompetent, narcissistic, impulsive and amoral man as president. This Christmas, heaven help us all.

It is difficult, at the moment, to fully assess the damage Trump is wreaking. We have never had a president like him, so history is a poor guide. For his racism, we can perhaps look back to Woodrow Wilson; his general unfitness to hold the nation’s highest office recalls the hapless Andrew Johnson. Maybe Andrew Jackson was as impetuous, maybe Richard M. Nixon as venal.

As multiple investigations close in, including the one led by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, Trump will surely lash out. I believe things will get worse before they get better.