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Survey: Acceptance Of LGBTs Declines Among Young

The Stonewall Inn where some say the battle for LGBT
rights officially began.

In what ought to be disturbing news to all in the LGBT community and certainly LGBT rights organizations, a survey shows that for the second year in a row the percentage of Americans accepting of members of the LGBT community declined.  The decline included the younger Americans who heretofore have been more accepting.  The survey did not come to any set conclusion for the decline although references were made to the general normalization of hate and intolerance that has been a hallmark of the Trump/Pence regime and its pro-Christofascist, anti-gay policies. Personally, I believe fault also lies with organizations like Human Rights Campaign ("HRC") and Equality Virginia ("EV") here in Virginia.  In the case of EV, when not shaking down gay and lesbian Virginians for money, burning bridges with top pro-LGBT officeholders, EV's main activities are focused on the transgender community to the seeming exclusion of the rest of the LG and B components of the community. I am not anti-transgender, but other than the general need for non-discrimination laws, the issues of the transgender community are not synonymous with those of gays and lesbians. In an era where many now feel comfortable being open white supremacists, having LGBT rights organizations pretending that they are the same does a disservice to all of the involved groups. LGBTQ Nation looks at the disturbing survey findings:

A new survey shows that young people’s support for LGBTQ people has dropped for the second consecutive year.

The Harris Poll and GLAAD just released the results of their yearly survey in their Accelerating Acceptance report.

The survey was conducted this past January and involved 1970 respondents, including 1754 non-LGBTQ respondents. They were asked about whether they would be comfortable with an LGBTQ person in various situations, like having an LGBTQ doctor, their kid having an LGBTQ teacher, or a family member coming out.

Among non-LGBTQ people, 49% were comfortable in all the situations, the same percentage as last year. Two years ago, though, 53% of non-LGBTQ people were comfortable in all situations, a drop that coincided with the start of the Trump administration.

But the drop was more pronounced among 18- to 34-year-olds. 63% were comfortable in all the situations two years ago, 53% last year, and 45% this year.  Young men’s drop in support was even more dramatic. 62% were comfortable in all the situations two years ago, but now only 35% are. Support for LGBTQ people in each individual situation either stayed the same or dropped since two years ago. 34% of straight people said that they would be uncomfortable if their child learned about LGBTQ people at school. This year, 39% said they would be uncomfortable.

Among 18- to 34-year-olds, 39% said that they were uncomfortable in that situation, up from 27% two years ago. Young adults were 50% more likely to say that they would be uncomfortable if a family member came out this year compared to 2016.

“So it is surprising to see a notable erosion of acceptance for the LGBTQ community, which counters many of the assumptions we make about their values and beliefs. In this toxic age, tolerance – even among youth – now seems to be parsed out.”

“The sharp and quick rise in divisive rhetoric both in politics and in culture is now having a negative influence on younger Americans and coinciding with an alarming pattern of anti-LGBTQ violence and discrimination,” said Sarah Kate Ellis, the president of GLAAD.

“As we commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, LGBTQ people and allies must urgently address today’s cultural crisis by being visible and vigilant.”

New strategies and efforts are needed - as is new leadership at leading LGBT rights organizations, particularly Equality Virginia to which I have ceased all financial support.  I stopped giving to the even more out of touch HRC years ago.

Joe Biden Doesn’t Look So Electable in Person

A column in the New York Times sets out some of my own misgivings about Joe Biden as the potential 2020 Democrat standard bearer.  Part of my concerns comes from remembering Biden's gaffe laden past runs for the the nomination and his seeming inability to ignite true enthusiasm.  Indeed, he reminds me of Bob Dole's ill-fated presidential run from back in 1996 during my days in the Republican Party. Despite a long, positive record, Dole simply never had the ability to spark enthusiasm.  As a result, he lost his election bid. Joe Biden is, to me, the Democratic version of Bob Dole and even faced with a widely loathed opponent in Donald Trump, the enthusiasm gap could be fatal much as it was with Hillary Clinton in 2016.  At this point, I admit, I do not know who the best candidate is to defeat Trump, other than my gut and years in politics suggest that it is not Joe Biden despite the bloviating of talking heads and others.  Here are highlights from the Times column:

On Saturday, Joe Biden was one of 20 presidential candidates to speak at a Planned Parenthood forum in Columbia, S.C., held right next door to the state’s Democratic convention. It was just a couple of weeks after he’d reversed his longtime support for the Hyde Amendment, which bans federal funding for abortion. One of the moderators asked him what he’d say to pro-choice voters who have concerns about his mixed record on the issue.

This was part of his answer: “The fact of the matter is that we’re in a situation where mortality rate for poor women and black women, here in this state, 26.5 percent of the, 24, 25.6 people, who of 100,000 who need, who end up dying as a consequence of birth, it’s absolutely absurd.” (He was referring to South Carolina’s maternal mortality rate, which is 26.5 maternal deaths per 100,000 births.)

Seeing Biden on the stump often feels like watching an actor who can’t quite remember his lines. Even if you don’t support him, it’s hard not to feel anxious on his behalf.

I had the chance to watch Biden campaign three times over the weekend, when almost the entire Democratic field descended on Columbia.

His performance was unnerving. I don’t want Biden to be the nominee for ideological reasons, but polls show him far ahead, and if he’s going to be the Democratic Party’s standard-bearer against Donald Trump, I want him to be a strong one. He didn’t seem strong in South Carolina.

Donald Trump, of course, also speaks in gibberish, but with a bombastic unearned confidence; rather than flailing around for the right figure he makes one up. Biden, by contrast, was just shaky. And while there’s great affection for him on the ground, there’s little excitement. You can see why his campaign has been limiting his public events and why he’s been avoiding the press.

It’s true that ordinary voters don’t seem to care about the gaffes that obsess cable TV commentators. No one I spoke to in Columbia was bothered by Biden waxing nostalgic about his civil relations with segregationist senators; most people hadn’t even heard about it. And his ability to forge personal connections remains impressive.

That’s Biden at his best — undisciplined, but with a big heart. But personal warmth won’t be enough without the ability to inspire masses of people. An ability to draw crowds isn’t everything — a tepid vote counts the same as a passionate one. Biden’s supporters are older than those of other Democrats, which gives his campaign less visible energy but a more reliable voting base. Still, as recent elections have shown, enthusiasm matters. Anyone convinced that Biden is the safe choice should go see him for themselves.

Tuesday Morning Male Beauty

One of my favorites.

Monday Morning Male Beauty

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Jesuits Defy Order from Indianapolis Archbishop to Fire a Gay Teacher

Both the less than saintly Pope John Paul II and his successor, former Hitler youth Pope Benedict XVI stacked bishoprics across the globe with reactionaries who desired to take the Catholic Church backwards in time and keep women subjugated to men and gays stigmatized and marginalized. The Church remains saddled with many of these reactionary bishops and cardinals who seemingly prefer to drive members from the Church than face new scientific and medical knowledge and social enlightenment.  These reactionaries also seek to wage war with the Church's religious orders that do not fall directly under their leadership but instead have their own independent leadership.  One order, the Jesuits, has for centuries been the home of the Church's intellectuals and also the most educated of the Church's religious orders.  Now, this dichotomy within the Church has collided in of all places, Mike Pence's state of Indiana where a Jesuit run high school is defying a reactionary archbishop's order to fire a gay teacher.  NBC News looks at the conflict.  Here are highlights:

A Jesuit-run prep school in Indianapolis is defying a demand by the local archbishop that it fire a veteran teacher who is in a same-sex marriage, prompting the archdiocese to revoke recognition for the school as a Catholic institution.

In a letter to parents, the leaders of the Brebeuf Jesuit Preparatory School said Archbishop Charles Thompson’s “direct insertion into an employment matter of a school governed by a religious order is unprecedented.”

“After long and prayerful consideration, we determined that following the Archdiocese’s directive would not only violate our informed conscience on this particular matter, but also set a concerning precedent for future interference in the school’s operations,” school officials said.

The letter was signed by the school president, the Rev. William Verbryke, and the heads of the board of trustees, W. Patrick Bruen and Daniel M. Lechleiter.

They wrote that for 57 years, school leaders have decided who gets hired.

“Brebeuf Jesuit has respectfully declined the Archdiocese’s insistence and directive that we dismiss a highly capable and qualified teacher due to the teacher being a spouse within a civilly-recognized same-sex marriage,” they said in the letter.

The school leaders reassured parents that their stand “will not change the mission or operations of Brebeuf Jesuit” and insisted that “our identity as a Catholic Jesuit institution remains unchanged.”

“We will continue to offer a rigorous academic program that follows more than 450 years of Jesuit tradition and is committed to expansive and critical thinking, competent and compassionate ethical concern, creative and artistic expression, and excellence grounded in faith and the dignity of the human person,” they wrote.

The Archdiocese of Indianapolis said in a statement that a Catholic school is required to "clearly state in its contracts and ministerial job descriptions that all ministers must convey and be supportive of all teachings of the Catholic Church."

The battle over the gay teacher has been going on for two years.

Brian Paulson, who leads the Society of Jesus Midwest Province, which represents Jesuits in the Midwest, called the archdiocese’s move “disappointing.”

“In the summer of 2017, Brebeuf Jesuit became aware that one of its teachers entered into a civil marriage with a person of the same sex,” Paulson said in a statement. “This fact became publicly known via social media.”  When the archdiocese asked that the teacher’s contract not be renewed, Paulson said the school refused.  “The teacher in question does not teach religion and is a longtime valued employee of the school,” Paulson wrote.

Paulson said they will appeal the archdiocese's decision.

The Rev. James Martin, a Jesuit priest who is one of the leading advocates for LGBT Catholics, called the move by Brebeuf's leadership "courageous."

One of the top private schools in the city, Brebeuf Jesuit serves about 800 students in grades 9-12.

The Catholic Church needs to leave its 12th century dogma on sex and sexuality behind or else, over time, it will find itself a much smaller, Africa centered church.  Kudos to the school leadership for saying "no" to ignorance and bigotry. 

More Sunday Male Beauty

Trump's Betrayal of Gays Is His Betrayal of all of America

Polls indicate that on issue after issue, Donald Trump is out of sync with a majority of Americans. That's one reason why his approval ratings have never gotten out of the low 40% realm - more often they are under 40%.  Indeed, Trump's approval is limited to small factions: right wing evangelical Christians and extreme right Catholics - the so-called Christofascists - white supremacists, and Republicans who according to Gallup surveys comprise only 30% of voters (thus, 89% approval by Republicans equates to only 26.7% of overall voters). The take away, therefore, is that when Trump and the sinister Mike Pence claim that they represent American values, they, in fact, do not. They represent a rump minority of Americans who are at war with modernity, science and knowledge, and who cling to racism and religious superstition. As a result, Trump is at war with a majority of Americans and their values. A column in the New York Times makes the case that the Trump/Pence war against LGBT Americans personifies this betrayal of the beliefs of the majority.  Here are column excerpts:

During the 2016 campaign, he spoke out against a North Carolina law forbidding transgender people to use bathrooms consistent with their gender identity and said that Caitlyn Jenner could use the commode of her choice in Trump Tower.

And then, of course, there was his speech at the Republican National Convention, when he carefully enunciated “L.G.B.T.Q.,” pledged to protect those of us represented by that consonant cluster and, upon hearing applause, added, “I have to say, as a Republican, it is so nice to hear you cheering for what I just said.”

I’m glad he enjoyed it. We L.G.B.T.Q. Americans aren’t enjoying him. Far from protecting us, he and his administration have stranded us, packing federal courts with judges hostile to gay rights, barring transgender Americans from military service and giving a green light to Americans who, citing religious beliefs, don’t want to give us medical care or bake us a cake. When several United States embassies — including the one in Berlin, over which Grenell presides — requested permission to fly the rainbow flag this month in honor of Gay Pride, the State Department said no.

It’s an ugly story, and it pretty much sums up Trump’s approach to governing. His treatment of gay people perfectly reveals the flabbiness of his convictions and his willingness to stand at odds with a majority of Americans if it pleases the smaller number who adore him. He’ll suffer our anger for their ardor. Decency and principle don’t enter into it.

And he is at odds with most of the country, very much so. Take the Trump administration out of the equation and the march toward gay equality continues apace. As gay and transgender Americans prepare to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising on June 28, we inhabit a state of cognitive dissonance, staring at a split screen: insults from the White House on one half of it, positive reinforcement from elsewhere on the other.

Democrats’ embrace of Buttigieg, the first openly gay politician to land in the top tier of presidential candidates, illustrates the trajectory beyond Trump. “As recently as five or 10 years ago, I think, a project like this would have been dismissed out of hand,” Buttigieg told me in a recent interview, referring to his campaign. “It was unsafe for Democrats to support same-sex marriage at the beginning of this same decade that we’re living in now.”

Being gay, Buttigieg said, hasn’t been any impediment to his bid for the White House so far. “It led to there being more interest and attention early on,” he said. “Perhaps the most interesting thing is how often it doesn’t come up — all the interviews in which it’s not mentioned. At this point, it’s safe to say that that’s most of the time.”

I was given an exclusive advance copy of a new report by the Victory Institute, a group that promotes L.G.B.T.Q. candidates. It found that the number of known L.G.B.T.Q. elected officials at the municipal, state and national levels in America rose 24.9 percent, to 698 from 559, over the past year. And while some of that is attributable to more politicians coming out, much is attributable to more being voted into office.

With the congressional elections last November, the number of openly L.G.B.T.Q. members of Congress rose to an all-time high of 10 — eight in the House and two in the Senate — up from seven. That same month Jared Polis in Colorado became the first openly gay person to win a governorship. He told me that his sexual orientation was absolutely not a factor in his race: “There might be some people who care about it, but they wouldn’t be considered swing voters, so they’re not relevant in terms of who you have to win over. It never comes up in terms of scrapping for the votes you need in the middle.”

In Chicago in April, Lori Lightfoot became the first openly gay person to win the mayoralty of one of the country’s three most-populous cities. “The fact that I could run as an out lesbian, married, in an interracial relationship, with a child, would have been unthinkable not that long ago,” she said when I spoke with her recently. “You can’t stop progress. You just can’t. It’s like trying to stop a ball from rolling down a hill.”

While media attention focuses on proposed state legislation to deny rights to L.G.B.T.Q. people, there are probably more examples of bipartisan pushes to protect or expand those rights.

According to Freedom for All Americans, an advocacy group, more than two dozen Republican lawmakers in 15 states recently sponsored legislation to protect gay or transgender people from discrimination. They include the chairman of the Republican Party in Florida and the State Senate majority leader in West Virginia. Republican lawmakers were crucially involved in blocking discriminatory measures proposed in Texas, Tennessee and Georgia, the group said. In South Dakota, where Republicans control both chambers of the Legislature, four different measures to permit discrimination against transgender people were defeated this year.

That reflects Americans’ values more accurately than the Trump administration does. In a Quinnipiac University poll in April, 92 percent of Americans said that employers should not be allowed to fire someone based on his or her “sexual orientation or sexual identity.” When Americans are asked whether a full spectrum of civil rights protections should be extended to L.G.B.T.Q. people, the number falls — but a majority of 53 percent still say yes. And in poll after poll, most Americans say that transgender people should be able to serve in the military, with 70 percent of them indicating support in one survey.

Yet the Trump administration keeps tugging in the opposite direction. Trump has nominated and the Senate has confirmed many jurists with explicit, unabashed hostility to gay and transgender rights, including, just days ago, Matthew Kacsmaryk, who received a lifetime appointment as a United States district judge for the Northern District of Texas.
 The choice of Kacsmaryk is hardly an aberration, said Sharon McGowan, the chief strategy officer and legal director for Lambda Legal, an advocacy group that has been tracking these appointments to the federal bench. “The arc of history may bend toward justice,” she told me, “but history will not be kind to those who are complicit in what has been happening over these past two years.” She meant in the White House, in the cabinet and on Capitol Hill, where a stubbornly retrograde social conservatism holds sway.
 Trump himself continues to murmur words kinder than his deeds, such as his tweet three weeks ago exhorting Americans to “celebrate LGBT Pride Month and recognize the outstanding contributions LGBT people have made.”

But the contributions Trump is focused on are the votes and donations from the so-called religious right, given in gratitude for his opposition to abortion and his anti-gay actions. “Because he doesn’t have the ability to broaden his support, he’s playing to a narrow base, and at the center of that base is this right-wing faction that’s often garbed in religion,” . . . “He’s throwing them any meat he can find.”

On issue after issue it’s like that: He doesn’t act or speak for the majority, but he accomplishes some narrower purpose, and gets away with it partly because gerrymandering, the structure of the Senate and the Electoral College have led to a government out of sync with the governed.

Trump is on the wrong side of history. But he doesn’t care — so long as it’s right for Trump.

The majority of voters need to end the nation's nightmare and vote Trump from office in 2020.  Meanwhile, here in Virginia, we need to vote out Republicans in November, 2019, and give control of the Virginia General Assembly so that Virginia can become a true progressive state. 

Sunday Morning Male Beauty

Hampton Roads Pridefest 2019 - Reflections

Governor Northam addresses Pridefest 2019 in Norfolk.

Some years back I was on the board of directors of Hampton Roads Pride and was involved in putting on Pridefest, so I know what a huge undertaking it is to put on what now has become a massive event.  Yesterday's Pridefest in Town Point Park was over the top with by far the largest crowd ever in the history of the event.   The park was packed from the main stage all the way back to Nauticus. I have not seen any estimates of the crowd size - it's a free event, so there are no ticket sales to help determine the number of attendees - but it had to be 20,000 or even more. The photo above of Governor Ralph Northam addressing the crowd and pledging to push for equality for all Virginians regardless of race, religion, national origin, sexual orientation or gender identity shows part of the vast crowd.  The Governor simply said we are all Virginians and should be fully equal under the law.  Another first was the fact that there were many more vendors that ever before and included recruiting booths for all of the local police departments, the FBI and the CIA.  Trump supporters would likely have an aneurysm. The image below is of a banner at the Newport News Shipbuilding tent - the only company in America that can build our nation's nuclear carriers. 

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Yesterday's event kicked off with the Pride Boat Parade which had the largest number of boats ever - including one entry that had to be close to 100 feet in length.  The husband and I participated aboard the Americn Rover, a large schooner that does harbor cruises. As for the crowd, like the Block Party on Friday night, the crowd was very diverse - every race, old, young - indeed, a record number of children accompanied parents - and every subset of the LGBT community. One straight Democrat politician I know stated he was nothing less than amazed by the crowd sizes and the happy, laid back vibe of the crowd.   Pride events continue today in Virginia Beach at the Neptune Park area of the resort strip.  Things have changed radically since my first Pride in 2002 when the event involved perhaps 200-300 participants. Despite the efforts of the Trump/Pence regime and its Christofascist allies, we are NOT going backward in time. The fight will continue. 

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The Spirit of Norfolk flying the rainbow flag with the old Naval Hospital in the background.