Republican theocrats in Houston managed to overturn that city’s human rights law by lying about it and scaring people with constant propaganda about mythological “men in dresses” waiting to attack little girls in women’s public toilets. The fact that’s never actually happened anywhere, didn't stop them from using the lie, anyway. It also allowed them to ignore the fact that asking transpeople to use the toilets labelled for their so-called “biological gender” is pathetically—even pathologically—stupid (it's REALLY stupid).
Extremist rightwing religious professional anti-gay activists in Indiana have filed suit to overturn every LGBT protection in that state, including the bill the legislature passed—full of loopholes and exceptions for religion—to end the boycott the state was facing when it legalised discrimination against LGBT people. The professional activists are already repeating the lie about scary “men in dresses” preying on young girls in the toilets.
Now we get word that distant third place presidential candidate Marco Rubio said on national television that he has a plan to reverse marriage equality in the USA by nominating extremist justices to the US Supreme Court. Rubio has a long history of anti-gay bigotry, and he’s actually been talking about overturning marriage equality and anti-discrimination protection for trans people for awhile now. No one’s noticed because of the freak-out over Trump’s call to ban all Muslims from entering the USA.
Marco Rubio is a moron, as I so often point out, with absolutely no understanding of the US Constitution or what it means. He’s also a liar. In the TV interview, he claimed, “I will appoint Supreme Court justices that will interpret the Constitution as originally constructed,” but that’s obviously a lie: He’s not going to have them interpret the Second Amendment as applying only to flintlock muskets, is he? No, he only wants to stop the things he hates, like equality for LGBT people. Rubio’s slogan is “A New American Century”. Now we know he's actually referring to the nineteenth.
Canadian-born Rafael "Ted" Cruz has also promised to nominate only far-right extremist Supreme Court Justices, and for the exact same reason: To overturn marriage equality, as well as Roe v. Wade. Of course, Cruz is also an anti-gay bigot, too.
While Cruz and Rubio are clearly anti-gay bigots, that hardly makes them unique: ALL of the Republican presidential candidates oppose marriage equality, and all but Pataki also at least to some extent oppose any laws that protect the civil and human rights of LGBT people. Many of the candidates are stridently anti-gay.
There is, however, the possibility that they’re all crass liars, merely pandering the most extreme parts of the Republican Party’s base, because those are the people who take part in the party’s presidential selection process. It’s certainly true that conservatives have spent a lot of time coming up with excuses justifying discrimination against LGBT people, so any Republican candidate is on solid ground embracing the rhetoric.
But, why? None of them can practice open and consistent anti-gay bigotry during the primary campaign and then pretend it never happened if they get the nomination! No voter is that stupid, and in the Internet Age, everything is forever. Apart from the fact that Americans overwhelmingly support marriage equality, thousands and thousands of same-gender couples have been married—do the Republicans really want to suggest that forcibly divorcing those couples is a good idea?!
The anti-gay extremism of Republican politicians is nothing new, of course, but the brazenness of it in the face of an America that is moving on is somewhat surprising.
So, I end where I began: What’s wrong with these people? Are there no adults left in the Republican Party?
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