The terror attack in Orlando is encouraging gay Americans to give Donald Trump a second look, so the LGBT establishment is trying to divert its eyes to the political theater in North Carolina where Trump is being portrayed as Rick Santorum blocking transgender people at the bathroom door.
The excuse for this preposterous theater is that Trump says the state’s voters have the right to balance their own disputes over bathroom privacy, the two sexes and accommodations for transgender people’s sometimes-indeterminate sexuality.
“Well, I’m going with the state,” Trump told the Raleigh News & Observer in discussing HB2. “They know what’s going on, they see what’s happening, and, generally speaking, I’m with the state on things like this. I’ve spoken with your governor, I’ve spoken with a lot of different people, and I’m going with the state.”
Trump’s LGBT critics pounced like a posse at a Lady Gaga concert. Their claim? Trump sold-out the LGBT community by turning his back on the transgender community.
“Let’s be clear, Donald Trump just gave one of the nation’s worst laws for LGBTQ people a full-throated endorsement,” the Human Right’s Campaign JoDee Winterhof said in a statement. “By buddying up with Governor Pat McCrory on the deeply discriminatory HB 2, Donald Trump is unabashedly embracing a dangerous law that takes away the civil rights of LGBTQ people and has cost North Carolina not only its reputation but millions of dollars in economic losses.”
The HB2 law, also known as the privacy and security act, says everyone’s sexual privacy should be protected by requiring men and women to use the public bathrooms designated for their sex. The law also accommodates transgender people because state law allows people to change their legal sex once they take medical procedures that clearly show which side of the sex and gender fence they’d rather stand. That state solution — although imperfect — is a better and fairer fix than a one-size-fits-all policy set by lobbyists and party hacks in Washington D.C.
Though LGBT activists are loathe to admit it, the plight of transgender Americans are starkly different from lesbian and gay Americans.
In April, 60 Minutes did a segment detailing the struggle of Schuyler Bailar. Bailar is a student athlete who won a scholarship to Harvard’s female swim team. The only problem, Bailar was a female who identified as male. The feature detailed how Bailar had “top” surgery – removing the breasts – and was able to transfer his scholarship to the male swim team. It was a story of acceptance and bravery. But towards the end Lesley Stahl asked one question to Bailar, who admitted he still had female sex organs. Would Bailar rule out pregnancy? No, said this female who wants to be accepted as male.
This answer highlights a major hurdle for the LGBT community. Most Americans accept that Adam can marry Steve and adopt a child, and do unenthusiastically accept Eve deciding he wants to become Steve — but they don”t want people making a mockery of civic rules by using the transgender idea of “gender identity” to casually flip their declared sex from day to day.
Eve can persuade Americans to let her become Steve in law and society — but Eve can’t flip back to Steve whenever it suits her, or him, or her or him. She doesn’t get to decide whether to use the men or women’s shower rooms today, or run in the women’s athletic race next month, or wear a skirt to the board meeting on Tuesday and a suit at the sales meeting on Wednesday, or be treated as a man but also a pregnant woman.
That’s because Americans want the power to preserve or modify their male-or-female sex rules — because the vast majority of women and men want their state and local civic rules to accommodate their distinct, complementary and equal preferences. Some states – California, New York and Washington, for example — will subordinate male and female sexual differences to transgender rights, other states will find ways to accommodate transgenders without sweeping away different-and-complementary rules or men and women. Polls show that the state-by-state approach is the overwhelmingly popular choice nationwide, especially when the issue hits K-12 schools, and it has already boosted the state’s GOP governor in his reelection race.
This recognition of national diversity is not to make light of the plight of the transgender community — as I continue to support my transgender friends — but only to make a point that their sex vs. gender fight is not the same fight of gays and lesbians for equal legal status of their same-sex relations.
The LGBT left wants to keep all of us sexual minorities away from the center of American life — because that’s how they get to keep control — or at least influence — over us and our voting cards. That’s why the LGBT left is quick to condemn Trump and eager to intimidate gay Trump supporters.
But Trump treats gays and lesbians as just normal Americans, who worry about jobs and schools and crime and neighborhood traffic and trade and wages. Just the routine, everyday stuff of Americans’ society.
His comments on the live-and-let-live HB2 in no way undercuts the commitment he has made to gay people – and all Americans – that he will keep them safe and protect them from sharia-shrieking, gay-hating jihadis.
And unlike his opponent, he won’t say he is pro-LGBT when the cameras are on, he won’t be taking money from anti-gay regimes behind closed doors.
Earlier in the year, speaking on NBC’s Today, Trump said about bathrooms that “there have been very few complaints the way it is,” adding, “[p]eople go, they use the bathroom that they feel is appropriate, there has been so little trouble.” It was during this interview that he claimed Caitlyn Jenner could use the bathroom of her choice at Trump Tower. Trump was telling the world he had no trouble allowing transgender people to use the bathroom of their choice at his place of business. That is his right as a business owner who complies with state laws and the pressure of each local marketplace.
What Trump said then and what Trump is saying now are not contradictory, much to the chagrin of the LGBT left. More importantly, what Trump said does not disqualify him from being the best candidate on gay rights that the Republican Party has ever nominated — because gay rights and trans rights are not synonymous.
The reaction of LGBT left, however, shows that it is more concerned about North Carolina law and is ignoring the threat of sharia law. That should qualify them from being the “voice” of LGBT politics.
Joseph R. Murray II, is the administrator for LGBTrump, a former campaign official for Pat Buchanan, and the author of “Odd Man Out”. He can be reached at jrm@joemurrayenterprises.com.
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