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L E T T E R F R OM T HE E D I T OR
For Joe Biden, Kamala Harris,
Push Relentlessly Until November 3
BY PAUL SCHINDLER
Among the many compelling
reasons to make sure
that Donald Trump and
Mike Pence are not reelected
on November 3, perhaps the
26 most compelling are the transgender
Americans — most of them trans
women of color — known to have been
murdered this year.
We needn’t be simple-minded in
making this argument. Trump and
Pence did not pull the trigger, and
those who did must, of course, bear
the consequences for their horrifi c
acts.
But the all-too-toxic environment
which too many of our transgender
siblings have endured in their lives
has gotten immeasurably worse over
the past four years.
For this reason and many more, in
an historic move, the 12 newspapers
of the National LGBT Media Association
(NGMA), which represents the
nation’s oldest and most established
LGBTQ publications with a combined
circulation of more than one million
readers, are issuing this joint endorsement
of the Joe Biden/ Kamala
Harris ticket this week.
From the start, Donald Trump
has used the trans community as a
punching bag to prove his toughness
to his socially conservative base hungry
for a strongman willing to turn
back the clock. He has denied trans
folks the ability to serve openly in the
military, sought to strip them of nondiscrimination
protections in healthcare,
worked to rob trans youth of
dignity in their schools, and battled
to take away the right of student athletes
to compete in sports.
And against the trans community
as well as lesbian, gay, and bisexual
Americans, Trump’s administration
fought tooth and nail to prevent the
pivotal advance we won at the Supreme
Court in June — the recognition
that we enjoy employment nondiscrimination
protections thanks
to the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Still,
Trump and his see-no-evil GOP Senate
allies refuse to move the Equality
Act, which would extend those
nondiscrimination protections across
the board in areas like housing and
public accommodations. For them,
the nation’s most embattled minority
are bigots who want to enshrine their
right to discriminate under the cloak
of “religious liberty.”
As in every other aspect of this endorsement,
Joe Biden and Kamala
Harris offer a stark and redemptive
alternative.
After Senate Majority Leader Mitch
McConnell denied President Barack
Obama federal judicial appointments
in his last year in offi ce, he and his
colleagues have rubber-stamped an
unprecedented number of judges —
many of them viciously right-wing,
others lacking in even the most elementary
judicial qualifi cations —
whose infl uence will last for decades
to come. The cornerstone decision
in protecting reproductive freedom
— Roe v. Wade — may already be
doomed by the Trump court’s confi
guration. Give him another chance
or two to name a member to the high
court and the ball game will defi nitely
be over, and of course the GOP right
now is trying to ram the late Justice
Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s replacement
through before November 3.
Trump’s governing has been much
like his court appointments — where
he is not cruel, he is merely incompetent.
Mexican and other Latin American
immigrants have been slurred in
overtly racist terms, and their children
have been caged. Muslim newcomers
to America have also been
stigmatized where they have not been
blocked outright. The damage is not
limited to the newcomers. Latinx and
Muslim-American citizens have faced
increasing levels of hostility and hate
crimes.
Trump saw “very fi ne people, on
both sides” during the 2017 neo-Nazi
invasion of Charlottesville, but he’s
been snide in reacting to the Black
Lives Matter movement, telling Bob
Woodward, in response to a question
about why he can’t bring himself to
empathize with African-American
citizens, “You, you really drank the
Kool-Aid, didn’t you?”
The coronavirus’ most recent surge
— in the Midwest — and the wild fi res
raging through wide swaths of the
West are only the most calamitous
indicators of Trump’s refusal to accept
the basic facts of science, a posture
at one with his hostility to factbased
discourse on almost any public
policy issue. It’s no surprise that the
nation’s free press and the unfettered
right of Americans to vote — the twin
jewels of American democracy — are,
in his mind, enemies of the people.
Meanwhile, Trump is most at ease
with fellow authoritarian fi gures
around the globe, whether Russia’s
Putin, North Korea’s Kim, Turkey’s
Erdo an, or Brazil’s Bolsonaro.
Since Hillary Clinton lost the presidency
in 2016 even while winning almost
three million more votes than
Trump, the Democratic Party has
undergone an internal battle of sorts
for its soul, pitting insurgent, leftleaning
candidates, many of them
young newcomers, against more
moderate establishment fi gures — on
issues from racial justice to healthcare
policy, economic inequality, and
climate change action. Those are all
areas on which debate is legitimate,
indeed needed.
But here’s the thing: With four
more years of Trump, there is no real
consequential venue for having those
debates. Trump and his enablers are
draining the oxygen out of our democracy.
Debating between left and
center in the House of Representatives
is no substitute for regaining
the White House and the Senate.
Only then can we have our debates,
lick our wounds, and set a course for
a better tomorrow.
This election will decided in a small
number of states — perhaps as many
as a dozen, more likely just a handful.
In all of the battleground states,
LGBTQ activists and our progressive
allies are on the ground working to
elect Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
Especially in a year when much of the
campaign will be carried out on the
air and online rather than in person,
all of us — everywhere across the nation
— can pitch in to help in those
states where a boost for Biden is most
needed. Grab a bucket, adopt a state,
and dive in to the battle. None of us
should wake up November 4 wishing
we had done more.
September 24 - October 7,10 2020 | GayCityNews.com
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