-->

Monday, July 18, 2016

Emerging Republican Platform Goes Far to the Right


My Note:  Today's post is a followup to yesterday's political cartoon.  I am going to quote parts of an article that appeared July 12 in the New York Times. Please read the whole article here.  Overall, the Republican Platform as it stands is detrimental to our community. The language concerning LGBT issues is brutally prejudicial and repeated efforts to soften the rhetoric were ignored.   This is the presumptive platform that Mr. Trump and all republican candidates are to subscribe.

A narrative is practically writing itself with Mr. Trump's VP candidate, Mike Pence of Indiana.  According to Senator Elizabeth Warren, a democratic spokes person,  "It’s no wonder considering Pence’s record on human rights and equality. Pence’s views on LGBT rights were a national topic of discussion in 2015 after he signed (Indiana) Senate Bill 101, a 'religious freedom restoration' bill that would have allowed for discrimination against LGBT citizens."
    
Progress for all of the LGBT community issues has been long in coming and if we are complacent, we have much to lose.  Be informed, concerned and active in a year where so much is at stake. Elizabeth Warren's plea:
 Now is not the time for good people to stand by and do nothing.

_____________________________________

JEREMY W. PETERS
New York Times, July 12, 2106

CLEVELAND — Republicans moved on Tuesday toward adopting a staunchly conservative platform that takes a strict, traditionalist view of the family and child rearing, bars military women from combat, describes coal as a “clean” energy source and declares pornography a “public health crisis.”

The platform demands that lawmakers use religion as a guide when legislating, stipulating “that man-made law must be consistent with God-given, natural rights.”

It also encourages the teaching of the Bible in public schools because, the amendment said, a good understanding of its contents is “indispensable for the development of an educated citizenry.”

The pornography provision was not in an initial draft that the Republican National Committee drew up and released on Sunday. But delegates added it on Monday at the same time they were inserting many of the amendments opposing gay and transgender rights. It calls pornography “a public menace” that is especially harmful to children.

Much of the most combative debate centered on language in the platform that describes gay and transgender people, and efforts to strip those words out and replace them with language proposed by a minority contingent of socially moderate delegates.

But nearly every provision that expressed disapproval of homosexuality, same-sex marriage or transgender rights passed. The platform calls for overturning the Supreme Court marriage decision with a constitutional amendment and makes references to appointing judges “who respect traditional family values.”

Additional provisions included those that promoted state laws to limit which restrooms transgender people could use, nodded to “conversion therapy” for gays by saying that parents should be free to make medical decisions about their children without interference and stated that “natural marriage” between a man and a woman is most likely to result in offspring who do not become drug-addicted or otherwise damaged.

And what Republicans will probably end up with when they formally vote next week to ratify the platform approved in committee on Tuesday is a text that can seem almost Victorian in its moralizing and deeply critical of how the modern American family has evolved.

_______________________

For more information on the platform process read this:   


One final convention note - Here is a one minute ad that will run on Fox during the Republican Convention this week week.   Very well done and we can all appreciate the message.





No comments:

Post a Comment