No group is better at playing the victim in the Trump Era than the LGBT Left.
Last week, the LGBT Left stood atop a soapbox to decry their injustice of the day. According to these folks, the injustice under President Trump was so severe that LGBT Americans were being “erased” from the nation. What was this eraser sitting atop Trump’s No. 2 pencil? The U.S. Census.
“By erasing LGBTQ Americans from the 2020 U.S. Census, the Trump Administration is adding a disgusting entry to a long list of tactics they’ve adopted to legally deny services and legitimacy to hard-working LGBTQ Americans,” proclaimed Sarah Kate Ellis, president and CEO of GLAAD.
Ellis was not alone as others joined her chorus of condemnation. Meghan Maury of the National LGBTQ Task Force decried the census omission as “yet another step to deny LGBTQ people freedom, justice and equity” by the Trump administration.
If we are to take Ellis and Maury literally, their argument is more disturbing than their belly-aching. Where most, including this author, want to resist the encroaching presence of Big Brother from their personal lives, these two have linked their existence to a government questionnaire.
But herein lies the problem with census calamity: The census never included questions of sexual orientation and gender identity. If the census was lacking such questions to begin with, how could Trump erase what never existed?
The Census Bureau had prepared a draft of new questions to add to the 2020 Census, some of which addressed LGBT issues. These new questions, however, were left on the cutting room floor and, despite the cries from the LGBT Left, the decision may not have been political.
“Some Census experts said the decision may not be meant as a political statement,” The Hill reported. “The Bureau takes years to test new topics to be included among their questions, and while the agency has been researching sexual orientation questions, they may not have finalized that research or figured out just how to phrase the questions they ask.”
Any rational person, gay or straight, would view the census issue for what it is: a government bureaucracy taking light years to catch up to society. So why did the LGBT Left respond as if Fire Island was foreclosed? Because in the aftermath of marriage equality, the relevance of the LGBT Left is so minimal that all they have to complain about is the Census.
This reality is not lost on the LGBT Left, as GLAAD just released its 2017 “Accelerating Acceptance” Study. Though the study found that one-third of Americans still have a level of discomfort with fellow LGBT Americans, such numbers are great news.
With GLAAD’s own study showing that post-marriage equality America is a great place for gays, Ellis was forced to admit that “this report shows a remarkable new era of understanding and acceptance among young people.” Since such an admission undermines her relevance, it is no surprise she created a strawman in Trump.
“As the administration begins to fulfill its pledges to move the country backwards, many are concerned about progress made in recent years for the LGBTQ community,” Ellis explained. The problem for her is this: Nobody is buying the argument that the man who has made more gestures to the LGBT community than any other Republican president in history is seeking to erase LGBT people or rollback equality.
The LGBT Left in the U.S. is not just clueless, it’s delusional. Gays are being stoned in the Middle East and Ellis is making hay over government bean counting. If folks like Ellis continue to cry civil rights wolf and use drama in lieu of discernment, such behavior will backfire.
The public could see such aggrandizement as the LGBT Left putting its own political interests ahead of the community and country it purports to advocate for. If that perception takes hold, the LGBT Left becomes more of a racket than an engine of change.
What then? The LGBT Left becomes a caricature that nobody can take seriously. That is probably not a bad thing.
Joseph Murray (@realJoeMurray) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. Previously, he was a campaign official for Pat Buchanan. He is the author of “Odd Man Out” and is administrator of the LGBTrump Facebook page.
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