Did you know that opposing President Trump’s impeachment makes you homophobic?
That’s apparently the latest narrative that left-wing gay and transgender rights activists are pushing. On Thursday, the Human Rights Campaign released its annual “scorecards” evaluating federal legislators on their supposed support for “LGBTQ rights.” The point of the evaluations, per the Human Rights Campaign, is to “provide you with information on how your elected officials have voted on issues of [LGBT] equality.”
The results are, at first glance, quite concerning. Democrats received many perfect scores and most ranked in the 90s out of 100. Yet dozens of Republicans got a score of “zero” or scored in the single digits.
So, are Republicans all evil anti-gay bigots while Democrats all have rainbow halos above their heads?
That’s certainly what you’d think based on these ratings from the nation’s largest left-wing gay and transgender rights advocacy organization — which, unfortunately, is often cited by the media as some sort of nonpartisan or apolitical group when it’s anything but. But even a cursory look at how the Human Rights Campaign manufactured these rankings reveal that they have little to do with gay rights and much more to do with a Democratic partisan agenda.
For example, the grading criteria the Human Rights Campaign used to evaluate whether GOP senators were “anti-LGBTQ” includes how they voted on Trump’s impeachment. This is manifestly absurd.
Regardless of whether you thought the president’s conduct with Ukraine was harmless or treasonous, it has literally nothing to do with gay rights. The Human Rights Campaign is basically just saying if you don’t vote to remove the president they hate from office; then you must hate gay people.
Other bizarre and seemingly unrelated criteria used in the Human Rights Campaign’s rankings include how senators voted on the nomination of Attorney General Bill Barr, and how they voted on a police reform proposal introduced by Sen. Tim Scott. Are these debatable voting issues? Sure. But they don’t have anything to do with a legislators’ record on gay and transgender rights.
As far as the House of Representatives is concerned, the Human Rights Campaign docked Republican representatives points for whether they voted for a gun control bill enacting so-called universal background checks, and how they voted on an immigration bill to give amnesty to “Dreamers” who came to the country at a young age.
This isn’t just unfair to the GOP; it’s actually insulting to gay and transgender people. The Human Rights Campaign’s bizarre evaluation criteria would suggest that gay people such as myself who oppose “universal background check” proposals are self-hating. It denies our individuality and ability to reach our own logical conclusions on political issues the same way anyone else would.
The rubric clearly doesn’t measure anti-gay bias. It’s set up so it would be basically impossible for any legislator who is ideologically conservative to score well, no matter how gay-friendly they may otherwise be — or even if they were themselves openly gay.
Why would the Human Rights Campaign smear Republicans and throw Democratic partisan agenda points into their “LGBTQ” evaluations? It’s the money, stupid.
As I previously wrote:
Fake outrage sure pays well.
Brad Polumbo (@Brad_Polumbo) is a Washington Examiner contributor and host of the Breaking Boundaries podcast.
