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02/13/2015
Maggie Gallagher pushes GOP to ignite anti-gay 'culture war'; where (and from whom) have we heard this before?
If the GOP sweeps in 2016, Maggie Gallagher knows what she wants to be her party's top priority. It's the unfettered right to deny LGBT people goods and services, natch:
If the GOP would like to leave a legacy that makes a difference, I would argue for generous anti-discrimination protections for those who favor or oppose gay marriage (unless they work for an organization whose substantial purpose is to favor or oppose gay marriage).
...
If social conservatives want to be taken seriously as a political force, we need to do what a handful of Common Core moms have just done: push our concerns into the presidential race.
And for me, if I were to prioritize, the right not to lose my job or my tax exemption because I publicly oppose (or support) gay marriage should be at the top.
FULL: God Talk Is Not Enough Anymore [NRO]
Her "those who favor or oppose" setup is itself deceitful. No vendor who fairly accommodates same-sex couples, employee who supports his married gay colleagues, fire chief who preaches inclusion over discrimination, etc., is suffering blowback from standing with civil fairness. And this isn't because the other side is so more welcoming of the viewpoints (ha!). No, no—it's because supporting LGBT people's human and civil rights, like civil marriage equality or fair treatment by public accommodations, isn't just another side of a two-sided coin. Supporting LGBT people's fair movement through society is the decent and just thing to do; opposing LGBT Americans' fair protections is discrimination.
Maggie's fantasy world, delivered by her fantasy GOP, is the ultimate slippery slope for LGBT people. Unlike any other minority population or suspect class, most of which are rightly protected in most cases by various laws, Maggie wants an America where LGBT people's access to basic consumer goods, dignity in the public square, ability to cross state and county lines without having to check how protected they are in that specific area, and general welfare in all areas of public life—for both ourselves and our families and children, who are also affected—is contingent on the whims of the vendor, boss, mayor, of whoever else is in the decision-making seat. It is a deeply hubristic vision that pits anti-gay faith's intrinsic superiority complex above American ideals that most of us thought were past the point of reasonable debate.
As a Roman Catholic, Maggie is protected from discrimination. Already. Fairly so. But that's not good enough for her. Her version of "religious freedom" protections allow her to have her cake and deny us ours too (even though, to be fair, Maggie has said she probably would sell a wedding cake to a gay couple). If her version of the GOP were to go forward, and it didn't destroy an already demographically-challenged party on the national level in the way I think it would, there is no way her theoretical version of an openly anti-LGBT America could ever hold up in the courts over time. But it could force LGBT activists, who have already been forced to pause our lives and fight against unconstitutional ideas that Maggie Gallagher and her crew forced upon us, to continue to struggle against onslaughts that do nothing but divide our nation and demoralize our population.
Maggie and her team of "culture warriors" fooled us once with a "protect marriage" battle that we told them from the get-go was inevitably ours to win. If they fool the GOP into buying into this game plan again, then that party deserves every bit of shame it will ultimately receive for igniting another anti-gay "culture war."
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