On ‘LGBT’ et al: Stop being stupidly compliant with the left’s terms of debate

On ‘LGBT’ et al: Stop being stupidly compliant with the left’s terms of debate

All right, just listen up for a minute, folks.  This one’s important.

You have got to stop letting the progressive left frame the debate for you.  The media are in the tank for the left, allowing it to seize the high ground by aligning media themes with the left’s framing of every issue.  You will never win as long as you align yourselves with the left too, by the use of prejudicial terms and mental constructs.

There are a lot of examples, such as the very basic one of the leftist lie-theme about “gun control.”  “Gun control,” as the left conceives it, is an imaginary concept.  It has no rational meaning.  There is no such thing; there are only state-imposed gun restrictions, gun regulations, gun prohibitions, and gun confiscation – while the use of guns doesn’t decline, and isn’t magically “controlled,” but only shifts dangerously against the interests of the peaceable, law-abiding citizen.

Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?

Gun control, if it is anything, is proper control of your gun when you, personally, are storing or using it.  Eddie Eagle is Mr. Gun Control.  Anti-gun leftists, by contrast, are totalitarian gun confiscators waiting for an opportunity to behave like Stalin, Mussolini, Hitler, Mao, Castro, and ISIS, among others.  Well-meaning people who buy what they’re selling are ignorant and haven’t thought the issue through.  They don’t mean anything rational when they speak of “gun control.”  They don’t really know what they mean; they just hope irrationally that more regulations and restrictions will somehow bring about an unachievable outcome.  Catering to their ignorance is fatal to your liberties.

So stop babbling on the left’s cue about “gun control.”  If you wouldn’t talk earnestly about our government policy for unicorns, leprechauns, or forest faeries, you shouldn’t talk about “gun control.”

That said, the one I want to talk about today is the deceptive way in which yesterday’s vote in the House on an LGBT-related amendment to the defense authorization bill was characterized.  I’ve seen far too many conservatives referring to the amendment in question as “providing protections to members of the LGBT community.”  This is a lie-theme.

Nobody wants to leave “members of the LGBT community” (which is not an actual “community”; it’s a political alliance, with nothing bringing it together but radical political motives) “unprotected.”  But that’s not what was at issue in yesterday’s vote.

What was at issue was a Democratic effort to keep Congress from protecting defense contractors – who include contractors for religious services – against federal harassment over their LGBT employees, or lack thereof, because of Obama’s executive order conferring special privileges on LGBT activism.

The left naturally frames Obama’s EO 13762, signed in 2014, as an order “protecting members of the LGBT community against discrimination.”  It applies to federal contractors, who are made subject to an additional burden, beyond the terms of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, to avoid “discriminating against” people based on gender identity.

But the Obama EO is, in fact, the basis for denying business to federal contractors, and bringing lawsuits against them, if their employee demographics – even aside from any demonstrated intent – don’t suit radical LGBT activists and their allies in federal agencies.  That’s what matters about it.  The EO enlarges the opportunity of leftists to extort Americans, adding “gender identity” to the list of other pretexts on which our federal government can usurp our constitutional rights and shake us down.

The Civil Rights Act, in Title VII, affords a religious-belief exemption from its non-discrimination rules.  In the wake of Obama’s EO 13762, Congressman Steve Russell (R-OK) proposed an amendment to the defense authorization bill that would ensure Title VII exemptions cover defense contractors.  One of the key concerns was that EO 13762 not be used to attack religious-services vendors over their stances on LGBT issues, which could well be reflected in their employee demographics.

Congressman Sean Patrick Maloney (D-NY) offered a counter-amendment that would have made sure Obama’s EO was fully effective against defense contractors, with no religious exemption.  That’s what was narrowly voted down on Thursday, by a vote of 213-212 in the House of Representatives.  Far from “protecting LGBT” persons, Maloney’s amendment would have ensured that the Obama administration could attack religious-services vendors that contract with the Department of Defense over those vendors’ religious beliefs about sex, gender, and sexuality.

Obama’s harassment of employers doesn’t provide “protections” for LGBT persons.  To the extent that it does anything for them, it sometimes has the effect (intended, if not always realized in practice) of conferring bizarre special privileges.  But it mostly enriches lawyers and browbeats the rest of America.

The opposite of special privileges for L, G, B, and T persons isn’t discrimination and hatred.  That false proposition is part of the lie-theme about this whole issue.  The opposite of special privileges is equal rights under the law.

And the most salubrious construct for law is keeping it limited, so that it doesn’t inquire into “gender” or sexuality; it inquires as little as feasible into sex (male or female); and it doesn’t pretend to know what it cannot know to an actionable level for the purposes of law: whether people intend “discrimination” or “hatred” in their actions.

If you want liberation from the progressive left’s project of cultural Marxism, you’re going to have to stop talking in their terms.  Yes, it’s a tall order, because the terms of cultural Marxism are embedded in the American discourse now.  But this is non-negotiable.  You will not free yourselves until you do it.

J.E. Dyer

J.E. Dyer

J.E. Dyer is a retired Naval Intelligence officer who lives in Southern California, blogging as The Optimistic Conservative for domestic tranquility and world peace. Her articles have appeared at Hot Air, Commentary’s Contentions, Patheos, The Daily Caller, The Jewish Press, and The Weekly Standard.

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