Why the LGBT community should embrace its inner Donald

They have far more in common than you might think

Michael Cook | Aug 3 2016 | comment

Linking the words “Donald Trump” and “LGBTQI” may not seem like an easy task. But according to the Queer Voices Deputy Editor of The Huffington Post, James Michael Nichols, it’s an alarming possibility. “The number of self-identified gay men who have recently come out in support of Trump is, at the very least, unsettling,” he says.

Support for Trump in the gay community appears to have grown substantially since a Muslim supporter of the Islamic State massacred 49 people at gay club in Orlando. Trump’s anti-Muslim rhetoric seems comforting.

“Have we ever had a Republican nominee for president who used the phrase, 'LGBT community,' let alone used a major policy address as an opportunity to stand in solidarity with the country's LGBT community? I don't think so," Log Cabin Republican President Gregory T. Angelo told CNN.

As on most issues, Trump’s policies on issues dear to the hearts gay Republicans are sometimes contradictory and nearly always vague. But there are profound reasons why the LGBT community should support the candidacy of Donald Trump. Deep down, they sync both emotionally and tactically. Consider just some of the similarities.

Playing the victim

The LGBTQI trump card is always victimhood – how much stigma, discrimination and hatred they have to endure. A couple of years ago gay writer Jonathan Rauch penned a cover story for Time magazine about “The End of Gay Victimhood”. He was immediately roasted in Slate for being outrageous, naïve and callous. Victimhood is at the heart of the LGBTQI identity.

And, surprise, surprise, of Trump’s identity as well. His campaign is built on grievance and the perception that elites, the Chinese and Mexican rapists are trampling on us average guys. As Washington Post columnist Catherine Rampell put it:

To hear Trump tell it, he and his supporters are the most beaten-down victims this country has ever seen. The system is rigged to keep them from winning, designed to make the weak even weaker. They have been robbed, disenfranchised, bullied and insulted. With the odds so stacked against them, they — and their leader — are not only permitted but also morally obligated to “punch back” as ferociously as they can.

Bullying.

Donald Trump as a bully? Where do we start? Threatening journalists? Threatening judges? Threatening illegal migrants? Threatening his political opponents?

Did he learn this from the LGBTQI community, who are masters of shamestorming on Twitter and brutal insults everywhere? Check out the Southern Poverty Law Center’s list of hate groups. It now includes the American Family Association and the Family Research Council, which are said to spread bigoted lies about homosexuality.

Everybody hates me

How about hate crimes? Here’s Donald Trump raging that US District Court Judge Gonzalo P. Curiel, an Indiana native, is hostile to him because of Curiel’s Mexican background: “Everybody says it, but I have a judge who is a hater of Donald Trump, a hater. He's a hater. His name is Gonzalo Curiel and he is not doing the right thing …” As the for the LGBTQI community, accusations of “hatred” and “homophobia” are stock in trade on Twitter for their opponents.

Life in a post-truth universe

Trump and LGBTQI advocates share a distinctive mode of lying: they repeat untruths over and over and over and over again until they become “true”. Admittedly, accusing Trump of misrepresentation and lies is highly political. But has anyone ever praised him for being scrupulous with the facts? The Washington Post awarded 64 percent of his statements four Pinocchios – its highest rating for untruthfulness.

But the LGBTQI crowd is hardly better in its misrepresentation of research, its claims of victimhood, its accusations of bigotry. Take the martyrdom of Matthew Shepard, a 21-year-old gay student murdered in Wyoming in 1998. It was billed as a gay-hate crime, but it was actually a sordid drug-related murder – a tragedy, but not homophobia.

The fact that both Donald Trump and the LGBTQI cause are in the ascendant in August 2016 ought to prompt anyone with a brain to ask if it is coincidental.

The answer is No.

They spring ultimately from the same root, narcissism and self-absorption. Both are so convinced of their righteousness that they reshape reality to accommodate them. Some observers argue that Trump is the vanguard of post-truth politics. Facts no longer matter; they can be ignored and replaced with self-serving narratives which are merely projections of their own desires. If the facts are still inconvenient, a lawsuit will dismiss them.

The casualty of narcissistic politics is the common good. Neither Trump nor the LGBTQI crowd are the first to use bullying, defamation, lies and bombast in the pursuit of self-interest. But in the past, politicians paid selfless service to social justice the tribute of their hypocrisy. In the kingdom of narcissism the notion of a common good will be completely forgotten. Trump and the LGBTQI community are going to make a good team.

Michael Cook is editor of MercatorNet.

Surprisingly, there are a number of gay Republicans who support Donald Trump in his campaign to become the next American president. One leading activist even says that he is the "most pro-gay Republican nominee ever". But what does a blustering businessman who has had three wives have in common with the LGBT community? I think that I have found the answer. Read the article below.