Last updated on July 17th, 2023 at 07:05 pm
Don't Miss Sarah Jones's Essay On Kristi Noem Titled Predatory Is The Point On The Daily.
So yesterday, as George Takei was penning an op-ed for the Daily Beast with the message to the NRA, “You don’t want to mess with us,” Donald Trump, following up Monday’s claim that he’s a “real friend” to the LGBT community, was tweeting his thanks to the “us” in question, apparently for being behind him 100 percent.
Thank you to the LGBT community! I will fight for you while Hillary brings in more people that will threaten your freedoms and beliefs.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 14, 2016
Now, we’ve seen Donald Trump express love for everyone – he even ate a taco bowl to express his love of Hispanics, for crying out loud – and has his very own African American.
However, in the wake of his celebration of the Orlando massacre, there seems something extremely creepy about Trump thanking LGBT people for their nonexistent support. And because his nose is so far up the backsides of the Religious Right, his thanks sound a bit muffled. After all, it’s a bit hard to say overturn marriage equality and “I will fight for you” in the same breath.
This is the same guy who, as PFAW’s Brian Tashman noted in The Huffington Post the other day, “cozies up to anti-LGBT activists” like “Harlem’s notorious ‘stone homos’ pastor James David Manning and far-right radio show host Alex Jones, who thinks the LGBT rights movement is a “suicide cult†bent on the destruction of humanity.”
Those guys.
It should be obvious to everyone that Donald Trump cannot be both for and against LGBT rights. Surely, even Donald Trump can see that.
Seriously, Donald Trump, who gets support from people who think gays and lesbians, let alone transgenders, have no right to even exist, is promising he will defend their “freedoms and beliefs”? And at the same time he giving back rubs to the NRA – the guys who made it possible for the Orlando killer to have an assault rifle – with his small, small hands?
You remember how Trump said he’s going to get advice on combating terrorism from the NRA, right? You can bet George Takei remembers.
Martina Navratilova immediately slapped Trump’s hand away in a tweet of her own, saying, “@realDonaldTrump agree with George Takei- we don’t need your “protectionâ€. Fight for us? Like you will fight for our equal rights? NOPE.”
George Takei, you see, had just made the very important point to the NRA and its Republican lapdogs, that nobody knows how to organize like the LGBT community:
“Now this latest and most deadly attack has targeted a group that has spent the last few decades learning how to organize, fight for, and protect its rights. Perhaps, then, the next chapter of LGBT history might not be just about the struggle to gain equality for ourselves, but also how we might help lead this country towards a collective right to participate and live free of fear and terror, and ultimately toward a common-sense, permanent ban on weapons designed for mass slaughter.
“Like it or not, this history and this obligation have been thrust upon us, and we must now rise to its challenge. For if there is one group in this country with more will, more experience, and more tenacity than the NRA, it is the LGBT community.
“You don’t want to mess with us.”
Donald Trump has done just that. You’d have thought pissing off the editor of The Washington Post was bone-headed enough. As Charles P. Pierce wrote the other day in Esquire, “Donald Trump Picked the Wrong News Editor to F*ck With.”
And now he’s gone and done it again.
From his reaction of a victory lap over the deaths of 49 LGBT people to the outrageous assumption that they support him heart and soul, Donald Trump has messed with the wrong group.
Hrafnkell Haraldsson, a social liberal with leanings toward centrist politics has degrees in history and philosophy. His interests include, besides history and philosophy, human rights issues, freedom of choice, religion, and the precarious dichotomy of freedom of speech and intolerance. He brings a slightly different perspective to his writing, being that he is neither a follower of an Abrahamic faith nor an atheist but a polytheist, a modern-day Heathen who follows the customs and traditions of his Norse ancestors. He maintains his own blog, A Heathen’s Day, which deals with Heathen and Pagan matters, and Mos Maiorum Foundation www.mosmaiorum.org, dedicated to ethnic religion. He has also contributed to NewsJunkiePost, GodsOwnParty and Pagan+Politics.
