Box Turtle Bulletin

PayPal Co-Founder Peter Thiel: “I’m Proud To Be Gay, I’m Proud To Be a Republican, I’m Proud To Be An American”

Here’s a clip from his speech last night. I would note that the reaction from the convention hall didn’t really kick in until he said he was proud to be a Republican and proud to be an American. That’s all well and good, but I think it’s safe to say that if he had just ended with “I’m proud to be gay,” the hall wouldn’t have been nearly as noisy.

A view from the floor of #RNCinCLE as @peterthiel says he's proud to be gay. pic.twitter.com/IvgesNPSWT

— Ryan J. Reilly (@ryanjreilly) July 22, 2016

After all, out of all of the 2,470 delegates at the convention, pro-LGBT proponents couldn’t find just twenty-eight of them to back revisiting the most the most anti-LGBT platform in the party’s 162-year history. Thiel may be proud of them, but his fellow Republicans just see him as useful.

NBA Pulls All-Star Game From Charlotte Over Anti-LGBT Law

Yahoo News broke the story:

Without any movement by state legislators in North Carolina to change newly enacted laws targeted at the LGBT community, the NBA is pulling the 2017 All-Star Game out of Charlotte, league sources told The Vertical.

The NBA is focused on the New Orleans’ Smoothie King Center as the host for All-Star Weekend and the All-Star Game on Feb. 19, league sources told The Vertical.

For now, there are still other cities trying to lure the All-Star Game, sources said.

A formal announcement on the NBA’s withdrawal out of Charlotte is expected as soon as this week, league sources said Thursday./blockquote>

The National Basketball Association has long warned North Carolina legislators that the state risked losing next year’s All-Star Game if it didn’t rescind HB 2, which prohibits local jurisdictions from enacting non-discrimination ordinances covering sexual orientation and/or gender identity, and excludes all workplace discrimination lawsuits from state courts. HB 2, additionally and more controversially, prohibits transgender people from using public facilities which correspond to their gender identity or presentation. A number of businesses have halted relocation and expansion plans in the state, and several conventions and concert performances were cancelled. Figures are hard to pin down, but one tally of known cancellations as of mid-April put the losses at $77 million.

So It’s Come To This: Ted Cruz Is the GOP’s Conscience

I guess it takes a narcissist to take on a narcissist. As William Saletan wrote back in January, the Republican Party is a failed state, and Trump is its warlord.

Protesters Confront Rubio In Orlando

Things got ugly in a city where nerves are still very raw. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) was in Orlando at a press event just blocks away from the site of the Pulse gay night club massacre which killed 49 and injured 53 a little over a month ago. The framing of Rubio’s visit probably didn’t help any. According to the Orlando Sentinel, it was “focused on how Rubio was trying to help businesses affected by slow traffic around the mass shooting scene.” It’s a legitimate concern. Those businesses are struggling and some have had to lay off employees. But given Rubio’s anti-gay record, it was very unrealistic for Rubio to expect a warm reception that close to Pulse and this close in time to the massacre:

Instead, about 30 protesters shouted so loudly outside that Rubio could hardly be heard at some points. The goal of the protest was to highlight Rubio’s lack of support for such things as gun control measures.

“I’m really angry at you,” Moran said. “I don’t feel you’re doing anything to support the LGBTQ people. I need to know what is your relationship is with the NRA. Why are you talking with transphobes and homophobes like John Stemberger… all of you have blood on your hands,” Moran said.

Rubio responded, “I disagree with your assessment… Homophobia means you’re scared of people, I’m not scared of people. Quite frankly I respect all people. We probably have a disagreement on the definition of marriage.”

Moran interrupted again, “Your policies kill people. Your policies enable people to be murdered. You have to protect us. You’re not protecting us. We’re going to be gunned down.”

John Stemberger and Marco Rubio

John Stemberger is Florida’s leading and best-known anti-LGBT activist as head of Florida Family Action. Stemberger recently endorsed Rubio’s re-entry into the race to retain his Senate seat. Rubio responded with a Facebook post saying, “I’m honored to receive John Stemberger’s endorsement and I look forward to working alongside Florida’s faith leaders to uphold our conservative values.”

The Sentinel has video of the confrontation.

Report: Trump To Seek New Powers To Purge the Civil Service

There are a whole range of policy-making positions in the federal government occupied by people who serve at the President’s pleasure. Cabinet secretaries are the obvious ones, but the range of positions extend several layers down from there. But there is a point in the hierarchy where jobs are shielded from political patronage by Civil Service laws. The President doesn’t get to fire those people based on the color of their shoes or the party ID on their registration cards. Trump surrogate Chris Christie is telling donors that they aim to change that if Trump is elected:

Christie, who is governor of New Jersey and leads Trump’s White House transition team, said the campaign was drawing up a list of federal government employees to fire if Trump defeats Democratic rival Hillary Clinton in the Nov. 8 presidential election.

“As you know from his other career, Donald likes to fire people,” Christie told a closed-door meeting with dozens of donors at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, according to an audio recording obtained by Reuters and two participants in the meeting.

…Trump’s transition advisers fear that Obama may convert these appointees to civil servants, who have more job security than officials who have been politically appointed. This would allow officials to keep their jobs in a new, possibly Republican, administration, Christie said

…”One of the things I have suggested to Donald is that we have to immediately ask the Republican Congress to change the civil service laws. Because if they do, it will make it a lot easier to fire those people,” Christie said. He said firing civil servants was “cumbersome” and “time-consuming.”

They fear that “Obama may convert these appointees to civil servants” because every president before them did the same thing. And to be clear, this practice, called “burrowing,” is not simply declaring, say, an assistant to a deputy cabinet secretary as a a protected civil service job. Rather, it’s the practice of moving a political appointee from a policy-making position outside the purview of civil service laws and finding them non-political positions jobs in the government, with the hope that they might somehow still be able to wield some kind of influence. Every president has done this: Bush did it before he left office, as did Clinton, elder Bush, Reagan, and so on.

But this kind of proposed change to the Civil Service laws would go beyond endangering just former political appointees who are now in non-political positions. It would, in by Christie’s own admission, make it easy for Trump to fire whomever he pleases, just like he does on his TV show. It would open the gates to the kind of nineteenth century-style political patronage that the civil service laws were intended to abolish, when political litmus tests were standard for every government job from mail clerk to Postmaster General.

In fact, it was this kind of patronage that contributed to the assassination of President Garfield in 1881 by Charles Guiteau, a mentally unstable man who was furious that Garfield didn’t give him a government job in return for guaranteeing Garfield’s election thanks to a speech that Guiteau gave that nobody remembered. Garfield’s assassination was the last straw for a populace already outraged over the “spoils system” which saw the wholesale replacement of federal employees every time the government changed hands.

So imagine now a scenario where a new law goes through allowing those protections to be eliminated if the president or one of his minions doesn’t like the politics of some federal workers. There is precedent for that, from 1950 to 1953, when thousands were fired from government jobs because the were supposedly “subversives.” A particular kind of “subversive” sought during those times were gay people, a witch hunt that was codified in a 1953 Executive Order signed by Eisenhower. For the next twenty-two years, it was the official written policy to prohibit hiring and employing gay people by federal employment, and for the next twenty-two years, thousands of gay people, or simply people accused of being gay, were fired. One such firing turned Frank Kameny into an aggressive gay rights pioneer and a perennial thorn in the Civil Service Commission’s side until 1975, when the Commission finally modified its policy following a string of defeats in the courts.

So Trump now wants to replace a system designed to protect government employees from being fired for political purposes and replace it with a system specially designed to specifically allow employees from being fired for political purposes. Purges like what he has in mind are dangerous territory, especially in the hands of someone who already sees no constitutional problem with instituting a religious test banning Muslims from entering the U.S. So why stop with Democrats? Why wouldn’t he purge civil service employees based on religion? Or, given Trump’s famously thin skin and fondness for vendettas, just someone — anyone — he doesn’t like?

It’s hard to know whether this proposal would actually go anywhere, but with this Republican Congress, it’s hard to dismiss it outright. More importantly, though, this gives us a very clear view of the mindset inside the Trump campaign, which already has shown it has no concern about the nuts and bolts of the constitution or for laws, rules, norms, history, facts, etc. If you want to know what Trump’s American might look like, you might want to check out Turkey or Russia right about now. Especially Russia. He admires Putin.

Yeah, I Needed This…

Plagarism Should Be the Very Least Of Our Worries Right Now

It was truly an honor to introduce my wife, Melania. Her speech and demeanor were absolutely incredible. Very proud! #GOPConvention

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 19, 2016

via Washington Post.

And her speechwriters’s plagiarizing didn’t stop there:

He will never, ever give up. And, most importantly, he will never, ever, let you down.

— Melania Trump (2016)

Never gonna give you up
Never gonna let you down.

— Rick Astley (1987)

Sad! Pathetic! Weak!

Okay, the fun part of this post is over, because the bigger issue is that this silly controversy — and it is a silly one in the greater scheme of things — is overshadowing a much larger problem on display in last night’s convention speeches. If you had to pick one speech that wasn’t filled with gut-level bloodlust and hatred, Melania’s relatively optimistic and positive speech was the only one that stands out. Josh Marshall zooms back out:

In substantive terms, the much bigger story from last night was a hastily thrown together program focused on violence, bloodshed and betrayal by political enemies. We’ve become so inured to Trump’s brand of incitement that it’s barely gotten any notice that Trump had three parents whose children had been killed by illegal/undocumented immigrants to tell their stories and whip up outrage and fear about the brown menace to the South. These were either brutal murders or killings with extreme negligence. The pain of these parents is unfathomable.

But whatever you think about undocumented immigrants there’s no evidence they are more violent or more prone to murder than others in American society. One could just as easily get three people who’s children had been killed by African-Americans or Jews, people whose pain and anguish would be no less harrowing. This isn’t illustration; it’s incitement. When Trump first did this in California a couple months ago people were aghast. Now it’s normal.

Even more disturbing, numerous speakers from the dais, including some of the top speakers of the evening, called for Hillary Clinton to be imprisoned. At least two – and I think more – actually led the crowd in chants of “lock her up!” There has never been any evidence of criminal activity on Clinton’s part. An investigation with a lot of pressure to find something amiss concluded that no charges should be recommended against her and that no prosecutor would bring charges against Clinton for anything connected to her private email server

It goes without saying that it is a highly dangerous development when one presidential nominee and his supporters make into a rallying cry that their opposing candidate should be imprisoned. This is not Russia. This is not some rickety Latin American Republic from half a century ago. This is America. For all our failings and foibles this is not a path we’ve ever gone down.

To be clear: I’m no Clinton fan. I loathe everything she (and he before her) stands for, especially the safe triangularizations that she and her husband have been famous for over the past three decades. But it’s one thing to cynically creep up to and blur the lines between what’s right and what’s wrong — something she’s guilty of in spades — and quite another to obliterate anything that remotely resembles the law, democratic values, citizenship, common decency or facts — things which are today derided as “political correctness.”

I’ve been on the front lines of publicly confronting bigotry ever since I started this blog ten years ago. Some of that work has included going straight into the heart of some rather ugly conferences to hear, first hand, bigotry — there’s no other word for much of it — being spewed by some very angry people. My partner asked me again last night how could I just sit there and not run screaming out of those conferences. I don’t know. I guess I saw these people for what they seemed to be at the time: buffoons who were going against the tide and whose threat was diminishing, at least here in the U.S. (which is why many have been turning their attentions elsewhere in the world). They were on a sinking ship, and the really sad thing is that they knew it. Each year, their conferences were getting smaller and smaller, and they commiserated about the poor attendance in the hallways. Knowing that — keeping that long view — kept me sane and kept me sitting in that seat listening to their bigotry and lies. I wasn’t scared or angry, just attentive, shaking my head from time to time as I took notes on what they said.

And so I can’t say I’ve never seen anything like what we’re now seeing at the GOP convention before — of course I have, but it was always in miniature and never to this kind of a scale. It had its place, but it appeared to be contained to those specific places. Reagan, Bush, Dole, Bush again, McCain, Romney — they were all anti-gay, but they were, to varying degrees, relatively nice about it. They were sometimes anti-other people too, though not always, not consistently so, and certainly not so publicly so. To the extent that they were, they were also, to varying degrees, relatively nice about them too. “Relatively” is the operative word here, of course. Also, because there was a whole range of motivations at play, from bigotry to cynicism to cold political calculations, they were always able to maintain a kind of a plausible deniability about whatever motivations they had that led to their policies. And by the way, Democratic candidates and Presidents during that period, I think, were just as guilty. And so whatever the motivation, the end result was nearly always the same, from marriage bans and AIDS neglect to “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and DOMA.

But now it’s clear that the kind of bigotry I saw on display at those anti-gay conferences wasn’t as contained as I thought. My exclusive focus on anti-gay politics — what I now call my “gay blinders” — kept me from understanding that it was a symptom of something much larger. And that larger thing has now gone mainstream and expanded to include all kinds of those people. In the way they used to just blame gay people, they now blame all those people for all of our problems. Those people: gays, transgenders, blacks, Muslims, immigrants, refugees, Mexicans, Democrats, the media, public schools, unions, Supreme Court justices, academics, the Obamas, RINOs, #NeverTrumpers — does it even matter exactly who those people are anymore? They’re all — we’re all — enemies, according to a serious candidate for President of the United States and his supporters. That makes this a real and pressing threat to everything we know in our hearts to be true and right, even among those whose politics won’t let them say so out loud. And it’s because of that that I now have to admit that I am truly scared, in a way I was never scared before at those rather sad and poorly-attended anti-gay conferences. I know I’m not being temperate here, and I don’t take this as a point of pride. I’m afraid that recent events are causing me to lose that capacity. Or maybe, it’s a luxury I can no longer afford.

Log Cabin Republicans: “Losers! Morons! Sad!”

The Log Cabin Republicans have plagarized Donald Trump’s tweets (that’s a joke, people!) for a full-page ad in the Cleveland edition of USA Today in response to yesterday’s adoption by the Republican National Convention of the most anti-LGBT platform in the party’s 162-year history. They explain in a press-release:

“Response from allies to our reaction in the wake of the drafting of this vitriolic anti-LGBT platform has been nothing short of staggering,” Log Cabin Republicans President Gregory T. Angelo stated. “The email sent to our members last week propelled Log Cabin Republicans to the top trend on Facebook for more than two days, and now holds the record as the highest-grossing single fundraising appeal this organization has ever sent. But this was fundraising with a purpose—I’m pleased to share that every last cent donated to Log Cabin Republicans via last week’s email has been spent on this project. This unprecedented support is representative of the GOP I know, and this is the GOP our members want to see.”

The provocative advertisement reads, “LOSERS! MORONS! SAD! No, these aren’t tweets from Donald Trump. This is what common-sense conservatives are saying about the most anti-LGBT platform the Republican Party has ever had. GOP Platform Committee: Out of touch, out of line, and out of step with 61% of young Republicans who favor same-sex marriage.”

“It’s my hope this advertisement will be a wake-up call to the intransigent and ancient voices on the GOP Platform Committee that marriage equality is the law of the land, gay families are a part of the fabric of America, and LGBT Republicans have an important role to play in growing the Party,” Angelo concluded.

Donald Trump’s Ghostwriter: “He Has No Attention Span.” And That’s Just For Starters

Tony Schwartz was Donald Trump’s ghostwriter for The Art of the Deal. Before then, Schwartz had been a serious journalist, but this ghostwriting gig ended all that. “I knew I was selling out. Literally, the term was invented to describe what I did,” he told the New Yorker. The Art of the Deal made Trump’s reputation, and Schwartz, to his horror, feels responsible for what’s happening today.

I put lipstick on a pig,” he said. “I feel a deep sense of remorse that I contributed to presenting Trump in a way that brought him wider attention and made him more appealing than he is.” He went on, “I genuinely believe that if Trump wins and gets the nuclear codes there is an excellent possibility it will lead to the end of civilization.”

You really have to read this piece, and you have to do it before you decide who to vote for or whether you should even vote in November. There’s simply too much at stake to sit on the sidelines this time around:

Schwartz thought that “The Art of the Deal would be an easy project. … But the discussion was soon hobbled by what Schwartz regards as one of Trump’s most essential characteristics: “He has no attention span.”

…“Trump has been written about a thousand ways from Sunday, but this fundamental aspect of who he is doesn’t seem to be fully understood,” Schwartz told me. “It’s implicit in a lot of what people write, but it’s never explicit—or, at least, I haven’t seen it. And that is that it’s impossible to keep him focussed on any topic, other than his own self-aggrandizement, for more than a few minutes, and even then . . . ” Schwartz trailed off, shaking his head in amazement. He regards Trump’s inability to concentrate as alarming in a Presidential candidate. “If he had to be briefed on a crisis in the Situation Room, it’s impossible to imagine him paying attention over a long period of time,” he said.

…Schwartz believes that Trump’s short attention span has left him with “a stunning level of superficial knowledge and plain ignorance.” He said, “That’s why he so prefers TV as his first news source—information comes in easily digestible sound bites.” He added, “I seriously doubt that Trump has ever read a book straight through in his adult life.” During the eighteen months that he observed Trump, Schwartz said, he never saw a book on Trump’s desk, or elsewhere in his office, or in his apartment.

Trump’s short attention span meant that Schwartz was never able to interview Trump, which is a pretty big hindrance for any author who’s supposed to ghostwrite his biography. So Schwartz came up with another idea, he’d follow Trump around, listen in on phone calls, and take copious notes. Then he’d call his business associates to get more background material:

But their accounts often directly conflicted with Trump’s. “Lying is second nature to him,” Schwartz said. “More than anyone else I have ever met, Trump has the ability to convince himself that whatever he is saying at any given moment is true, or sort of true, or at least ought to be true.” Often, Schwartz said, the lies that Trump told him were about money—“how much he had paid for something, or what a building he owned was worth, or how much one of his casinos was earning when it was actually on its way to bankruptcy.”

…Schwartz says of Trump, “He lied strategically. He had a complete lack of conscience about it.” Since most people are “constrained by the truth,” Trump’s indifference to it “gave him a strange advantage.”

When challenged about the facts, Schwartz says, Trump would often double down, repeat himself, and grow belligerent. …Whenever “the thin veneer of Trump’s vanity is challenged,” Schwartz says, he overreacts—not an ideal quality in a head of state.

Familiar pattern, isn’t it. It’s an incredible piece. I have to stop quoting from it. You have to start reading.

Anti-LGBT Language Will Stay In the GOP Platform

This development, of course, isn’t surprising. Last week, after the Republican platform committee approved the most anti-LGBT platform in the party’s 162-year history, delegates were gearing up for a potential floor fight over the the anti-LGBT planks. All that was needed to force a floor debate over the platform was just 28 signatures from the 2,470 delegates — just a little over one percent. But they couldn’t get even that tiny bit of support in time to force a debate today:

Rachel Hoff, the platform committee’s first openly gay member, chalked up the failure of their “minority report” to scare tactics from her fellow GOP delegates.

“The pressure and intimidation for delegates to drop their support for the minority report worked, but this effort did demonstrate strong support for a more inclusive platform,” said Hoff, who represents Washington, DC. “A simpler document that stated our core principles would have been better, and there will be even more people who believe that on the committee in 2020.”

The Republican platform, which will be rubber-stamped by the full convention later today, includes calls for laws and government regulations recognizing only opposite-sex marriages; and endorsement of a constitutional amendment or the appointment of supreme Court judges which would result in allowing states to ban same-sex marriage; support for the so-called “First Amendment Defense Act” and other legislation designed to allow discrimination against LGBT people; support for lawsuits challenging the Obama administrations transgender non-discrimination policies; and a provision inserted at the last minute by the Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins designed to allow parents to send their children to ex-gay therapy.

But hey, the GOP platform isn’t anti-LGBT at all. Don’t believe me? Just ask Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin, who told CNN that it’s not anti-LGBT because “there were gay people on the platform committee themselves, and we respect that and we’re an inclusive party. We’re a big tent.”

In fact, there was just one gay person on the platform committee, Rachel Hoff, who led the fight against the anti-LGBT planks.

Methodists Elect First Openly Gay Bishop

In defiance of a United Methodist ban on ordaining “self-avowed practicing homosexuals,” delegates of the Western Jurisdictional Conference meeting in Scottsdale, Arizona, selected Rev. Karen Oliveto to be the denomination’s first openly gay/lesbian bishop. Ovieto is the senior pastor of Glide Memorial Church in San Francisco, which has a pro-LGBT history that goes back nearly six decades. Ovieto’s election came after two days and seventeen ballots. Two other contenders withdrew just before the seventeenth vote:

“I think at this moment I have a glimpse of the realm of God. I want to thank the candidates who I have journeyed with these past few days, for the grace with which we walked with each other. And know I stand before you because of the work and prayers of so many, especially those saints who yearned to live for this day, who blazed a trail where there was none, who are no longer with us, and yet whose shoulders I stand on,” Oliveto said after her election.

She especially thanked the delegates of the Western Jurisdiction “who dared to live into this Kairos moment. Today we took a step closer to embody beloved community and while we may be moving there, we are not there yet. We are moving on to perfection,” Oliveto said.

She said as along as people “walk by our churches and wonder” if they belong, because of race, sexuality orientation, ethnicity, social class or immigration status, then “we have work to do.”

Bishop Bruce R. Ough, president of the United Methodist Council of Bishops, responded in a statement:

Rev. Oliveto has been described as “an openly lesbian clergyperson.” This election raises significant concerns and questions of church polity and unity.

Our Book of Discipline has clearly delineated processes in place for resolving issues even as complex and unprecedented as this election.

The authority to elect bishops is constitutionally reserved to the jurisdictional and central conferences. Any elder in good standing is eligible for election as a bishop of the church. An elder under an unresolved complaint is still considered to be in good standing. Being a self-avowed, practicing homosexual is a chargeable offense for any clergyperson in The United Methodist Church, if indeed this is the case.

The Council of Bishops is monitoring this situation very closely. The Council does not have constitutional authority to intervene in the election or supervisory processes at either the annual conference, jurisdictional or central conference levels. And, we are careful to not jeopardize any clergy or lay person’s due process by ill-advised comments.

Ough cautioned that “an endless cycle of actions, reactions and counter-reactions is not a viable path and tears at the very fabric of our Connections. …Our differences are real and cannot be glossed over, but they are also reconcilable.”

The United Methodist Reporter provided some background:

Most Annual Conferences in the Western Jurisdiction passed resolutions that said sexual orientation should not be a consideration for qualifications to be bishop. The 2012 Discipline only indicates that “Elders in good standing” are eligible to be Bishop, and many Annual Conferences interpreted that as not a bar to sexual orientation. All of the episcopal candidates in the West are in good standing.

However, some are wondering the implications of this election, given the United Methodist Book of Discipline’s proscriptions against homosexual clergy being ordained as ministers in the UMC. While a complaint could be made, it would have to be filed with the Western Jurisdiction College of Bishops and they generally been more inclusive of LGBTQ persons in ministry in the past.

Rev. Oliveto was formally consecrated this afternoon at Paradise Valley UMC in Scottsdale.

Earlier This Week, The GOP Platform Committee Declared Porn a Public Health Crisis

I scoffed the time, but now I have to apologize. It looks like the crisis is way worse than I thought:

Twitter, naturally, is having a field day:

@JohnDingell I don't know but I'm fairly sure Pence will want to make it illegal.

— Tom Davidson (@DPTomDavidson) July 15, 2016

Trumppence logo suggests that before this is all over, Mike Pence is going to bleeding out of his wherever.

— Erick Erickson (@EWErickson) July 15, 2016

#ThatAwkwardMoment when the #TrumpPence logo gets to third base on itself. pic.twitter.com/LbSwF3RsLp

— Eric Wolfson (@EricWolfson) July 15, 2016

"When two people love each other very much and want to start a campaign together…" pic.twitter.com/OkOncMsbth

— Ellie Hall (@ellievhall) July 15, 2016

Hypocrtical liberals mocking the #TrumpPence logo haven't even asked poor @GovPenceIN if he needs a safe space! https://t.co/Lxld2lhmWr

— Scott Wooledge (@Clarknt67) July 15, 2016

.#TrumpPence New Logo explodes on Twitter – pic.twitter.com/oMlq0rPkNv

— Puesto Loco (@PuestoLoco) July 15, 2016

How are we supposed to explain the new Trump logo to our children??

— Will Rahn (@willrahn) July 15, 2016

The Trump Pence logo is what happens when you can't find a single gay graphic designer willing to work for you.

— Craig Mazin (@clmazin) July 15, 2016

trump: perfect logo. it's not gay if you're the one giving.

— kimplesimple (@kept_simple) July 15, 2016

It’s Trump-Pence

I am pleased to announce that I have chosen Governor Mike Pence as my Vice Presidential running mate. News conference tomorrow at 11:00 A.M.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 15, 2016

You, of course, remember Indiana Gov. Mike Pence for his bumbling, bungling handling of Indiana’s ill-fated right-to-discriminate law. Pence has positioned himself as political poison among LGBT voters and many women, while Trump’s name is poison to African Americans and Latino voters. Which I guess makes this the ultimate Republican diversity ticket.

David Barton Claimed His Anti-Gay Remarks Were “Taken Out of Context and Mischaracterized.” Here’s the Context.

I’ve decided that no one in the English-speaking world has more fun telling tall tales than fourth- and fifth-generation West Texans. My partner hails from Fort Stockton. His brother loves telling tall tails. And when he does, there’s his mother revealing another fine talent that it seems Texans of all stripes posses: the pithy putdown. Think Ann Richards. After another tall tale, Chris’s mom always chimes in. “Ricky! You’d climb a tree to tell a lie!” In other words: Even when telling the truth is much, much easier, Ricky would rather exert the added physical effort to avoid doing so.

Which, of course, brings us to David Barton, another Texan from Aledo, just west of Ft. Worth. A fake historian who got his Bachelor’s degree in religious education from Oral Roberts University, Barton has climbed an entire rainforest of trees in his adult lifetime. Barton also happens to be a member of the Republican National Convention’s platform committee which just approved what the Log Cabin Republicans call the “most anti-LGBT platform in the party’s history.” On Monday, when the platform committee was about halfway through its work, The Daily Beast’s Tim Mak confronted Barton over just a couple of his anti-gay statements:

And David Barton, a committee member from Texas, believes that God is preventing the medical profession from finding a cure for HIV/AIDS, and claimed that gay people die “decades earlier” than others and have more than 500 partners apiece in their lifetimes.

Barton told The Daily Beast that these statements did not represent his views, and this was “an example of something taken out of context and mischaracterized. I’m an advocate for faith-based conservative values, which include love, grace, and truth, focusing on traditional family values.”

One might wonder what kind of context could possible render those arguments reasonable. Barton, of course, doesn’t explain. But he’s right: context is always important. Which is why Right Wing Watch re-posted the full context of those remarks:

In the case of his claim that gay people die “decades earlier” and have hundreds of sexual partners, Barton said that on his radio program back in 2010, when he was somewhat facetiously making the case that the government should regulate gay people’s sex lives.

Barton argued that since the government seeks to regulate all sorts of things that are unhealthy, it should also regulate consensual sex between members of the same gender because it is not only dangerous for those who practice it but bad for society as well:

Homosexual/bi-sexual individuals are seven times more likely to contemplate or commit suicide. Oooh, that doesn’t sound very healthy.

Homosexuals die decades earlier than heterosexuals. That doesn’t sound healthy.

Nearly one-half of practicing homosexuals admit to five hundred or more sex partners and nearly one-third admit to a thousand or more sex partners in a lifetime.

Those statistics are not only stale — invented in the late 1980s — but they were invented out of whole cloth by Paul Cameron, using methods that got him barred or censured by every relevant professional professional organization in North America. Birds of a feather and all that.

As for Barton’s claim that God was preventing the medical profession from finding a cure for AIDS, let’s go to the videos. Here’s Barton at Charis Bible College in Woodland Park, Colorado, in March 2015:

…anything the Bible says is right, there is scientific basis for it now. It’s fun to be able to show that. So, these guys, homosexuals — I’ll say guys, I’m from Texas, that’s guys and girls. Everybody’s “guys” in Texas . So these guys, homosexuals, lesbians, they want AIDS stopped. You saw the prevalence: sixty times higher than the general population, et cetera. And what they’re looking for is a vaccine. So the federal government in the last several years as spent tens of billions of dollars looking for a vaccine for AIDS — HIV/AIDS. And I don’t think they will ever find a vaccine for HIV/AIDS. And I say that based on a particular Bible verse. If you look at what Romans 1:27 says. This is what the Scripture says. It says, “Men, leaving natural relations with the woman, lusted toward each other and did that which is wrong receiving in their bodies the penalty due them.” And notice this: homosexuals receive in their bodies the penalty due them. The Bible says that if you engage in homosexuality, your body will do things that will penalize you. So if you can have a vaccine for AIDS, then you’re keeping your body from penalizing you. I don’t think they’ll ever find a vaccine for AIDS.

And that was not just a one-off thing. A month later, Barton gave the same talk at Faith Baptist Church in Knightdale, North Carolina:

The population where AIDS is increasing is the homosexual population, and that’s why these guys are looking for a vaccine. They’ve spent about 26 billion dollars of federal money to find a vaccine and so far they have not found a vaccine. There’s been no vaccine that they have found for AIDS. Now in my opinion I don’t think they ever will find a vaccine for AIDS. Well that’s pretty callous isn’t it? No. Actually, I’m just using what the Bible says here. Romans 1:27, this is what the Scripture says: “Men, leaving natural relations with the woman, lusted toward each other and did that which is wrong receiving in their bodies the penalties (sic) due them.” Notice the last phrase: homosexuals receive in their bodies the penalties due them. If you can find a vaccine for AIDS, then you’re not receiving in your body the penalty.

Now, you know why they haven’t found a vaccine for AIDS so far? [It] is AIDS is the fastest known transmuting virus in the history of mankind. It is. Every time they get right on the verge — “Oh we finally have a discovery!” — AIDS is like dominos on the board. They just reshuffle and it comes out, “Oh my gosh, we’ve to to start from ground zero again.” They get real close to a vaccine and then it reshuffles — and every time they get close it just reshuffles. It’s a transmuting virus. They can’t identify it. Every time they get close, it becomes something new and they have to start again.

Now, that was my position that I don’t think you will find a cure for it based on Romans 1:27. But I acknowledge that I make mistakes. And so when this article came out: “for the first time ever, an HIV vaccine shows success in trial.” You go, well I must have misinterpreted because, you know, this… And then about six weeks later, this article came out and says “NIH halts trial of HIV vaccine after it fails to work.” They made a big splash, “Oh we finally have one that works!” And then they went back and tested it and said, “That doesn’t work! It’s just like all the others.” So, to this point, there is still no cure for that behavior which is the result of their body’s penalizing them for what they do in homosexuality. That’s just what the Bible says.

So, so many trees. Barton had actually trotted out those vaccine headlines a month earlier in Colorado, and Grove City College professor Warren Throckmorton tracked them down:

The problem with Barton’s presentation is that the second headline didn’t come out “six weeks later.” Rather it came out four years later in 2013 and was about an entirely different attempt to create a vaccine.

The Yahoo News article Barton referred to (the second headline) is only available via Internet Archives and is dated April 26, 2013. The Yahoo article linked to the NIH announcement that the HVTN 505 clinical trial had been halted. The HVTN 505 trial results had nothing to do with the earlier success of RV 144. The RV 144 trial was reported in 2009, the same year that the HVTN 505 started. The NIH has more on the HVTN 505 trial on the NIH website.

Barton got the time frame wrong and made it appear that the two headlines were related to each other.

When the second video came out, Throckmorton added:

Barton’s use of the headlines is extremely deceptive. In fact, progress continues to be made which builds upon the modestly successful vaccine already available. In fact, R144 vaccine does offer protection from HIV infection. An extension of the success of R144 is being conducted in South Africa now.

Cleveland Rolls Out the Red Carpet for the Republican Convention

…by voting on an expanded trans anti-discrimination ordinance:

Cleveland City Council is expected tonight to pass legislation empowering transgender people to choose whichever restroom, shower or locker room aligns with their gender identity, without fear of discrimination.

The measure was introduced in 2013 as part of a package of ordinances that update the city’s existing anti-discrimination laws to include the transgender community. Council’s Committee of the Whole passed the legislation this morning, sending it on to a full council vote.

The legislation removes a passage from the existing nondiscrimination ordinance that allowed for owners of private business with “public accommodations” to discriminate based on a person’s gender identity or expression and dictate which bathroom a person should use, “provided reasonable access to adequate facilities is available.”

Ordinance supporters testified in 2014 that some transgender people avoid using public restrooms out of fear of being attacked, harassed or assaulted.