“I say of all dangers to a nation, as things exist in our day, there can be no greater one than having certain portions of the people set off from the rest by a line drawn – they are not privileged as others, but degraded, humiliated, made of no account.” –Walt Whitman
At one time, the political right scapegoated “Communism” and the “Communists”, claiming they used scare tactics to recruit members into its organizations and bring donations in to fill its war chests.
But since the decline of global Communism and the fall of the Soviet Union, right-wingers have needed other villains to scapegoat to further their own political agendas and to scare their voters into turning out for local and national elections.
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In addition to the right’s cynical and vicious representations of black and brown immigrants – both legal and undocumented – the GOP has also targeted those who fall outside its current definition of the “traditional family,” which includes LGBTQ+ people, those who advocate for protecting women’s reproductive freedoms, and even heterosexuals who either choose not to marry or choose not to bear children.
Women and LGBTQ+ people have long been scapegoated by the ultra-right to gin up its base of support. This year, Donald Trump, J.D. Vance, and the MAGAsphere have resurrected outdated and archaic definitions of heteronormativity, idealizing women being consigned to the home to raise children and men as breadwinners performing super-masculine roles of strength, power, and control.
It is no mere coincidence or slip of the tongue that Donald Trump waxed non-poetically for 20 minutes at a recent rally honoring and glorifying the supposed giant schlong of legendary golfer Arnold Palmer. Equally deliberate is his choice of playing Macho Man at certain gatherings.
Add this to Vance’s diatribes against supposed “Childless Cat Ladies,” whom he vilified for not accepting their alleged “God-given” mandate to multiply for the sake of producing good consumers for the capitalist machine.
The American Civil Liberties Union has recorded 530 anti-LGBTQ+ bills that have been proposed this year in the U.S. as of September. These bills cover several issues, including the banning of LGBTQ+ books and topics in school curriculums, banning transgender people from using the school facilities of their choice, banning transgender athletes from sports teams, banning gender-affirming healthcare, and banning accurate information on identification documents for transgender people.
While transgender topics are not among the top concerns for the U.S. electorate, according to a Gallup poll, Trump and his allies have been belligerent in forcefully pushing anti-trans messaging in the closing weeks of the campaign. The Trump campaign and Republican political action committees have spent more than $21 million on anti-trans and anti-LGBTQ+ TV ads as of October 9.
LGBTQ+ rights as a political football
The 1992 Republican Party platform, the first U.S. presidential election after the fall of the Soviet Union, stated that “[The Republican Party] opposes any legislation or law which legally recognizes same-sex marriages and allows such couples to adopt children or provide foster care.”
In the 2004 election, George Bush and his political advisor, Karl Rove, used the tactic of encouraging Republican state legislatures to place anti-same-sex marriage ballot initiatives to help turn out the Republican vote.
Prop 8 in California – which would effectively ban same-sex couples from enjoying the rights, responsibilities, and benefits of marriage – passed in 2008. In Florida and Arizona, state constitutional amendments legally defining marriage as between a man and a woman also passed. In Arkansas, a ballot measure banning same-sex couples from adopting children passed as well.
The origin of the scapegoat dates back to the Book of Leviticus (16:20-22). On the Day of Atonement, a live goat was selected by lot. The high priest placed both hands on the goat’s head and confessed over it the sins of the people. In this way, the sins were symbolically transferred to the animal, which was then cast out into the wilderness. This process thus purged the people, for a time, of their feelings of guilt, shame, and fear.
Stereotyping can and often does result in singling out individuals and groups as targets of hostility and violence, even though they may have little or nothing to do with the offenses for which they stand accused. That is when stereotyping becomes scapegoating. With scapegoating, there is the tendency to view all members of the group as inferior and to assume that they are all alike in most respects. This attitude often leads to even further marginalization.
When stereotyping occurs, people tend to overlook all other characteristics of the group. Individuals sometimes use stereotypes to justify the subjugation of members of that group. In this sense, stereotypes conform to the literal meaning of the word “prejudice,” which is a prejudgment, derived from the Latin praejudicium.
The limitations of states’ rights
I have often heard it said that the issue of whether to legalize same-sex marriage, transgender rights, and reproductive healthcare rights should be left up to the individual states to decide. Conservatives argue that the national government should not intrude by imposing its will on the states.
I argue most emphatically that reproductive healthcare, marriage rights in general, and transgender people’s right to healthcare and equal access to public facilities are and must remain federal government issues.
Take the following cases, for example.
If the issue of prohibiting the practice of slavery had not been settled in Lincoln’s 1863 Emancipation Proclamation and later codified in the US Constitution, I question whether Southern states would have voluntarily outlawed the practice of slavery, and I indeed believe the practice of legalized slavery would have existed long after the Civil War in some states.
If the issue of school desegregation had not been settled in the 1954 Brown v Board of Education US Supreme Court decision and later strengthened in the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964, I question whether the states would have voluntarily relinquished the practice of racial segregation, and I indeed believe that this practice would remain to this very day in some states, though arguably it does continue de facto.
If the issue of prohibiting individuals from different races from engaging in sexual relations (miscegenation) had not been settled in 1967 by the U.S. Supreme Court in Loving v Virginia, I question whether the states would have voluntarily relinquished the practice of arresting and incarcerating people of different races found engaging in sexual relations, and I indeed believe that these arrests and incarcerations would remain to this very day in some states.
The founders of this country provided a mechanism for the protection of minorities against the tyranny of the majority. The checks and balances between the three branches of government and the authority of national legislation have time and again offered some form of protection for minority rights and responsibilities – though of course not perfectly and not without major adjustments and reversal of policy along the way.
If we leave these important issues of social justice and social inequality to majority rule, then many of the evils that have plagued this country throughout its history will never end.
How tyranny is born
We still live in a society that attempts to define and perpetuate “fairytales” about the real lives of women and LGBTQ+ people and even proclaims that some of us do not have a right to exist. But exist we do, everywhere and in all walks of life.
Women and LGBTQ+ people in many areas of this country continue to be regarded as second-class citizens at best. We continue to be represented as sinners and destroyers of the traditional family, as recruiters and molesters of young, impressionable children, and as antithetical to traditional values.
The bigotry once again reminds me of the concept of tyranny of the majority articulated in the 1830s by Alexis de Tocqueville, French political scientist and diplomat, who traveled across the United States for nine months between 1831 and 1832 conducting research for his epic work, Democracy in America.
Though he favored U.S. style democracy, he found its major limitation to be in its stifling of independent thought and independent beliefs. In a country that promoted the notion that the majority rules, this effectively silenced minorities.
This is a crucial point because in a democracy, without specific guarantees of minority rights, there is a danger of domination or tyranny over others whose ideas, ideals, or identities are not accepted by the majority.
Progressive people are standing up to the terrorism of false and fraudulent definitions of “family,” and we are expanding the parameters. We are removing from our vocabulary words that delineate people according to relationship status, for example, the value-laden terms “unwed mother,” “illegitimacy” and “illegitimate child,” “bastard” and “bastard child,” “out of wedlock,” “bachelor,” “old maid,” “Miss,” “Mrs,” and other exclusionary terms.
We are consigning these words to the archives of history because when currently used, they continue to separate people from one another, and they result in lower self-esteem.
Human diversity is a true gift, as evidenced by the fact that “families” come in a great variety of packages, with differing shapes and sizes, colors, and wrappings. If, however, we still need to cling to a common definition of “family,” I would remind us of one offered by singers/songwriters, Ron Romanovsky and Paul Phillips, who tell us, the definition’s plain for anyone to see. Love is all it takes to make a family.
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