Safeguarding the Progressive Movement in a Trump Presidency

"LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES!"  We are all familiar with this announcement from the Sergeant-at-Arms of the U.S. House of Representatives.  It is the last thing we hear before the leader of the free world enters the House chamber to give the State of the Union speech each January.  When we hear it in January of 2016, it will be the last time that the person who walks down the center aisle of the chamber will be Barack Obama.

Traditionally, a newly inaugurated President does address a joint session of Congress a few weeks after the inauguration, even though it is not considered an official State of the Union speech.  So when we hear those words again in 2017, who will be the person walking down the center aisle?

What if that person is Donald Trump?

There are no limits to the speculation of media pundits as to the possibility of this scenario.  "A ridiculous distraction" has morphed, in succession, into "another meaningless front-runner status"; "nothing more than the groundwork for a third party run"; "a lead in the polls that will soon evaporate"; and finally "a legitimate candidacy with a real chance at victory."  As I write, the most recent CNN/ORC poll shows Hillary Clinton leading Donald Trump among registered voters by only 6 percentage points, 51% to 45%.  And unfortunately for us Progressives, Secretary Clinton is facing a barrage of political attacks that are weakening her image and viability among "The Great Undecided" center-center-right and narrow issue voters: namely, Benghazi, emails, and an increasingly powerful grass-roots challenge from Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, who has given Progressives a legitimate alternative to Clinton.

Counterbalancing this precarious situation is the idea that Trump would stand no chance of becoming the Republican nominee, and that he would (as he, by his own admission during the Fox debate, would be more than happy to do) run as a third-party candidate, effectively handing the White House to the Democrats by splitting the Republican vote between the corporate shills and the whackadoodles.  But in the days since the Fox debate, poll after poll has indicated that Donald Trump's positions are, in fact, the shared views of the majority of the Republican Party, the rank-and-file of which is substantially more conservative than at least 15 of the current 17 candidates.  (Neither of the two exceptions, Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum, will never be the Republican nominee, for reals.)   So the stage is set for an actual Trump matchup, be it with Clinton, Sanders, or even Vice President Joe Biden, who is still contemplating getting into the race.

And that lands us squarely inside the worst of all possible nightmares: that mental picture of President Trump, walking down the center aisle to deliver his first speech to a Joint Session, one hand on the nuclear button, the other signing deportation orders for 11 million undocumented immigrants.

So, what will we Progressives do for those four years?  What will be our priorities?  In a world where we can no longer count on a presidential veto to prevent regressive, damaging or bigoted legislation, we need to get as much accomplished as possible in these next few months.  These should be our priorities:

• LGBTI rights.  Marriage equality is not the end of our fight--it's the beginning. Our goal for 2016 should be the passage of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act.  This is the federal law that extends equal employment protection based on sexual orientation and gender identity.  We need to make sure that every candidate we support would be willing to vote in favor of this legislation, and write/call the Democratic leadership of both the House and the Senate to encourage bringing the law to the floor.  The nation currently has a hodge-podge of state and local ordinances, which means that LGBTI workers who change jobs and move may lose their protection.  Only a federal law can fix this.  

• Black Lives Matter.  The Black Lives Matter agenda, which includes important items such as sensitivity training for officers, deescalation of lethal force and new standards of engagement, should become the standard in every community.  Progressive voters need to make sure that every candidate we support for city councils and elected police department positions are aware of this agenda and support it.  Protests at campaign rallies are valuable, but they should be expanded to include the Republican candidates, who really need to hear the BLM message.  The recent disruption of a Jeb Bush rally was a good start.

• Immigration.  The 2016 House and Senate races will be crucial to this issue.  We must use every means at our disposal to get out the Progressive vote, not only for President, but for Congress as well.  "President Trump" has already made it clear that he fully intends to deport as many immigrants as possible, even children who are legal citizens of the United States under the 14th Amendment.  The only way to effectively oppose this is to have enough leverage in Congress to counteract any potential executive order that would lead to mass round ups and deportations.  This is perhaps the most serious threat of all.  Trump has decided to focus all of his self-loathing on this particular, vulnerable group, and he has persuaded his followers to do likewise.  

Clearly, this is the most important election of the century so far.  We Progressives lost the opportunity to steer the country in the right direction in 2000--we cannot afford to lose that opportunity this time.  The stakes are too high.  A nation can recover from the dithering of a George W. Bush, but the vindictiveness, the cruelty of a Trump presidency could ruin the United States forever.  We cannot let that happen.

House-to-House Combat

The world changed forever on June 26, 2015.  After 50+ years of LGBTQ activism and advocacy, 10 years of state-by-state progress, and months of waiting while the case of Obergefell v. Hodges was brought to and argued before them, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the right to marry the person one loves is a right that applies not only to heterosexual couples, but to same sex couples as well.  In all 50 states.  Forever.  The euphoria was palpable, in print and electronic media, and especially on social media, where the hashtag #LoveWins was used on Twitter more than 5.5 MILLION times in the 24 hours following the announcement of the ruling.  The beautifully written decision, authored by Justice Anthony Kennedy (the swing vote who kept SCOTUS observers guessing until the very last minute) was announced just in time for Pride Weekend celebrations across the nation, and activists everywhere were awash in a sense of triumph, a sense that as treacherous as the road that had led us to this point had been, they could finally pause and catch their breath, if only for a brief moment.

Well, most activists did.  Some of us, however, were aware of a new sense of foreboding.  In the midst of the celebrations, some of us, mostly we activists who live in the Deep South and the central Appalachians, knew that there was still an obstacle that the Supreme Court had not cleared out of the way for same sex couples seeking a marriage license.

That obstacle is the Evangelical Right.  And it's face is the face of the woman whose picture appears above.

Kim Davis has worked in the Rowan County, Kentucky clerk's office for over 30 years, and she has become the poster child for a small, but vocal minority of county clerks across the country who claim that their religious convictions prevent them from issuing marriage licenses to same sex couples.  Last week, a two same sex couples and two opposite sex couples in Rowan County filed a lawsuit against Davis demanding that she follow the law of the land, do the job she was elected to do and issue marriage licenses to all eligible applicants.  The judge in the case heard arguments on both sides, including from Ms. Davis herself, who took the stand.  In a statement that might remind the LGBTQ community of the bakery owners in Oregon who refused service to a same sex couple, Ms. Davis said, "If I say they are authorized, I'm saying I agree with it, and I can't."  As with the bakery owners, Ms. Davis has likened the simple act of doing her job to somehow being implicitly involved in the same sex marriage ceremony, as though signing a piece of paper would somehow be akin to forcing her to attend the ceremony in her Sunday best and throw flowers at the couple as they walked down the aisle.  

So it has gone for the first month of marriage equality.  Here in Texas, where I live, things have gone more smoothly than anyone could possibly have imagined.  Our own home grown poster child, equally as vexing but much less courageous than Ms. Davis in Kentucky, was Katie Lang, the clerk of Hood County, just outside of Ft. Worth.  Like Ms. Davis, Ms. Lang initially claimed religious exemption, and put off a same sex couple not once, but twice before the couple filed a lawsuit.  Unlike Ms. Davis, Ms Lang folded like a house of card the minute the lawsuit was filed and immediately began issuing marriage licenses to all couples.  (The couple in question has not withdrawn their lawsuit, both to insure that the Hood County clerk's office continues their compliance, and to recoup their attorney's fees.)  Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama are falling in line kicking and screaming, with nine county clerks in Alabama still refusing to issue marriage licenses to ANY couple, gay or straight, rather than follow the law.  (I still say one has to make a tremendous mental leap to fathom THAT level of homophobia.)  And then there is what I call "The Kentucky Problem."

So here are my thoughts and solutions for the refusing clerks.  First of all, I don't buy what Kim Davis is selling.  There are many clerk's offices that have one or two staff members who are claiming religious exemptions from issuing marriage licenses to same sex couples, but in most cases there is a clerk or clerks who have NO problem issuing such licenses and they are simply doing their jobs.  Ms. Davis has not only refused to issue the licenses HERSELF, but has forbidden anyone ELSE in her office to issue them as well.  That says to me , "This isn't about my religion.  This is about me hating homosexuals."  Second, there should not be any such thing as a religious exemption.  Issuing a marriage license to a same sex couple does not make you a part of their marriage.  The same sex couple does not care about your religious beliefs, any more than YOU should care about THEIR bedroom habits.  The best thing for all concerned would be for those clerks who have religious issues that prevent them from doing their jobs to resign.  Unfortunately, the Earth has shifted underneath you, and now you hold a belief that prevents you from doing your job.  The Earth does that sometimes.  

The bottom line is this:  gay people are not going to accept being treated differently than straight people anymore.  Not anywhere, not anyhow, not under any circumstances.  Not in the public square, and not in private enterprise.  The sooner that the public officials, who are paid with OUR tax money, realize that, the better.