Donald Trump made comments about Sen. John McCain that created a firestorm this week. Trump’s comments questioning McCain’s “hero” status made the Republican candidates rush to castigate Trump, who is the leading Republican presidential contender. Yet each one of the Republican candidates have at some point said inappropriate and hateful comments about the LGBT community and what is the response from the other contenders? Media silence.
Here is a sampling of the swift response to support Sen. McCain:
Damning. Yet when horrible hateful things are said about our entire LGBT community, there is no rush by Republican presidential candidates to social media or the microphones to repudiate their co-contenders. Where was the repudiation of Rick Perry’s recent comment when he said “I believe that Scouting would be better off if they didn’t have openly gay scoutmasters”? There was none. How about when Gov. Scott Walker said that the Boy Scout ban was there to “protect youth.” The clear implication was that Walker believes gay Scout leaders are potential pedophiles. Walker was forced to walk the comment back by the media not by his competing presidential contenders; they said nothing.
The Republican candidates could not find the intestinal fortitude to repudiate Trump’s statements calling Mexican undocumented immigrants “rapists,” but say that one old senator is not a war “hero” and oh my goodness, Trump is not qualified to be president and must apologize immediately. Why was there no call for an apology to the Mexican community?
Is attacking Sen. John McCain’s “hero” status somehow worse than attacking the lives of an entire group of people? Of course not. We have all read and heard the ridiculously discriminatory comments concerning same-sex marriage from the Republican presidential field, yet there has been no outrage. No shouts that the homophobic comments were beyond the pale. No suggestions that each candidate who uttered hateful anti-LGBT rhetoric is unqualified to be president of the United States. We all know why, all the Republican presidential contenders think it is A-OK to attack the LGBT community, as well to call undocumented workers “rapists.”
While the LGBT community has its own war heroes, like Eric Alba, it is clearly unacceptable to question Alba’s hero status but completely OK to vilify his so-called “lifestyle.” It is this type of hypocrisy that will ensure that the Republicans will not win the White House in 2016, and maybe not for the foreseeable future.
Thank you Donald Trump for underscoring what is important to the Republican Party. A Republican presidential candidate cannot insult or question the war “hero” status of one Republican senator, but he can insult entire groups of people without question. Since the Republican Party is willing to forsake, for the most part, the LGBT, Latino, female and African American vote, a Republican candidate can’t win. No “heroic” effort can change that fact. That’s the progressive Trump card.
STAMPP CORBIN
PUBLISHER
San Diego LGBT Weekly
