Hard to believe there is actually a gays for Trump organization. What do
they do, get together and kick themselves in the groin?
Which presidential candidate is the best choice for LGBT
people? Corey Johnson, a gay man who sits on the New York City Council, clashed
with Christopher R. Barron, founder of GOProud, on this topic in a televised CNN
interview Tuesday night.
Barron is behind Gays for Trump, a campaign that
hopes to marshall LGBT support for presumptive Republican nominee Donald
Trump’s White House
bid.
“I know the left wants to scare gay people into not even
thinking about voting for Donald Trump,” Barron told CNN’s Don Lemon Tuesday
night, explaining his support for the billionaire businessman. “If you want
people to have equal rights and dignity, then talk about combatting radical
Islam.”
But as Johnson pointed out, Barron’s support of Trump
differs markedly from his prior statements on the businessman. On Twitter, the
gay conservative once referred to Trump as a “sociopath.”
Barron expounded on those views in a March editorial
for The Guardian, in which he wrote that Trump has “torn [the GOP]
apart.”
“Trump has played to the political cheap seats,” Barron
wrote earlier this year. “Instead of offering Republicans a positive vision for
the future, he chose to play on some of our most base fears.” He later added:
“He has allowed his campaign to play footsy with xenophobes, white nationalists
and unreconstructed bigots.”
Barron, who urged Trump to run before he announced
his campaign for president last July, previously told CNN he regretted that
encouragement.
“He has unleashed forces with the conservative movement
that we will be dealing with for years and years to come,” Barron told the
network in March. “If I would have known what I know now, I would have found
somebody else.”
On that point, Johnson agreed in Tuesday's
discussion.
Although Trump has marketed himself as “the champion
of the LGBT community,” as Johnson argued, the likely GOP candidate has
consistently aligned himself with some of the most extreme voices in the
Republican Party.
“He met today in New York with a thousand
evangelical leaders — a who’s who of the antigay right — people who have made a
professional career of demonizing and denigrating gay people,” Johnson said. The
same day, Trump announced his Evangelical Advisory Board, which includes noted antigay figures like Liberty University president
Jerry Falwell Jr., Focus on the Family founder James Dobson, and former
Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann.
“Donald Trump is against marriage equality,” Johnson
continued Tuesday. “Donald Trump says he wants to remake the Supreme Court and
make it even more conservative. Donald Trump has never been there for the gay
community — he is a megalomaniacal, arrogant crazy person.”
Barron has faced criticism for his views in the
past.
The former head of GOProud, which disbanded in 2014, has
previously compared GLAAD to aterrorist organization and pyromaniacs. Barron
also has a history of defending right-wing pundit Ann Coulter, who proposed Disown Your Son Day in 2012 as an
alternative to National Coming Out Day, praising her as a “strong ally of gay
conservatives.”
* * * * * *
And if that’s not enough . . .
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