Every time I hear her speak, I am struck by how intelligent and articulate, her explanations are easy to understand and well thought out

She’s phenomenally articulate.

She came along just in time for my son who was fed up with the Democratic Party and is now registered as an independent even as he assures me he votes straight blue.
My daughter in law is still a registered Democrat like me.
I listened to this interview and a few others. She is amazing!

I feel like every time they are insulting her they’re insulting our whole state. And some Republican members treated her like shit from the beginning. Christians.

When the chair of the committee addressed her as “Congressman’ she shot back with “thank you madam chair” to the man. 😀

Of course one of the Dems on the committee spoke up, but she can sure handle herself. Almost as if she’s had practice! 🙄.

She’s nothing less than a hero!

I've been very impressed by her sense of grace in handling that hateful gal Mace.

Really principled stuff.

she is elected and tryng to get things done. Most times you need three support of those you disagree to make it happen.

So kind of weird coming from her.

comment perfectly describes a what DU is becoming:

Is that a lot of tenured faculty at colleges and universities badly overplayed their hands, especially on the I/P and trans issues. These people - who really ought to have known better - created such an annoying atmosphere it drove away a lot of allies and gave a lot of fuel to the right-wingers.

As a result, their colleagues in the biomedical research sciences are being defunded, even though the vast majority of scientists never even participated in a protest (or ever snapped at a student or colleague for making a mistake in terminology).

I saw this myself, in real time. It is a tragic example of overreach that helped nobody.

I think about the LGBT movement, where it's been, where it's going. And it's just gotten so . . . stupid.

Most LGBTers just want to live their lives equally, with dignity, free from discrimination and harm. They want what everyone else has.

Then you meet the Chase Strangios of the world. Where he doesn't want mere equality or even equity. He subscribes to a gender ideology and queer theory that is authoritarian adjacent to reorder and restructure society. People who see marriage or monogamy as patriarchal systems that are inherently violent. He uses that word. Violent. To describe the biggest LGBT civil rights victory in American history.

He thinks it promotes a violence.

And here's the thing. Not only do most Americans not want any part of that - most LGBT people do not want any part of that. But people like Strangio are forever at the podiums of these activist organizations. So cis-het people see that and think, "I guess this is what LGBT people want now. And I, as an ally, will support this!"

And it's like no. You do not have to support this. I promise. Most LGBT people have nothing to do with this liberation ideology where they need to educate children to cast off the shackles of whatever. I'm a very progressive gay man, and I've been at "Knock this shit off" for at least 15 years at this point. It alienates everyone except this tiny radical sliver of an enclave of a minority and the virtue signalers who love them.

The problem is, the Internet exists. So these radicals all band together to 1. Make their presence seem much larger and representative than it actually is, and 2. Enforce their ideology by coordinated attacks, brigading, deplatforming, and social pressure. What they didn't count on was that you can't browbeat people in real life. All their online and social media tactics that worked well for them throughout the 2010's met the cold, hard reality of the American voter and legal system in the 2020s. "I can't just call a Supreme Court Justice a bigot and get my way?"

No, Twitter. You cannot.

There needs to be a drawback and discussion about just what are the aims here. Because ask five different LGBT people, you'll get five different opinions about where we are going. But one thing is very clear to me: the Strangios need to go, and a lot of these organizations like GLAAD and the HRC need a thorough housecleaning of people who do not actually represent what the majority of the LGBT community is like.

And before cis-het people @ me about this. I'm in my 40s, and all my life I've dealt with radicals who pooh-poohed my wanting to just settle down, have a career, and live a fairly traditional life. I shouldn't want monogamy or marriage or even children. We are liberated! We don't have to conform! It never occurred to them, for one second, that people like just living a "normal" life - that we're not brain-washed or imprisoned into it. They sneeringly call us "assimilationist" as they work out their personal issues in their ideology and politics instead of going to a therapist like a normal person.

I have never liked these people who endlessly sit around and tell me how I should be gay. As if it's any of their fucking business.

They do not speak for me, they do not represent me, and I do not support them outside of shared civil equality and nondiscrimination goals.

The glorious gender revolution just face-planted. Now what?

It will, of course, be interpreted in many ways.

It doesn't have to be "Ban Harry Potter!" (the very real position of a lot of LGBTQ+ activists) OR "Inverts back in the asylum!" (the very real current MAGA position), seems to be the point, anyway.

But I'm very very interested based on how it's characterized in the OP.

I am all for eschewing the radicalism and getting down to basic equality and dignity and creating an environment where people can just live their lives.

In fact, quite a bit of it is true of some feminists.

Some people just take things way too far.

as a cis lesbian, this part speaks for me at a deep level:

A lot of internet armchair warriors have taken to using liberalism as an excuse to bully and coerce people within the last decade. But they've gone up against the party of professional sadistic bullies and now vulnerable minorities (like of what I'm a member of) are paying the price. Now with someone that hates minorities so much and can just ignore the constitution in office, any minority can become fresh prey for mass cleansing.

And if you have a job, your employer can't legally fire you for being gay because Chase Strangio helped get the Bostock victory at the Supreme Court.

Yet you said,

Then you meet the Chase Strangios of the world. Where he doesn't want mere equality or even equity. He subscribes to a gender ideology and queer theory that is authoritarian adjacent to reorder and restructure society.

...that his entire point of anger in that post was precisely that gay marriage was not being written into law?? That it was being left up to the courts to be trusted to not reverse the decision??

And that is exactly where we are now: looking at the response to explicit calls from the Supreme Court to overturn Obergefell.

As he said: he had been working on gay marriage as an activist and a professional since he was nineteen years old. He was on the team that won Obergefell. He could see better than anyone all the energy that went into same sex marriage. Clearly he thought it worth doing, for those decades he spent helping win that goal.

Yet as he also makes clear, other very important efforts were being ignored -- voting, abortion (agreeing with RBG, but that's another discussion), trans rights, and student loans. Do you think them less important for LGBTQ people because they affect more than just us? As we know now, every single one of those erstwhile rights is now far worse off -- far more subject to the political winds that once were balmy, but now blow cold. If as much attention and "lavender money" was given to, say, assuring voting rights, especially for communities of color, we'd all be better off now. But for better or worse, the "Gay Agenda" too often meant a white agenda, a male agenda, a disposable income agenda.

So after all that: I think the post of his you quoted was actually prophetic. Tragically so. To me it seems you are reading part of it through a narrow lense, as if he had offended you personally.

One last point - while it is clear to me even from that post that Chase decided to devote his early career to helping secure wins for gay marriage, my experience in the gay community was not that everyone was 100% in favor of securing access to this fundamental institution of our society. Far from it. There has always been a vocal segment of the LGBTQ communities that dreamed beyond the models of relationship we had grown up with.

In a way, you can see their lasting impact, with the increasing popularity of nonmonogamy, "throuples" (and more), polyamorous networks, and so on. Only a segment was vehemently anti-state-regulated marriage, but that was by no means an extreme minority. (I've even seen that view here on DU, especially from people who are anti-organized religion.) It was a pretty common viewpoint where I came from -- perhaps impacted by first the sexual 'revolution,' and then the AIDS crisis years. Maybe getting through the worst of that made people hungry all the more deeply for a return to something that seemed like normalcy, like acceptance. Well, we can see now how shallow that acceptance has been, and how transient.

Among other things.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chase_Strangio

Let's make sure we're not kicking highly productive and helpful people out of the tent just because they make us a bit uncomfortable...

But should everyone still welcome everyone else who makes them uncomfortable?

I think the answer is somewhere close to “yes” mainly because if someone makes you uncomfortable just move on. But some have an authoritarian gatekeeping mindset and won’t let that go.

..then surely we can tolerate a highly talented lawyer who has helped win major legal victories for Democrats and happens to have some non-traditional views on partnerships?

For me, such a person is clearly a great addition to a big tent Democratic party.

In 2016, when trans people were fighting the North Carolina bathroom bill, Strangio objected to the ad campaign because it appealed too closely to the normies' sensibilities. He put his ideology before practical politics. He put his ideology before the people he claims to champion. He then went and wrote an op-ed full of concepts and verbiage 99% of the American population would reject out of hand if it were on a ballot.

Ideology before political progress.

After the Bostock decision, he gave an interview where he basically bragged that they'd tricked Gorsuch in some way. He openly admitted he wanted to use the narrow ruling to push much, much farther than Gorsuch had in mind. He sat there taunting a Supreme Court Justice - one who he would need in a future case. Does anyone anywhere think Gorsuch didn't see that? Gorsuch didn't say a word during oral arguments in Skrmetti. Strangio had alienated him.

Ego and ideology before legal strategy and political progress.

In Skrmetti, when Alito tried to pin Strangio down on whether transgender is a suspect class, Strangio had a choice. He could have argued that gender dysphoria is an immutable characteristic. But in order to do so, it would involve eschewing and admitting that parts of his gender ideology are not salient or even relevant to the legal matters at hand. He would have to cede ground on the idea that someone is trans just because they decide to be, or fluid where they change genders at whim, or undefined, non-binary, or the whole host of genders and identities that are more an ideological and social construct than an immutable characteristic like orientation.

He could argue for the dysphoric or he could make an ideological argument to a conservative Supreme Court Justice.

He chose his ideology over the more legally sound argument, that the dysphoric are a separate consideration from those who pursue gender variation based on social and political sensibilities. Strangio could not cede the ground, could not sacrifice his radical notions for the sake of a case advocating for transgender children.

Again and again, Strangio tries to advance his ideology at the expense of the movement he claims to champion. Why? Because he's on a mission. If it helps LGBT people, so be it. If LGBT people have to be screwed over to maintain ideological purity, so be that, too.

His attitudes have been very clear. He is a detriment. If he wants to help legally, great. Go do that. Quietly. Because that mouth does not speak for me or even most people. It has, rather, cost us. And we are just only now seeing those costs. And do you think Strangio will bear those costs? A successful ACLU attorney who's a celebrity in the activist movement? Of course not.

Everyone else will get to pay for the sake of Strangio's purity.

Enough already. Enough with people like this.

We need to be able to get in the trenches and convince people when they are off kilter. And even when they're off kilter, it's better that they're off kilter within the party rather than making additional parties and diluting the ballot.

The repukes have all sorts of nutters. The nutters don't hurt the party cuz they just ignore or minimize them. Maybe it's the ACLU we should be blaming for allowing him to argue rather than putting him in an analysis/research/prep role.

Absolutely do. They should've known far better than what was managed here. But it has also become an increasingly ideological group. How one of their own lawyers runs around talking about banning books, and they don't shitcan him on the spot, is beyond me. Politics and ideology over principle and legal strategy. It's a recurring theme.

I am just so very tired of these people. They're the kind of people who would pilot a ship towards the rocks because, deep down, they don't actually really like the ship that much. And once it breaks apart, they'll be standing on the beach doing fist pumps while surrounded by bodies in the sand. Then they'll nod in self-satisfaction because, hey, they found land.

No one's going anywhere outside of the tent. It's too embedded now. People bought in. This is a pride thing now. The climb down would shatter them. They'll insist on themselves to the bitter end.

But they can be ignored. They can be minimized. They can be left to themselves to mutter in the corner. I am pro-corner.

welcome if they make others uncomfortable because of their differing views.

If yes, do you apply that across the board?

I would.

To get very specific, I'm talking about faculty and administrators who berated and demeaned people - in my presence - not for being bigoted or insensitive but for accidentally using the wrong term. To the point where I - an openly gay person - had to reassure my coworkers who consider themselves allies of LGBTQ people that I welcome and support their efforts at inclusion and education and that I disagreed with the presenter. That's how bad it was and it went on for years.

As a lesbian I am familiar with condescension and bigotry. Well-intentioned accidental misuse of a person's preferred identification is not a sign of bigotry and not something to be publicly shamed. We know the difference between somebody like MTG deliberately dead-naming somebody and an ally's unintentional mistake. At least most of us do.

But some people are so wounded they can't stop themselves from lashing out.

I don't see Dem leaders enforcing rigorous codes of speech. Do you?

Do non-MAGA voters hold Republicans running for office responsible for the hateful rhetoric and domestic terrorism of the far right?

Republicans play by a different set of rules, even though -- or because -- their Dear Leader has flooded the zone with so much shit that his reprehensible lies and stochastic terrorism have been normalized (for the right, but not the left).

The deranged & often incoherent rhetoric, bold-faced lies, juvenile name-calling, and hate he spews is simply no longer newsworthy.

The FAILURE and complicity of the Fourth Estate to effectively sound the alarm is IMO the largest single factor in the rise of Trump.

Since blame must be placed elsewhere, we see endless articles blaming the Democratic Party and "the Left" in general.

Without a doubt, there is considerable room for improvement in Democratic messaging and candidates, but that misses the pont.

Real villains are hoarding wealth and destroying our Constituutional representative democracy. They own corporate media, big tech, and control the Republican Party.

Casting stones at Democrats misses the mark, and focuses justifiable anger in the wrong direction.

If you aren't with 100 percent, you are a transphobe.

I actually am with it all 100 percent, but the reality is a majority of Americans are not and we need to provide them space to be at a 50 percent mark and still be encouraged.

Now the actual transphobes screw em, but we give very little grace or room.

Why are we so vocal on trans women in sports? Why is this such a line for us? Why isn't it something we can put aside for now as we build more trans acceptance overall and then come back to it?

Why didn't we take more of a government shouldn't be involved in parental decisions line on kids? We skipped nuance and went straight to 100 on everything.

Which left us wide open to the worst case examples and scare mongering with no way to maneuver out of it.

They are comfortable with what they are comfortable with.
The old excuse "well, but our friend who's (queer, Trans, Muslim/Jewish/Catholic, undocumented, black, ect...) is different - they are polite, kind, articulate, helpful, honest... You've all heard the excuse why they're against the politics or codifying that person's civil or legal rights - but not that person.

"Why do you all have to be so decisive?"

Even non political things like if it's someone's birthday people will bully a famous person for not posting about it.

My god, you can be as liberal as possible but OMG, question trans rights in sports and you're a horrible person. See what happened to Gavin Newsom.

To be clear, I do support trans rights. But again, the #1 purity test I ever see is from trans activists, because there is no compromise on this issue from trans activists.

Because, that’s what Republicans do. It’s really hard to determine what is good faith vs. bad faith.

For example, people like Charlie Kirk don’t actually care about women’s sports, and, just want all trans people eliminated from the US.

people (even here) will post how individual athletic associations should be able to decide if they permit trans athletes or not.

You (not you personally) do realize that means that some associations won’t permit them?

it depends on their exact criteria they are suing to exclude people.

Also if it's a private association, there may not much that people can do legally.

and frankly I think the ability to sue outside of the context of employment is likely a dead letter.

Even though they know only a tiny tiny tiny portion of people who transition are athletes, they used that issue. And we stupidly decided to die on a hill to defend it instead of our bread and butter issues.

It's like we can't win on this issue

about the only talking point, along with bathrooms, that they have to demonize trans people, and to discriminate against trans people, and to fire trans people, and to make more trans people feel more suicidal, and to rally the angry bigot vote to help move towards a fascist state, and they want to spend more time talking about that then about school shootings and right wing violence and things that would involve them taking some responsibility for their own failed policies, instead of scapegoating other people.

left?

Or are those just fine?

The arguments aren't always from the left, often they are the centrists being angry that everyone isn't far enough toward the "center".

Lots of purity to go around, as it were.

Stupid, idiotic, foolish, unreasonable, irrational, insane, crazy. Seem to be favorite terms used on those to the left of us. These are terms that immediately discount what the other has to say. You can’t reason with someone who has these qualities. Ideology, radical, theoretical, but used as pejoratives designed to erase decades of intellectual thought. Words for ideas not as sensible as ours. It reminds me of sitcom dads who have to talk some sense into their wives and children but don’t need to resort to anything as strenuous as reason or argumentation. This is how many households were run in my youth. I had a distaste for it then and now. It’s not just that the burden of persuasion rests on anyone to the left, there’s a prevalence of pedantic paternalism that’s designed to shut down engagement akin to saying go to your room. We aren’t mature enough, wise enough, manly enough, or pragmatic enough to understand. We just need to know we are being foolish and things are fine the way they are.
The “purity test” criticism is a variation of this tactic where we are told that we are foolish to hold a principle as essential to our worldview. We must either concede or try to argue for both our rationality and our point of view. I’m sure we all have purity tests as to some right or privilege that we could not abide giving up, but it seems the ones we hold dear are sensible and those that others hold are less so, even if those are more germane to their existence. I’m probably in the minority, but I believe consistent challenges to accepted worldviews are what moves humans forward, at least when civil rights are concerned. Much of the worldview most here agree on was once thought radical. We don’t have to blindly except it, but we infantilize radical thought at our peril. I don’t think it is an accident that it took this long for humanity to get where it is now on civil rights issues.

but because some have decided he isn't. One OP declared he voted for Trump, based on...a feeling.

Poster seems to have an issue with Dylan and just seemingly made stuff up.

I haven't listened yet but he was very impressed.

McBride is not wrong. Many on the left will toss out a Democratic ally for the slightest thing. I remember Hakeem Jeffries being vilified on this site several months ago for posting a religious-themed tweet.

My concern was not that it was religious themed. My concern was that it sounded like he was giving up fighting and leaving things in God's hands. I felt that was not what was needed.

I think we all do better when we don't extrapolate that much out of one social media message.

But it's interesting, don't you think, that some of us can be "appalled" by one message, but others won't allow the slightest bit of criticism, to say the least, when someone they deem "perfect" makes several statements with which one can take serious issue.

I refer to Mamdani, of course and his "global intifada" remarks, his claim that his job is not to police antisemitic language, and his support of the uncommitted movement that helped VP Harris lose. Democrats regularly get slammed on this board with the claim that it's "constructive criticism" but certain candidates are off limits to any kind of criticism, it seems.

Just my .02.

I don't think anybody is off limits.

No one is off limits. But I also think it should be actually constructive, not just of the "Dems suck" variety.

He has no right to be surprised when people take offense. I’m disgusted to my inner being with the godbotherers and those who mollycoddle them, most especially when the godbotherer is in Congress and tweets god messages officially. I’m quite convinced such a person can never represent my interests because xtianity precludes any other religion or any nonbeliever from being legitimate.

Very sensitive to this religious stuff right now. I should have included …

from ANYONE in government

Nonsense.

‘Imperfect allies’ would be hateful bigots hostile to transgender Americans.

Tolerating, or remaining silent about, bigotry and hate for perceived political advantage would render Democrats as bad as Republicans, if not worse.

over the whole bathroom issue with Johnson. When she issued a statement saying that she would accept Johnson’s ruling, trans activists came down on her hard. In other words, blaming the victim.

The Republicans have hijacked Christianity and morality. Gays are immoral. Trans are immoral. Abortions are immoral. Socialism is immoral. Groups can be demonized and weaponized. We should be more afraid of trans people and spend more time talking about trans people than guns, white supremacists and mass shootings. They have convinced half of all voters of this. It is completely fucked up. It is brainwashing. It is playing on peoples fears and bigotry. It is winning them angry, motivated, high-turnout voters.

We haven't fought back to make the moral case against this. And we haven't made the moral case that healthcare is essential for all because it is the right thing to do, and incidentally, it is a Christian thing to do. I have never heard lawmakers say this. Same with accepting all people who are different. Accepting that we should love and embrace trans people and gays. That's what Jesus would do. Gun control - that is a moral issue.

As immoral as Republicans are, they win the moral argument because they make a moral case and we don't.

You speak the truth.

Absolutely doesn't speak for us in Congress like I had Hope's for. She really believes ceding her rights to Mike Johnson is representing us

I thought we had lost your voice.

I just kind of accepted this place is not very kind towards us so there's no really no point for having a voice here so I moved it to other places that value it more

There are strong voices for our causes in many other places but I have learned much from you and I am grateful.

Last edited Tue Jul 8, 2025, 12:01 PM - Edit history (1)

Especially bumping the thread to get this shot in…

We get it - you think trans people should not be a concern of the Democratic Party. You can agree with Sarah McBride while also having empathy for trans people who are having our rights taken away. Vercetti is upset for a reason, and, I think all trans people are with the way things are going.

Last edited Tue Jul 8, 2025, 12:58 PM - Edit history (1)

I didn’t realize there was a time limit on when we can and can’t respond to threads. The rest of the point you were attempting to make doesn’t require a response.

for those who don't have the time to watch the video and want to know the basic take

https://www.advocate.com/politics/sarah-mcbride-increase-transgender-support

Again, it's not us who keeps bringing up all these topics. It's the right. All we're doing is defending ourselves and our allies.

The rightwing maggots are OBSESSED.

And yes, the tone used when contradicting these assholes can get a little rough.

I guess in a perfect world we'd just STFU and let them trash and bully everyone.

Link to tweet