Republicans! To the barricades, mes enfants!
As The National Journal noted late last year, in an article entitled It’s Hard Out There For A Bay Area Conservative, “‘Conservatives in Northern California ‘have been beaten into submission,’ says Chris Pareja, host of a weekly political television show in Silicon Valley.” The National Journal recently drilled down further in a Pulitzer Prize-worthy piece of investigative reporting, The Secret Republicans Of Silicon Valley, an exposé of the oppression of the conservative demi-monde in Silicon Valley:
Deep in Silicon Valley, where the free market reigns and the exchange of ideas is celebrated, a subset of tech workers are hiding their true selves. Working as programmers and software engineers, they don’t want the stigma that comes with revealing who they really are.
They’re the tech company employees, startup founders, and CEOs who vote for and donate to Republican candidates, bucking the Bay Area’s liberal supremacy. Fearing the repercussions of associating with a much-maligned minority, they keep their political views fiercely hidden.
…
“Republicans are regarded as assholes,” [a Republican-leaning startup CEO] said. “And I wouldn’t want to be associated with assholes.”
The insults to and oppression of conservatives and Republicans are reprehensible and, in addition, unconstitutional.
When President John F. Kennedy, established, by Executive Order 10925, the President’s Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity, the first recitals stated:
WHEREAS discrimination because of race, creed, color, or national origin is contrary to the Constitutional principles and policies of the United States; and
WHEREAS it is the plain and positive obligation of the United States Government to promote and ensure equal opportunity for all qualified persons, without regard to race, creed, color, or national origin….
Creed is defined by the New Oxford American Dictionary as “a set of beliefs or aims that guide someone’s actions,” and, moreover, as “a system of Christian or other religious belief.” When, exactly, did creed get erased as a class protected from invidious discrimination?
Pfaw! Pflag! It is time for Republicans to fight their way out of the Credal Closet. Time, I say, to take a stand against those who marginalize, stigmatize and oppress us. Republican Pride! Let’s call it LCBTQ, an acronym for Libertarian, Conservative, Big Business, Tea Party, Questioning.
All in for LCBTQ Republican Pride. Begin here!
Republicans, come out of the closet! Trigger warning! I hereby myself take a bold step: outing myself: I am Republican … and Proud.
Let others follow. Jeb? Rand? Ted? Scott? Hello?
Anyone home? Come out, come out, wherever you are!
Imagine Republican Pride Days popping up across America. Republican Pride Flashmobs, Sit-Ins, Boycotts…. Let us design our own flag. Let’s one-up the Other Team’s flag with one showing the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
Theatrical spectaculars, perhaps a Devils In America. Tony Kushner to our rescue?
Lady Gaga? We Republicans were born that way. More than a few of us, myself included, are among your Little Monsters. Surely we deserve your lovely championship? Help us, Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, you’re our only hope!
President Obama recently has called for an end to ‘conversion’ therapies for gay and transgender youth, throwing his support behind efforts to ban such practices by the states. Mr. Obama? I call out to you!
Use that telephone to reprimand MSNBC for its shameful efforts to convert us LCBTQ advocates to the progressive creed! Meanwhile, an Executive Order is in order forbidding our siblings, parents, aunts, uncles, and, yes, children, from bullying us around the Thanksgiving table for our Republican Pride.
I propose a massive Republican Pride Parade, every year, in every major city, and many towns and villages. Imagine the floats.
Leading the parade? A U.S. Chamber of Commerce float with a resplendent CUT CORPORATE TAX RATES, REPEAL THE REGULATIONS! banner held aloft by men in grey flannel suits.
Wall Street’s Float, with Masters of the Universe hoisting a banner proudly proclaiming: TOO BIG TOO FAIL! Lloyd Blankfein, you make our thigh tingle.
Then comes Freedom Partners, a brand new chamber of commerce guided by the shamefully vilified Charles and David Koch, generously committed to bestowing almost a billion dollars on the next presidential election. The goal: to educate the public “about the critical role played by free markets in achieving economic prosperity, societal well-being, and personal happiness.”
Tim Phillips, president of Freedom Partners’ ally Americans for Prosperity, dressed in white tie and tails (connoting Prosperity), graciously waving to the throngs before a banner emblazoned with the Torch of Liberty, is master of this float!
Next bring on the Country Club Republicans’ float, with characters reminiscent of Thurston Howell III and Lovey, reclining languidly, waiving their banner reading: GILLIGAN, FRESHEN OUR MARTINIS, CHOP CHOP. Appalled at the company they are forced to keep, they parade, gamely, as a matter of noblesse oblige. Our gratitude knows no bounds: the Country Club Republicans represent the aristocracy of the contemporary GOP.
Not far behind, a float by our Grumpy Old White Males presided over by Rush Hudson Limbaugh III, puffing on a cigar and brandishing a banner emblazoned with the largest megaphone in the world. Rush extolls his own excellence in journalism and talent on loan from God. Bravo, Rush!
Next up? The Neocons, presided over by former Vice President Dick Cheney waiving a banner proclaiming KEEP NEO-IMPERIALISM ALIVE on a float resembling an aircraft carrier. Aircraft carriers rock! America possesses but a paltry dozen, with merely three more on order. Hard on our heels: India, Italy, and Spain, each with two.
Yes, they are allies, yet alliances may shift. Meanwhile the Neocons keep a wary eye on China and Russia, each of which with, says here, one aircraft carrier. (China’s is a refurbished stripped hulk purchased from Russia and now used exclusively as a training vessel. Take heart. China reportedly is building a real one. Stay vigilant, Bill Kristol!)
And then: come on Full-Spectrum Conservatives! A Conservative Action Project float, with Attorney General Ed Meese III and the Honorable Becky Norton Dunlap presiding, displays a thrilling banner depicting a Three Legged Stool! Ms. Norton Dunlap is dressed as a cat-herd, in best Bo Peep mode, herding the many disparate cats in the incipient LCBTQ movement in generally the same direction. (Except Frank Gaffney, who is playing Inspector Javert, or Clouseau, to Grover Norquist’s Jean Valjean. Frank, steer clear of the Seine.)
Just noting in passing: what’s up with the prevalence of the Roman numeral III behind so many Republican names, Howell, Limbaugh, Meese? Ignore the Urban Legend that it has something to do with King George III. Still… Bush III, anyone? Has a certain Republican dynastic appeal.
Next up, the free-loving libertarians, with Cato Institute, Reason Magazine, FreedomFest.com, and Liberty.me forming an Improvisational Jazz Band, celebrating, as Reason Foundation’s slogan has it, “Free Minds and Free Markets.” Nick Gillespieon saxophone. Jeffrey Tucker on trombone. (Guys, would you give Clapton’s Cocaine a rest, just for the day? The Grumpy Old White Males and several other contingents really believe she does lie.
Following after the libertarians, welcome the float of the Social and Religious Conservatives, fighting against abortion and, in a valiant rear-guard action, fighting the establishment of gay marriage. Brian Brown, with baton, gallantly standing on deck and conducting the NOM orchestra in a rendition of Nearer My God to Thee.
This contingent makes many libertarians nervous. That said, it’s high time that the libertarians man (and woman) (both cis and trans) up and join forces with the SoCons and TheoCons to rally for religious liberty, now under genuinely severe assault.
As the libertarianesque Rand Paul boldly proclaimed: “I tell people the Bill of Rights isn’t for the high school quarterback or the prom queen. The Bill of Rights is for those who are unpopular.” There’s hardly a more defamed and stigmatized minority, right now, than religiously serious Christians and Catholics.
The silence of too many of our libertarian lions about such a heinous assault on the first clause of the First Amendment leeches libertarian credibility. America has no need of limousine libertarians.
Wait! Here comes the Tea Party float. It carries the last known living Tea Partier, Jenny Beth Martin, looking fetching and waving a reproduction Gadsden Flag. And wait. Is she mouthing the name “Ted Cruz?” “Rand Paul?” “Scott Walker?” Sing out, Jenny Beth!
Bringing up the rear: a tiny, raggedy, Supply Side float. There is Steve Moore waving our iconic banner: a river of red ink across an emerald (connoting Greenbacks) field. The legend thereon emblazoned: Economic Growth, Yes! Deficits? Bring ‘Em On!(The rest of the Republicans, along with pretty much everyone else, blame us for the national debt. Might as well own it.)
That’s me, on the Supply Side float, freshening Steve’s martini. I belong to the supply side contingent. Forbes.com is our major redoubt, the Wall Street Journal having thrown in with the eponymous, and much more opulent, Wall Street contingent.) We Supply Siders always have been a tiny outfit. Occasionally, however, we emerge from obscurity and successfully inject economic growth into the political discourse. Jack Kemp, Rest in Peace.
Equitable Prosperity? Bring on the classical gold standard!
Have I missed you, oh closeted reader? That omission was no act of micro-aggression.
That other Pride movement, reacting to a stigma almost as deep as ours, started small. It grew. We too shall grow.
Come out of the closet. Declare yourself Republican and Proud! Discrimination against us is unacceptable.
Time to fight back against the shame and social stigma now being directed at us. “Republican is Good.” We shall prevail.
God bless Garret Johnson, Chris Abrams, and Aaron Ginn for founding Lincoln Labs, a precursor to the Republican Pride movement. Now, time for the full-fledged thing. Time to promote our own version of ‘self-affirmation, dignity, equality rights, visibility, community.”
Time to demand respect for our Credal Diversity. Get ready to celebrate, and militantly advocate for, Republican Pride!