Tempest in a Pee Pot Redux

In June 2015, I posted my first blog article on trans people, and my 5/20/16 blog post was titled Tempest in a Pee Pot. This issue has been in the news again this month, so I am writing about it once more—and in addition, I am referring again (first here) to this month’s Transgender Day of Remembrance.

Sarah McBride (2024)

Sarah McBride (D-Del.) was elected this month to the U.S. House of Representatives. She will be one of 125 women in that position. But Sarah (b. 1990) will be the first trans woman ever to serve in the U.S. Congress—causing what, again, I am calling a “tempest in a pee pot.”

As has been widely reported in the public media this month, another female House member, Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), introduced a resolution on Nov. 18 to ban transgender people from using U.S. Capitol restrooms other than those designated only for their gender as identified at birth.

Mace (b. 1977) described McBride as a “biological man trying to force himself into women’s spaces” and as a “guy in a skirt.”

It is reported (here) that “Nancy Mace’s Christian faith serves as a guiding force in her life. … This unwavering commitment to her beliefs empowers her to speak out against anything that she perceives as conflicting with her faith.” And her faith means saying trans women must use men’s restrooms?!

Not surprisingly, Mace’s position in opposition to Rep. McBride using women’s bathrooms at the Capitol was supported by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga).*¹ Greene has publicly said, "Men [such as Sarah McB.] should be banned from women’s restrooms in every federal building paid for by taxpayers."

Tim McBride was elected student government president in 2011 when he was a sophomore at American University (AU) in Washington, D.C.*² Fifteen months later, the day after he finished that term in office, Tim made a startling announcement in the school newspaper: he was becoming Sarah.*³

I don’t understand how people transition from one gender to another as adults or even why they think it necessary to make such a life-changing decision. But I accept the fact that a small percentage of the population do make that transition and often face hateful discrimination for doing so.

When Tim became Sarah in 2012, she was largely supported by the faculty, staff, and students at a university that broadly affirmed the self-chosen identity of LBGT people. But things nationwide have gotten a lot worse since then, especially for trans people.

But currently, as opinion columnist Michelle Goldberg posted (here) in The New York Times on Nov. 26, “It’s hard to imagine how terrifying it must be to be a trans person, or the parent of one, in America right now.”

Goldberg goes on to say, “Donald Trump and his party, having triumphed in an election in which they demonized trans people, seem hellbent on driving them out of public life.” The title of her article is “There Is No Excuse for the Bullying of Sarah McBride.”

Sarah McBride is only one of some 500,000 trans women in the U.S. That is a large number, but still a very small percentage (about 0.15%) of the nation’s population. Nevertheless, most of those 500k trans women are bullied as Sarah is—and many in ways much worse than by bathroom limitation.

Each year, November 13~19 is designated as Transgender Awareness Week. It leads to Transgender Day of Remembrance on Nov. 20, a day to remember all the trans people who have been murdered in the previous year. In the last five years, around 175 have been killed, 60% of them women.

The anti-trans rhetoric of current national politicians such as the two women mentioned above and the bulk of the leadership of the Republican Party and their MAGA supporters seem to lack recognition of and compassion for hurting people. This is contrary to the love of neighbor proclaimed by Jesus.

As I wrote at the end of my previous blog post, the driving force of my life for the past seventy years (and more) has been, and still is, doing my utmost to be a faithful disciple of Jesus Christ. My support for Sarah McBride and for all trans people facing hateful opposition is based on that commitment.

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*¹ Greene (b. 1974) is another problematic Christian. She was reared as a Roman Catholic, but in 2011 she was rebaptized and became a member of an evangelical megachurch in her home state of Georgia.

*² Here is a link from “The Eagle,” AU’s student newspaper, telling about Tim’s election with some of his background and plans for the coming year and beyond graduation. There is also a large picture of him.

*³ This link is to a June 2012 transcript of AU’s radio broadcast telling of Tim’s transition to Sarah. A picture of Sarah at that time is included with that article.  

Do MAGA Christians Support Trump Because of Malice or Stupidity—or Something Else?

Recently I learned about the adage called Hanlon’s Razor: “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”

The author of an article who cited those words wrote that he knows “lots of MAGA Christians but his efforts to understand ‘why’ they honor Trump have been futile. Since he has failed to find other reasons, he thinks that perhaps it must, indeed, be either because of malice or stupidity.

However, I don’t agree that it must be one or the other of those two choices. 

As most of you know well, I am not a MAGA Republican supporter. But I think that to attribute the reason that many Christians do support Trump and the MAGA movement as being due either to malice or stupidity is too harsh and inaccurate.

What can we say, then, about why there are so many MAGA Christians who do support Trump? That was an issue that Thinking Friend Jerry Jumper wrote/asked about in an email I received from him last month, and many others of you likely puzzle over that same question.

What could it be other than malice or stupidity? Several other reasons are feasible. and I think that the percentage of people who vote for Trump because of malice or stupidity is markedly smaller than those who did and will vote for Trump for other reasons.

Here are five reasons that might explain why many self-identified Christians have voted for Trump and are likely to do so again this fall, and this list is not exhaustive:

◈ Nostalgia. Many people who remember the 1950s—and still live in rural communities that fondly recall then as the “good old days” with an esteemed Republican President—wish that the U.S. could be like it was then. Thus, they are drawn to the Make America Great Again slogan.

◈ Fear. Closely related to the above is the fear of things changing for the worse. Nostalgic people often fear the loss of cherished values of the past. There is a close connection between religious and political conservatism, and one subsection of my book on fundamentalism is titled “The Fear Factor.”*¹

◈ Consistency. Some voters say they’ve always been (or ever since Reagan have been) a Republican, so naturally they vote for the Republican candidate. This was the sort of response June got from close relatives when she asked why they voted for Trump in 2016.

◈ Disinformation. Many people get misleading/erroneous information from “news” sources such as Fox News, “talk radio,” and publications such as Epoch Times.*² Last week I listened to the former some each evening—and was amazed at how their “news” differed from the “mainstream” media.*³

◈ Misinterpretation. Influential conservative evangelical Christians such as Pastor Robert Jeffress (First Baptist Church, Dallas), Ralph Reed (Faith and Freedom Coalition), and Franklin Graham (Samaritan’s Purse), among many others, have fostered misinterpretation of what the Bible says, or doesn’t say, about abortion, gay rights, etc.

Many people who support Trump for the above reasons may, indeed, lack sufficient understanding and/or information. But that doesn’t mean they are stupid. And while such reasons may trigger malicious actions by some, surely those who are MAGA supporters because of malice are few.

So, we who are steadfast opponents of Trump and MAGA Republicans need to beware of fostering arrogant, condescending, and/or belittling attitudes toward people we disagree with politically. Neighbor-love must be extended to them also, and that includes not labeling them as being either malicious or stupid.

Even the leaders of the Christian Right who for decades have sought to change this country into a theocracy, as vividly portrayed in Bad Faith, the new (2024) documentary about “Christian nationalism,” were certainly not stupid nor acting out of malice from their (mistaken) point of view.*⁴

But make no mistake about it: seeking to understand and being friendly toward MAGA Christians definitely doesn’t mean agreeing with their misguided views or minimizing the danger lurking under their unwise support of a wholly unworthy candidate for President.  

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*¹ Fed Up with Fundamentalism: A Historical, Theological, and Personal Appraisal of Christian Fundamentalism (2007, 2020), pp. 100~103.

*² Here is the link to an informative, and rather long, article about The Epoch Times.

*³ One evening last week, the top story at 8 p.m. was the campus unrest at Columbia University and elsewhere. Repeatedly they were referred to as “pro-Hamas” activities. The next morning the mainstream websites invariably called that unrest “pro-Palestinian.” That is a marked difference.

*⁴ This film traces the development of the Christian Right in the U.S. from the early 1970s to the present. June and I rented it from Amazon Prime and watched it last Friday evening. We thought it was a helpful film, fairly done but clear in showing the ongoing threat of Christian nationalism that seeks to overthrow USAmerican democracy. I highly recommend the viewing of, and sharing information about, that fine documentary.

 

 

Is the Republican Party Dead?

This is not the blog post I first intended to write for today. Last month I happened to see that Ralph Nadar was celebrating his 90^th birthday (on Feb. 27), and I planned to write about him. But my plan changed when I saw this headline: “Trump Jr. says ‘MAGA movement is the new Republican Party’.”

Various voices over the last few years have spoken about the death of the Republican Party. Surprisingly, one of those voices was that of Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.).

In November 2022, CBS News quoted Sen. Hawley as saying, “The Republican Party, as we have known it, is dead.” That was an expression of his disappointment about the outcome of the mid-term elections. Democrats maintained that those results were because of voters’ displeasure with Trump.

Since then, though, Trump and MAGA Republicans have become much stronger. Last week, “Donald Trump Jr. mused that the ‘Make America Great Again’ movement has replaced the old guard of the Republican Party.”

That New York Post article went on to cite Trump Jr. declaring, “That [old-school establishment] Republican Party frankly no longer exists outside of the D.C. Beltway.”

With Trump Sr. replacing the leadership of the Republican National Committee with his hand-picked supporters, including his daughter-in-law, the traditional GOP has essentially become the MAGA Party.

As the March 25 issue of Time magazine says (on p. 7) under the title, “It’s Trump’s Party,”  “The MAGA movement’s takeover of the GOP is now complete.” In that sense, it may be correct to say that the Republican Party as it has existed for the past century is dead.

What are traditional Republicans or opponents of Democrats to do? That seems to be the dilemma many U.S. voters find themselves in now.

Come November 5, one of two old, White men will be re-elected POTUS (assuming they are both still alive and well then, which is by no means assured.) But what if you cannot bear to vote for “Sleepy Joe” or “Sleazy Donald”?

That’s where Ralph Nadar enters the picture. According to Wikipedia, Nadar is an “American political activist, author, lecturer, and attorney noted for his involvement in consumer protection, environmentalism, and government reform causes, and a perennial presidential candidate.”

The latter is the only aspect of Nadar’s career that I will consider here, for Nadar’s running as a third-party candidate in 2000 is quite likely the major reason George W. Bush was elected President over Al Gore.

It is difficult to fathom how much better off this country, and the world, would be if Gore had been elected in 2000. As you may remember, Gore did receive the most popular votes, but thanks to the Supreme Court’s dubious decision, Florida’s electoral votes went to Bush and he became the 43^rd POTUS.

In that decisive state of Florida, Bush defeated Gore by only 537 votes. Nader received 97,421 votes in Florida, which led to justifiable claims that Nader was responsible for Gore's defeat—or rather, the Democrats and Independents who voted for Nadar were those most responsible for Bush’s election.

What does all this mean for 2024? Among other things, it means that those—and most especially those who live in the so-called “swing stages” of Ariz., Ga., Mich., N.C., Nev., Penn., and Wis.—must beware of voting for a third-party candidate if they don’t want Trump to win the election.

Some speak of voting for the lesser of two evils, and others say if both candidates are “evil,” they cannot and will not vote for either.

But it seems quite clear to me that it is far better to vote for the better of two evils than to not vote at all. Also, it is far better to vote for the lesser of two evils rather than for a third-party candidate that will potentially lead to the election of the greater of the two evils.

And mark it down: it is nearly 100% certain that either the Democratic or the Republican candidate will win the 2024 presidential election.

If Trump’s MAGA party is the only alternative to the Democratic Party, which seems to be the case now that the traditional Republican Party is the same as dead, I admonish you to vote for Biden’s re-election and for Democratic Senators and Representatives. Democracy itself and so much more is at stake.