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This has been a very contoversial topic this election, especially with the recent shooting in Orlando and the gay marriage ruling last year. Both of the leading candidates want to support the LGBTQ community but their other political stances conflict it.(Trump with his traditional marriage only platform and Clinton with her Pro-Islam platform) What are your thoughts? Coming from a straight person, I believe a Trump is more fit, considering the extreme anti-gay sentiment throughout Islam.

While Islam may be worse about gay rights than Trump, I don't see any evidence that Clinton will put any Muslims in a position to harm gay rights. On the other hand Trump himself will be in a position of power. Given that he will be able to nominate at minimum 1 Supreme Court justice but probably more he could potentially do serious damage.

I think Hillary's is more LGBT friendly. When you say pro-Islam, it doesn't mean she is Muslim and is gonna force any of their doctrines on the American people. Plus, it's entirely possible to have Muslims who accept or at least tolerate homosexuality, and when you consider there are actually some Muslim countries where transexuality is fine and encouraged for those who are gay.

On the flip side though, I imagine that it could lead to some exclusivity when it comes to punishing Muslims for their crimes against homosexuals.

Now taking in consideration Trump actually enforcing or doing something about making marriage traditional, it actually undoes and undermines work towards gay marriage. Plus, we all know, even if a minority, Trump has those rabid right wing people and other arsehole supporters like KKK members, and a landscape where they can thrive is definitely not a good thing for gay and transgender people.

However, a likely possibility that Trump is just appealing to certain groups wants and wont fulfil their desires and his opinions change daily, depending on who's vote he needs. And while this is just pure speculation, it seems to me like Trump doesn't really want to force his beliefs and make social changes, and is more likely to mess up your economy for his own personal gain.

{ I don’t see any evidence that Clinton will put any Muslims in a position to harm gay rights }

Letting an unchecked flood of them in the country seems to help. The pack in Minnesota is very vocal lately about Sharia being superior to US law, and let's not forget literally a week ago one of them went on a stabbing spree in a mall there. She also feels it's very racist and unnecessary to stop and/or examine closely anyone who takes a vaycay to the Middle East for a couple months then comes back with a newfound appreciation for Islam, a la Omar (ya know, that guy who slaughtered 50 LGBT in a club).

Even if Trump won and nominated a super conservative SC judge, the result would be a tie and the decision would stand. A Dem justice would have to die while he's in office to gain a conservative majority, and even then Anthony Kennedy is a GOP justice who voted with the Dems on gay marriage. & Trump is more pro-religious freedom than he is anti-LGBT. More likely, private small businesses would stop being forced to offer services they don't feel comfortable offering, like gay wedding cakes and women's haircuts.

I honestly don't believe either of the candidates is personally against LGBT rights. Clinton has to be pro-LGBT since she desperately needs LGBT-supporting voters. Trump is more enigmatic since his opinions change as the wind blows, but the impression I get is that he's pro-LGBT (or at least doesn't want to abridge LGBT rights that currently exist), but doesn't want to say it outright out of fear of losing the far-right vote.

Also, kind of tangential, but why is it suddenly Muslims presenting a huge threat to the gays in America? Even if there were a huge, sudden wave of immigration they'd barely make it over 1% of the population. They have no voting power and thus no real influence in politics. There are literally millions more homophobic Christians in this country than there are Muslims (homophobic or otherwise), and those homophobic Christians are invariably Republican.

A Republican Christian is likely to vote against you or hold a sign up at your funeral in the extreme cases, whereas a Muslim fresh out of Syria is likely to end your life. Plus fundamental Christians as a voting bloc are disappearing quicker than the middle class, atheists have become the largest religious voting bloc in both parties and are growing as the younger generations move away from religion as a whole.

@Not Snickerway Not saying that they will be a huge threat to gays, however, the level of extremism and fundamentalism in Islam is on a whole other level than that of American Christianity. Equating fundamentalist Christians and fundamentalist Muslims is a gross over simplification of things.

The absolute worst American Christians have to offer is the WBC, who, as much as I despise them with every fiber in my being, only stick to protests and don't violently attack their opponents. In the Muslim community however, you can easily find those who will resort to mass murder for their religion. There are many reasons beyond the actual religion themselves for this difference, but since that is not the topic I won't go into it (maybe I'll make my own thread)

In terms of who will do more damage to the LGBT community, I don't see either exactly helping them too much, but I don't see either of them destroying everything they've worked for.

Trump, while running as Republican, is only using the party name for votes and doesn't strictly adhere to the Republican platform as much as he does his own, so saying he's going to give the Republicans what they want just because he's their candidate is ignoring what Trump really is. I haven't seen him say anything particularly anti-LGBT myself, and as Lisa pointed out, there is limited amount of damage he could do, even as President.

Clinton's pro-Islam stance doesn't automatically negate any pro-LGBT stance she has. She, like a lot of people, are focusing on the good Muslims who don't blow things up and demand Sharia law be American law. This is just what the Left side of politics have been doing the past few years, and she might just be saying she's pro-Muslim for the left vote anyway, since you can't really trust her to stick to a position.

Regardless, I cant possibly see letting in refugees undoing any political ground LGBT have gained since they won't have political power, and I am confident even the most Left side of the country isn't going to convert to Sharia law just by them being around them. However, there is still the threat of more Omar's making it in and launching more attacks, not just on LGBT but on any group they feel their religion abhors. As much as it pains be to say it, it might take repeated attacks on the LGBT community by Muslims before the country, as a whole, realizes that the Islam religion, and the Muslim world in general, if filled with murderous extremists and that ignoring them for the sake of progressiveness is costing lives and perpetuating the problem.

In short, I don't see either Trump or Clinton turning the country back to the 90s in regards to this issue, but I also don't see either of them pushing the country forward either. Personally, I feel there are bigger things at stake in this election and that the LGBT issue isn't something to focus on since it's something the candidates aren't focusing on.

In the long run, letting Muslims in creates a time bomb. Most never assimilate regardless of what country they colonize, instead staying in their ghetto communities that just keep growing. However, the US is a huge country, so it could take a really long time for them to form a sizable minority, I suppose. And I'm pretty sure Hillary is more LGBT friendly. So I think it all comes down to whether you care more about today or the future.

Most of what I heard about Trump is he thinks LGBT people deserve rights it's just he thinks it should be decided locally which is honestly pretty reasonable. Like Trump in general has a lot of more centrist or liberal opinions but he puts them all under the premise of "it has to be local" which I respect. But I don't respect how flip floppy he is and how often he lies about everything. At least Hillary's flops are gradual Trump contradicts himself multiple times within a week.

So like in general I prefer Trump to Hillary but I still think both are steaming mounds of shit. Trump just happens to be a steaming mound of shit that's 2 inches shorter.

So to bring up my fav (or more like who I dislike the least as politics ends up being by nature), Johnson is pretty indifferent to it all since obviously libertarian. In the past he's opposed restrictive shit like Don't Ask Don't Tell and gay marriage bans and in general he says a right like that shouldn't be taken by the government.

But he does say religion should have some kind of self determination in deciding what marriage means to them, it's just it should all stay out of the government meaning of marriage. He says "the government should get out of the marriage business" which I also believe in. Yet again Johnson is a pretty reasonable dude. Vote Dat Gary.

The matter was already settled by SCOTUS in 2013. There's only two ways to change that: SCOTUS flip flopping or a constitutional amendment. Only two amendments have ever been passed specifically to overturn a SCOTUS ruling (11th and 13th). It would be nigh impossible to get an amendment passed on gay marriage, just as it would for any other current hot button issue (guns, abortion, etc.), which was the whole point of making the process difficult.

So that leaves a flip flop. First, a conservative majority would be needed. Kennedy already voted against it, so you need to fill Scalia's seat and have one of the liberals die--and I do mean die because none of them will have any plans of retiring if Trump's president.

Next, assuming the Senate approves the nominees and doesn't bork, you need to have an anti-gay marriage lawsuit slither its way up the courts, being rejected the whole way since they'd defer to case law. Then SCOTUS gets it and bans gay marriage… except probably not.

Roberts and them really had no issue with gay marraige. They were concerned about a Dread Scott kind of issue happening--SCOTUS putting it's foot down over a controversial issue before the public has decided. They loved the popular sovereignty angle that Michigan and the dozens of others had been using. Let the states' citizens decide what happens with it. They didn't want to ban gay marriage, they wanted to leave it up to referendums and state amendments.

If SCOTUS flip flops, they'd likely revert to that. And given the public's changing perception of gay marriage, it's likely only a handful of states would still actually ban it. Certainly not good for LGBT, but not this apocalyptic vision some people seem to have.

I don't really think Hillary's pro-Islam stance is altruistic. I think it's more or less a counterpoint to Trump to gain votes. Empty words to be unfulfilled in office. Hey, sometimes there's a benefit to being the business-as-usual candidate.

Sure she has Saudi money backing her, but that's not really unique to her or the Democrats. If Trump gets elected, you can be sure Saudi money's still going to flow into Washington.

The whole Trump thing has been interesting as far as him being a very non-traditional conservative candidate. An interesting NPR piece, before the primaries, on a kid who found Trump as a candidate that wasn't explicitly anti-LGBT without completely disappointing his pro-Cruz, conservative parents by choosing a liberal candidate.

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/580/thats-one-way-to-do-it?act=1#play

Granted, I don't know how much of what Trump says (or doesn't say) holds much bearing with what he'll do. I'll guess that even if he doesn't have anything to say on the subject, some of the people he'll bring in will. But lisa is right, social conservatives are dying out as the Republicans realize their true strength (from a voting standpoint) is fiscal. At worst I see dead silence to any LGBT related controversy that arises on a local level.

Correction, the source provides that non-religious as a bigger voting block. While similar ideologies, Atheist and Agnostics still differ in their main understanding. Non-religious can also be a term applied to those who believe in a god but don't file it under any organized religion.
Pew's Smith said. "It could be the 'nones' are not connected, almost by definition, to religious institutions, which can play an important role in spurring turnout and interest in politics."

I forgot to mention, that if Kasich is to be believed Trump is planning on letting his VP run a lot of the domestic and foreign policy. Pence is a fundamentalist Christian who has demonstrated in the past that he has no problem screwing over LGBT people in the name of religion.

The matter was already settled by SCOTUS in 2013

Same sex marriage isn't the only issue LGBTQ people face.

This. Everyone seems to forget that it isn't just Trump that gets in if he gets elected, it's Pence and whoever Trump nominates to the SC, plus the power that goes to a red congress without vetoes. Pence should be terrifying to anyone with any progressive ideals. FFS he's said DICK FUCKING CHENEY would be his VP role model.

{ Same sex marriage isn’t the only issue LGBTQ people face. }

& Trump is not an obstacle to any of those issues. He (nor Pence, the VP is fuckin useless, Pence is less of a threat to everybody tied up as VP than as a governor) wouldn't even be involved in any new laws Congress decided to bring up, if they tried to do something on a federal level which is typically resisted (hence gay marriage had to go to the SC, Congress couldn't get a 100% denial or 100% acceptance from the States of their own power). They refuse to take action on issues conservatives actually want to see action taken on and they have the majority right now, they don't need to wait until Obama is gone to start passing anti-LGBT legislation, if they were going to.

A lot of high profile GOPers have even stated that there's "no backing up" on gay rights (was likening them to parking lot spike strips, can't back up without catastrophe, you can only go forward over them).

The Democrats, on the other hand, have a mass of congressional support for all of the things I previously listed that makes them considerably more dangerous to the LGBT community than Donald Trump's potential administration.

Sorry I'm late, I intended to post many days ago but D.C. is a bit more fun to look at.

I'm gonna break down this entire debate and give my thoughts.

FADA

The First Amendment Defense Act (FADA) is a bill which keeps the government from doing discriminatory actions against people or corporation for acting on the religious belief or moral conviction that sex acts are for marriage only, or that marriage is only one man and one woman. It defines discriminatory action to include things like "disallow a deduction of any charitable contribution made to or by such person", or cancel contracts with because of acting on such viewpoints.

There's a lot of fuzz and vagueness surrounding the whole debate for this, as far as I can tell, so I'm trying my best here to interpret it all, but please keep that in mind. Feel free to do your own research and fact-checking.

While some of you may like this idea, try to remember that the LGBTQ community isn't so fond of people who fire them for existing, and they are less fond of those people getting away with it, but basically every other protection (e.g. you can't fire people for being black) exists to keep them from doing that.

It is, plain and simple, an elevation of certain religious views above others, which may run into some issues with the First Amendment, ironically. I'll get to that in the next section.

This relates to the election because Trump has pledged to sign it.

If Congress considers the First Amendment Defense Act a priority, then I will do all I can to make sure it comes to my desk for signatures and enactment.

Meanwhile, Clinton is going in the opposite direction.

Hillary will work with Congress to pass the Equality Act, continue President Obama’s LGBT equality executive actions, and support efforts underway in the courts to protect people from discrimination on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation in every aspect of public life.

The Equality Act is a bill which would amend the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to include sex, gender identity, and sexual orientation as groups you can't discriminate against.

Hopefully, you see why this is a point for Hillary in terms of "who is better for the LGBTQ community".

Supreme Court

Let's assume that the Supreme Court does matter, for some reason or another.

In this assumption, there are two sides to the coin: that Trump would replace more than one candidate (as no matter how he does it, it's unlikely he could get anyone substantively farther right than Scalia on this issue onto the SC), and that Clinton would put at least one substantially left-wing judge on the SC.

If Trump replaced one of the left-leaning judges or Kennedy, that'd shift the Court from a somewhat "balanced" viewpoint to a more right-leaning court. This would include possibly going against the path the government has tried to take in interpreting Title IX to include anti-discrimination measures for transgender students, instead ruling that Title IX only covers plain sex discrimination.

A Clinton court, on the other hand, with at least one more liberal justice (by replacing Scalia), would likely interpret Title IX to include transgender students.

Given the current amount of coverage and debate this has caused, I would say this is one of the two biggest concerns about the Supreme Court and LGBTQ issues this election. The other is FADA.

You see, some have argued FADA runs into issues with the First Amendment because it elevates two religious beliefs (the one of which we're interested about, that marriage is for a man and a woman only) above others, which seems like a violation of the spirit of the law, if not the letter.

A left-leaning court would likely argue that it breaks the First Amendment. A right-leaning court might argue that the bill is fine. I'm confident that each of those cases are more likely than the reverse.

I'd like to revisit the assumptions at the top real quick. While it's clear a Clinton Court would likely lean left, it's a debate if a Trump Court would lean right. Some have argued that it wouldn't.

I disagree with this assessment. The Washington Post wrote an article on February 13th this year which is relevant.

The average age at which justices retire, you may remember from this April 2014 piece we wrote, is 78.7. Right at this moment, three justices are over that mark: Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Antonin Scalia and Anthony Kennedy.

While the article says that maybe it isn't something to worry about, the reverse holds true – maybe it is. Ginsburg is the oldest, at 83 years old. That is well past the average age. With a life expectancy of 81 years for women in 2014, you do have to wonder if Ginsburg, well-known for being outspoken about her liberal views, will even live over the next 4 years.

Refugees

This is kind of the true crux of this debate. Is it dangerous to let refugees in from other countries on the level Clinton has proposed, for the LGBTQ community? And, is it a higher risk than what a Trump presidency may bring (based off of what I've already covered)?

Well, firstly, if there's evidence that refugees are a risk to the lives of LGBTQ people in significant proportions, then obviously, yes, it is a higher risk. I feel inclined to assume that anything less than physical harm would be inconsequential in the big picture, due to the fact that an increase of 620k refugees (an extrapolation assuming she wanted to repeat the action every four years, and did so – the most extreme reasonable possibility) is an increase of about 0.2% of the population, according to my math. So the question comes down to this: Will the amount of people Clinton proposes to bring in introduce people who will kill or seriously harm LGBTQ people?

I have legitimately spent like half an hour, at this point, searching for some facts to make some kind of viewpoint off of. There's so many claims in this thread, but no sources for the vast majority, and none I see that'd help me.

There is the mention of the Pulse shooting (at least twice), but we do have to remember we have about 3.3 million Muslims in the US and that even if you added together every single Muslim who committed a major act of violence in the U.S., it still would be an amazingly small percentage. He also wasn't a refugee.

So, I must point out that without evidence, arguments don't really have much weight. "We don't know" isn't an argument, and searching for over an hour at this point, I'm not finding much to convince me either way.

My View

In the end, I haven't found much in the way of proving that the one argument Trump had going for him – that refugees are dangerous for the LGBTQ community – is a good argument. (There's not much going the other way either.) On the other hand, there are a couple legitimate (in my opinion) lines of criticism against Trump in this area.

I would judge this as leans Clinton. The only way I can see Trump being a better candidate than Clinton for LGBTQ people is if refugees were a legitimate threat to life or limb for them, and I just… don't see anything.

I'd also like to take a moment to respond to some things people have said, directly.

{ Same sex marriage isn’t the only issue LGBTQ people face. }
& Trump is not an obstacle to any of those issues.

See FADA and Title IX.

The absolute worst American Christians have to offer is the WBC, who, as much as I despise them with every fiber in my being, only stick to protests and don’t violently attack their opponents.

and

A Republican Christian is likely to vote against you or hold a sign up at your funeral in the extreme cases, whereas a Muslim fresh out of Syria is likely to end your life.

While maybe if you take the only the direct, literal meaning of your words, you are right, the fact of the matter is Christians have committed horrible hate crimes against the LGBTQ community.

A transgender Evansville woman shot in the face Sunday told police that her alleged attacker, who identifies with a black separatist group, shouted a homophobic slur during the assault.

Gerald Duane Lewis, 26, is accused of shooting 55-year-old Crystal Raquel Cash at 715 N. First Ave. On his Facebook page, Lewis claims membership in Israel United in Christ, which the Southern Poverty Law Center has identified as a hate group.

This also fails to account for the lesser cases that occur. About 19% of hate crimes reported to the FBI in 2014 were related to sexual orientation, including anti-transgender bias. (About 1.5% of that was due to anti-heterosexual bias.)

Hate crimes are defined include intimidation, property damage, simple assault, aggravated assault, and various other minor crimes that compose less than a percent of all total crimes.

It would be absurd to think that simple or aggravated assault (if you wanted to limit it down to that) never happened to anyone in the LGBTQ community by Christians.

Edit: I wrote this over a period of 2 hours from 11:30 p.m. to 1:30 a.m. What am I doing.

FADA: ensures religious organizations can't have tax exemptions withheld or be denied federal benefits afforded to non-profits (which the IRS was caught red handed doing), and that effects the rights of LGBT people……. how?

& we can talk at length about the faults with Title IX and what more recent liberal interpretations have done to college campuses especially. Where would you like to start?

{ the fact of the matter is Christians have committed horrible hate crimes against the LGBTQ community. }

You can ask all the Islamic majority countries if they think terror is righteous or Sharia is mandatory and you'll get at least somewhat different answers, but every single one of them will tell you the homos have to die. There is no Christian law that advocates death for homosexuals. The African Israelite who shot the transgender woman yelled a homophobic slur, he didn't yell IN THE NAME OF JESUS I VANQUISH YOU! The culture Hillary wants to bring in by the hundreds of thousands is the one that associates holiness with slaughtering an LGBT crowd. I'd rather have to drag someone through the court system to prosecute them for harassment than have my family dragged through the court system to claim my wrongful death payout after the next terrorist attack. like wtf how do you even compare these things?

I'm just going to play Devil's Advocate for Rivers for the sake of it. I'm not very decisive on most politics and this is included. The anti-discrimination laws are in a few ways completely worthless. When you create anti-discrimination laws for hiring and firing 2 big problems come up. The first is the fact that an employer is usually allowed to fire for any other reason. It is very easy for a bigoted employer to just fire someone on the basis of them being LGBT while masking it as something else. Very very easy.

The other problem is if an employer actually has to reject hiring or firing of an LGBT person or whatever they will become paranoid. If they hire or fire someone who is very touchy or sue-happy for completely legitimate reasons but they happen to be in a protected group they might come under fire for just doing their job as a manager. It's not worth it to not hire or fire someone if it's a risk, skewing the job process.

So are these laws really worth it? If someone is bigoted they will get around it and non-bigoted people will be punished in a wary system. The only actual solution to discrimination is for individuals to stop discriminating and not for the government to coddle them into it.

Another point which Lisa brought up is that extending title 9 comes with its own problems. Title 9 I've seen has been used to extend the definition of rape beyond any reasonable bounds. I don't think extending it to queer people will exactly directly effect that (but it effects what I stated above) but title 9 isn't all fun and games is what I'm trying to say.

And all this leads me again I know sorry to the Johnson man. He wouldn't impose specific protection laws but at the same time he would not really try to get in the way. But obviously Johnson won't win.

Trump as has been established mostly will not be able to do anything negative to lgbt rights as a president. Only congress and local governments like in NC really have the power to fuck stuff up. SCOTUS won't really do anything it's not like they're going to reverse the marriage ruling maybe not ever, and if they did it'd be in a reasonable way like removing the word "marriage" from government and giving it back to religion while still offering couples of all sexualities equal legal union benefits. That is if they reverse the ruling at all which I don't think will happen period.

Almost forgot, when it comes down to the refugee thing I dunno immigration is such a gray topic possible my most indecisive social topic and its own realm basically. Rivers is right in that the population shift for Hillary's proposed refugee quota is minimal. But the argument also is usually these Muslims clump together in communities and sometimes ghettos that have been found in Europe to often be violent or even internally operate on Sharia law. Any openly LGBT person who dares be in these places has a lot lower chance of staying safe than in most places. But then again in any ghetto LGBT people are probably constantly less safe we don't know if there's a difference.

And as Rivers pointed out Pulse was not a refugee just a Muslim. In fact much big terroristic acts seem to never be connected to refugees but people who were already in the country even 2nd generation people. This really makes things weirder. But this is becoming a mess I shouldn't have even brought up immigration lol fuck this.