Your Checkbook Won’t Save You

Not all Americans deserve life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. According to reports, some House Republicans are trying to torpedo a U.S.-Canada-Mexico trade pact, if LGBTQIA protections remain.

Nearly 40 House GOP members signed a letter sent to the White House.

“As a sovereign nation, the United States has the right to decide when, whether, and how to tackle issues of civil rights, protected classes, and workplace rights,” the letter reads.

“A trade agreement is no place for the adoption of social policy. It is especially inappropriate and insulting to our sovereignty to needlessly submit to social policies which the United States Congress has so far explicitly refused to accept.”

The Trump regime is intent on creating a real-life Handmaid’s Tale — with healthy dollops of homophobia and transphobia. So, this move isn’t startling. Calling the United States sovereign seems more about stoking Trump and his minions’ delusions that he is sovereign. But their stance also lays bare the raw desire to hold America, hostage, in a makeshift theocracy.

That raw desire has never been under wraps. It’s only been totally underestimated. The Moral Majority gave birth to conservatives craving a theocratic utopia, where their version of God reigned. Liberals laughed them off for years.

Our complacency throughout the Clinton administration blinded us to the reality that emerged after President Barack Obama’s election. Conservative evangelicals and white supremacists united to defeat liberalism in the form of a Black man — by any means necessary.

That’s why a Birther claim peddler occupies the White House. His followers’ mantra that he “tells it like it is” only applies to one revelation — anyone not straight and White is the enemy of “We The People.” The words begin the U.S. Constitution, but they weren’t written with anyone but white, straight, and land-owning men in mind.

Many alleged patriots wished that was still the case. Given that an administration and president are running roughshod over the Constitution, some leaders want to take us back 242 years — minus the cotton and plantations if we’re lucky. The latter is what makes the support Trump gets from some people in our community curious, to say the least.

For some, alleged economic success is worth throwing their LGBTQIA siblings under the bus. Until former U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ ouster, he created and oversaw a religious freedom task force with the express purpose of rendering our community invisible.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) now perpetuates an alternative fact — transgender people don’t exist, thanks to the Trump administration. Transgender, fetus, and diversity are among the words the CDC is forbidden to use. How long before words beginning with L, G, and B are banned?

Some LGBTQIA siblings — I’m looking at you Log Cabin Republicans — might want to spend less time counting money. Your checkbook won’t save you.