U.S.A. Republican Project 2025 Manifesto Attacked For "Dehumanizing Language" Towards LGBTQ Americans

[Webster]

(The Guardian) An exhaustive manifesto for the next conservative US president produced by Project 2025, an initiative led by the hard-right Heritage Foundation, uses "dehumanising language" about LGBTQ+ Americans too extreme even for candidates currently seeking the Republican presidential nomination, a leading advocate said.

"The dehumanising language is consistent with the way the right talks about LGBTQ+ people overall," said Sasha Buchert, director of the Non-Binary and Transgender Rights Project for Lambda Legal.

"They're never talking about transgender people or gay and lesbian people, it's always referring to them as an ideology of some kind, or an 'ism'. There's no humanity involved … Not even the presidential candidates in the Republican debates are embracing this kind of rhetoric."

Donald Trump is the clear leader of that Republican race, despite facing 91 criminal indictments and multiple civil suits. Primary candidates have eagerly embraced anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric, particularly over state anti-trans laws and the place of LGBTQ+ issues in public education. This summer, however, Trump's closest polling rival, Ron DeSantis, was forced on to the defensive over an online video that used harsh imagery and language to accuse Trump of being too soft on LGBTQ+ issues.

By its own description, Project 2025 is the work of "a broad coalition of over 70 conservative organisations", aiming to shape the presidential transition should a rightwing candidate beat Joe Biden next year.

In the words of Paul Dans, its director, Project 2025 is "systematically preparing to march into office and bring a new army, aligned, trained, and essentially weaponised conservatives ready to do battle against the deep state".

Such language may echo conspiracy-tinged rants by Trump and his supporters, but that "army" has produced something solid: Mandate for Leadership: the Conservative Promise, a 920-page document that sets out policy wishes across the breadth of the federal government.

US hard-right policy group condemned for ‘dehumanising’ anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric

Project 2025, which seeks to ‘march into office’ with conservative ‘army’, accused of ‘far-right desire to turn America back to the 20s’

www.theguardian.com

 

[Raine]

Nothing shocking here, though I'm pushing the doubt button more than a little bit on "Not even the presidential candidates in the Republican debates are embracing this kind of rhetoric." There may be clownshoes up and down the aisle, but, it's been pretty clear to us what's been being said and done.

Anyway, escalation is the name of the game. People are squeamish about the word genocide but that's the gameplan.

 

[Webster]

Nothing shocking here, though I'm pushing the doubt button more than a little bit on "Not even the presidential candidates in the Republican debates are embracing this kind of rhetoric." There may be clownshoes up and down the aisle, but, it's been pretty clear to us what's been being said and done.

Anyway, escalation is the name of the game. People are squeamish about the word genocide but that's the gameplan.

Its' the Overton Line; walk up to it, step over it and dare the opposition to push you back.
They don't, so you step over another line and another. Wash, rinse and repeat.

 

[Smacktard]

Anyway, escalation is the name of the game. People are squeamish about the word genocide but that's the gameplan.

I think the aim is make LGBTQ+ rights "the" divisive topic so that regular people spend all of their time and energy fighting for/against that, instead of a common enemy like billionaires, bankers, the 1% that own the country. Divide and conquer.

 

[Raine]

I think the aim is make LGBTQ+ rights "the" divisive topic so that regular people spend all of their time and energy fighting for/against that, instead of a common enemy like billionaires, bankers, the 1% that own the country. Divide and conquer.

Always is, yeah. And basically always works because unless it directly affects them, people aren't so quick to notice/care.

See also: Abortion, "illegal" immigration, greed-masked-as-inflation.

 

[Mark]

Always is, yeah. And basically always works because unless it directly affects them, people aren't so quick to notice/care.

See also: Abortion, "illegal" immigration, greed-masked-as-inflation.

It’s because people knee-jerk the hot button issues and sensitive subjects. Always. They know all they have to do is throw out a topic that’ll get people going, and then they can do whatever they want over there while we’re over here debating this or that.

 

[Raine]

It’s because people knee-jerk the hot button issues and sensitive subjects. Always. They know all they have to do is throw out a topic that’ll get people going, and then they can do whatever they want over there while we’re over here debating this or that.

Yup, and their inability to own up to and learn from their mistakes allows for the continued erosion of everyone's safety.

The fact that you can Ctrl+H and just replace the target group with another at random and it both sounds eerily familiar and still works is... sad.


Anyway this is my soapbox for the next twenty seconds.

The next year is gonna be fucking hell for LGBTQIA+ folk. If you've got any in your life, like, don't coddle or whatever, but let 'em know you care. Trans and intersex people are going to take the brunt of the bullshit wave, but I assure you there will be plenty of shit smeared across the whole thing. In very broad, callous and completely ridiculous ways.

The highlight of my existence will be seeing Biden and Trump trying to have a debate about trans people in sports. Assuming Captain Bonespurs isn't in prison or doesn't otherwise chicken out. ...Is 11:26 AM on a Saturday too early to start drinking?

 

[Kat]

Ugh. Why is anybody focused on this? Don't they have any real problems?

 

[Webster]

Ugh. Why is anybody focused on this? Don't they have any real problems?

Change a few of the words around above and you have the Right's obsession with the LGBTQ community; in the near-23 years that I was a conservative (and the year or two I tried to go back) I saw an almost inhuman obsession with what they used to (and probably still refer to behind closed doors) refer to as "the homosexual community" and it just boggled my mind to no end how obsessed they were. I'm like "we got a thousand problems in this country to deal with and you're worried about that?"

It could get worse, though: go back and read Uncle Clarence's (a/k/a Clarence Thomas; I call him "Uncle Clarence" because of his inordinate and frankly perverse eagerness to throw his fellow black Americans under the conservative bus) concurrence in last year's Dobbs' decision; per the Wiki...

Thomas argued that the Court should go further in future cases, reconsidering other past Supreme Court cases that granted rights based on substantive due process, such as Griswold v. Connecticut (the right to contraception), Obergefell v. Hodges (the right to same-sex marriage), and Lawrence v. Texas (banned laws against private sexual acts). He wrote, "Because any substantive due process decision is 'demonstrably erroneous,' we have a duty to 'correct the error' established in those precedents.

 

[Raine]

It could get worse, though: go back and read Uncle Clarence's (a/k/a Clarence Thomas; I call him "Uncle Clarence" because of his inordinate and frankly perverse eagerness to throw his fellow black Americans under the conservative bus) concurrence in last year's Dobbs' decision

Will get worse, undoubtedly. It's not like impeachment is feasible or that he, his wife, or anyone else are seemingly going to be held accountable.

And that's part of the Right-wing's problem here: They're sort of the dog that caught the tire. Roe is dead, the Supreme Court is theirs ostensibly until such time as the country collapses, lower courts are packed with Conservative judges that will help ensure further erosion of "undesirable elements."

They had little-to-nothing as a platform in 2016; they had less in 2020; they've got fucking nothing in 2024. So they have to invent some more shit to stir up their base and maintain/gain power. Trans women are a useful bludgeon, and bonus points because undermining and (legally) erasing us also serves as a backdoor to exert more control over cis women.

Are bathrooms and sports enough to take the presidency? Honestly, I doubt it. But that isn't going to stop them from trying, and... it's not like Biden's administration is pushing back in the least. Hell, they're doing what they do best: compromising and appeasing.