Trumps Religious Liberty Fail

Shows That He Can Be Stopped

Statement from the Gay Liberation Network (Chicago)

As a real estate developer, Trump was no doubt used

to saying Build It! and, after dispensing with pesky
zoning and NIMBY matters, getting others to do so
forthwith.

Not so with his Muslim ban, and now, his nixed religious liberty executive order
to discriminate against LGBTQs and women who had abortions and/or used
contraceptives.
Months after the religious rights orgasmic anticipation of Trumps gift to them, the thrice-married, porn-
loving, pussy-grabbing creep totally disappointed them. Thursdays executive order was widely seen as a
banal reassertion of current law, and not the wholesale assault on equal employment rights and access to
public accommodations that religious bigots had hoped and lobbied heavily for.

There are three important lessons for the left to draw from this:

1) Right wing creeps, including the most powerful man in the world, aka U.S. presidents, can be
defeated through popular mobilizations.

The social movements of the 1960s learned this a generation ago in defeating the most ideologically
rightwing President seen in modern times, Richard Nixon. Forcing a wind-down of the U.S. war in
Southeast Asia, the enactment of Affirmative Action, Food Stamps, the legalization of abortion, and a
wave of environmental legislation such as the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts time and again, Nixon
was forced to do things he didnt want to.

2) The catastrophic pronouncements of some on the left that a Trump Presidency meant the inauguration
of fascism, or something close to it, are once again shown to be cartoonish. If Trump truly was der Fhrer,
he would have ordered the bigoted change, and simply rounded up or murdered any who stood in his
way.

Fortunately, the fact that we still do have (yes, quite circumscribed) formal democracy means that we can
speak out, protest and take more aggressive direct action and live to take action another day. And in this
case we can win, all without seriously risking life and limb. In a true fascist state, any individual, including
even ruling class people, who publicly voiced the mildest opposition would have found themselves
imprisoned, if not dead.

3) As the Nixon example shows, what is won today is never permanent under capitalism. While we won
many things despite Nixon, we lost many of them during subsequent administrations, both Democratic
and Republican. So while we have defeated Trump for now, we will have to fight hard against him and his
successors to preserve this win, and we wont ultimately guarantee it until we live in a society that is truly
democratically run by everyone, and that values everyone.

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