Not Homophobia (Gayphobia?)

I like Aaron Rupar and Donald Trump Jr. is reprehensible. But Rupar is simply wrong here.

"He's the gay guy, so we gotta give him something, let's make him Transportation Secretary" -- unvarnished homophobia from Donald Trump Jr on Newsmax pic.twitter.com/L4VuGQANi8

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 23, 2023

A "phobia" is a fear and there is no indication that Donald Trump Jr. fears gay people. Presumably, Rupar simply means that Junior's tweet reflects hostility toward homosexuals. (The term is "homophobia," not "gayphobia.") 

On December 3, 2020 President-elect Biden

said he had a meeting scheduled with the NAACP on Tuesday. NAACP President Derrick Johnson told CNN Wednesday that his organization and other civil rights groups had requested time with Biden and Harris to discuss the incoming administration and ensuring minority and civil rights representation in their agenda.

“Their job is to push me,” Biden said, noting every advocacy group is “pushing for more and more and more of what they want. That’s their job.”

“My job is to keep my commitment to make the decisions,” Biden said. “And when it’s all over people will take a look and say, I promise you, you’ll see the most diverse Cabinet representative of all folks, Asian Americans, African Americans, Latinos, LGBTQ, across the board.”

As of that date, he had made four nominations to his cabinet. They were a black woman as UN Ambassador; a Cuban-American to be the Secretary of Homeland Security; a South Asian as director of the Office of Management and Budget; and a black woman to be chairperson of the Council of Economic Advisors.  The diversity, as Biden's statement suggested, was not coincidental.

After the former vice president's pivotal victory in the South Carolina primary, Buttigieg withdrew from the presidential race, after which Amy Klobuchar did the same. Klobuchar then endorsed Biden and within hours Buttigieg had done so, also.

To be sure, when Biden announced the nomination of Buttigieg twelve days after boasting there would be a Cabinet of Asian Americans, African Americans, Latinos, LGBTQ, across the board," he did not cite the sexual preference of the former mayor and presidential candidate, Instead, he described him as "a patriot and a problem solver."  Buttigieg is indeed a patriot. However, he had never established himself as a problem solver and clearly has not done so as transportation secretary, ineffectually responding to deceptive practices and flight cancellations of airlines and insufficiently regulating railroad safety procedures.

He did, however, offer something Klobuchar, whom it appears was not offered a cabinet post, could not. The President-elect had Asian Americans, African Americans, and Latinos covered; also, obviously, women. Yet, something was missing. 

If Buttigieg wasn't selected in part because he is gay, the nation's news media was thoroughly fooled. On February 2, 2020, The New York Times reported

The Senate on Tuesday confirmed Pete Buttigieg, a former mayor of South Bend, Ind., and a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, to be transportation secretary, putting in place the official who will help oversee President Biden’s overhaul of the nation’s infrastructure.

By a vote of 86 to 13, the Senate made Mr. Buttigieg, 39, the nation’s first openly gay cabinet secretary to be confirmed by the upper chamber and Mr. Biden’s youngest cabinet member.

The Times, recognizing the importance of the Secretary's challenge to help transform the nation's infrastructure, waited until its second sentence to note that Buttigieg was "the nation's first openly gay cabinet secretary." ABC News and NPR eagerly noted in their very first sentence that he had "made history" as "the first openly gay" individual to win Senate confirmation to run a Cabinet department. 

Pete Buttigieg's failure thus far to be an effective Transportation secretary has nothing to do with his sexual preference and if he succeeds in the future, it will have nothing to do with his sexual preference.  It's unclear whether Aaron Rupar nor Donald Trump Jr. fully understands this, and there is a tremendous amount of things to criticize the latter for. However, when he asserts that the former South Bend mayor was selected because he is gay, he is not homophobic and very likely not wrong.

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A Low Bar That Must Be Cleared

President-elect Biden has nominated Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, to be Assistant US Attorney for Civil Rights Under Law. Last summer, responding to protests of the killing of George Floyd, Clarke wrote

This is a moment like none other in our nation's history. We are literally witnessing the emergence of one of the biggest racial justice movements that we have seen in modern time. For the first time, we are talking openly about white supremacy and racism.

If a researcher for Fox News' Tucker Carlson has the story right, Clarke certainly knows a lot about supremacy and racism. It's personal for he, or at least it once was because reportedly

In 1994, Clarke wrote a letter to The Harvard Crimson in her capacity as the president of the Black Students Association to explain her views on race science.

"Please use the following theories and observations to assist you in your search for truth regarding the genetic differences between Blacks and whites [sic]," Clarke wrote. "One: Dr Richard King reveals that the core of the human brain is the 'locus coeruleus,' which is a structure that is Black, because it contains large amounts of neuro-melanin, which is essential for its operation.

Two: Black infants sit, crawl and walk sooner than whites [sic]. Three: Carol Barnes notes that human mental processes are controlled by melanin -- that same chemical which gives Blacks their superior physical and mental abilities.

"Four: Some scientists have revealed that most whites [sic] are unable to produce melanin because their pineal glands are often calcified or non-functioning. Pineal calcification rates with Africans are five to 15 percent [sic], Asians 15 to 25 percent [sic] and Europeans 60 to 80 percent [sic]. This is the chemical basis for the cultural differences between blacks and whites [sic].

"Five: Melanin endows Blacks with greater mental, physical and spiritual abilities -- something which cannot be measured based on Eurocentric standards"...

After an outcry on campus, Kristen Clarke suggested that she didn't necessarily believe what she had written.

Just a month later, however, Clarke invited the noted Trinidadian anti-Semite Tony Martin to speak on campus. Martin, then a professor at Wellesley College, was the author of a self-published manifesto called "The Jewish Onslaught." In it, Martin chronicled the "escalating Jewish onslaught" against Black people.

For Martin's fans like Kristen Clarke, his speech at Harvard did not disappoint. He attacked both Jews and Judaism as a religion. Martin, who retired from Wellesley in 2007 and died in 2013, spent his final years giving speeches to Holocaust denial organizations on topics such as "tactics of organized Jewry in suppressing free speech."

Kristen Clarke strongly approved of Tony Martin, telling The Crimson: "Professor Martin is an intelligent, well-versed Black intellectual who bases his information on indisputable fact." According to Kristen Clarke, Tony Martin's anti Semitism was based on "indisputable fact."

These remarks may have been taken out of context. Or they could have been merely the intellectual ramblings of a young Harvard University student. Presumably, that will be determined at the confirmation hearings of the highly accomplished nominee, whose parents emigrated from Jamaica and sent their daughter to Choate Rosemary Hall, a preparatory high school in Connecticut.

No one should be denied a critical position in a presidential administration simply because she is a child of privilege nor supported supremacy (white or black) twenty-six years earlier. Clarke will presumably be asked about the remarks and whether she'd say the same things now.

Of course, she will express her deep regret for them- whether or not they were accurately transcribed and reported. If nothing else, they will make it more difficult for her to gain confirmation.

But more is necessary. Clarke needs to state definitively that she was wrong at the time and no longer believes what it appears she wrote.  After four years of an administration headed by Donald Trump, a summer of protests of racial discrimination, and a recent attack on American government motivated in part by racial hostility, there is something that Democrats and Republicans should demand of our leaders: racists need not apply.

Kristen Clarke, Biden's choice to lead the DOJ's Civil Rights Division, has some truly wild theories about racial differences:

"Melanin endows blacks with greater mental, physical, and spiritual abilities — something which cannot be measured by Eurocentric standards." pic.twitter.com/l0W4gteGFL

— August Takala (@AugustTakala) January 12, 2021

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