In Reply to: Re: Dems focusing on losing every 4 years... posted by SagoBob on July 13, 2025 at 14:40:19
or equity, or inclusion. What needs to happen is not backing off of what's morally right, but taking the narrative back from the right.
That said, I also believe simultaneously that the transgender community made a big strategic mistake thinking that the country's pivot on gay marriage and the overall acceptance of gays would directly translate into transgender rights. They completely misread what straight people were uncomfortable with when it comes to gays: it was not necessarily gays having sex that bothered them, it was gays not always aligning with gender norms. That was the main source of the freak out. Gays who were comfortable in their gender identity were more acceptable to the straights by and large than gays who were more gender-fluid. That's why "they" irks so many people in a visceral way, and that's why transgender people had a whole long path of struggle laid out ahead of them. Instead, they got too excited and took a shortcut, even though being the T in the LGBTQ didn't mean that America was ready to embrace them.
So that was the strategic mistake. Does that mean we now back down from it? I think it would be morally unjustifiable. I think we need to make a mental note of what went wrong and make that the starting point to claw back the trans rights being lost in the backlash, if for no other reason than because they are human beings who are being forced to choose between being true to who they are and participating in society.
As for DEI: this is nothing less than defining what America is. Are we a white nation or not? I don't want to end up making another terminological switch to get back to talking about the same thing once again. DEI is fine. Let's stick with it but put our efforts into explaining why it matters to every American, including the straight white males who feel threatened by other kinds of people.
I think what the Democratic Party lacks is a moral compass and a sense that it stands for something. First they need convictions, then the courage thereof. In my opinion, of course.