Keep America great

by Rob Howard
Political Columnist

What does “Make America Great Again” mean? According to Hillary Clinton, it means “Let’s Take America Backwards.” And I agree with her. What Donald Trump and his base want to do is take America back to some time in the past when, in their addled minds, things were better.

I wonder where they want to take us. I’ve now been an observer of and participant in the American Experiment for 70 years. And there aren’t many times in the span that I want our country to go back to.

Do they want to go back to the years before 1948, when African-American soldiers were segregated from their white comrades in arms? At the same time, and until 2011, as many as 100,000 LGBT members of the military who got caught, or were suspected of, being openly homosexual, were tossed out of the service, usually with a dishonorable discharge. Is that where they want to take us?

How about the years before the Supreme Court, in Brown v. Board in 1954 ruled segregated schools unconstitutional? Or for the next couple of decades while bigots fought desegregation through the courts, and resisted it with state legislation (does that remind you of this year’s Bathroom Wars and the fights over religious objection to marriage equality? Good, it was supposed to.)

Or do they want to go back to the years before President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964? Legend says LBJ said, after signing the Act, that “We have lost the South for a generation.” While it’s disputed that he ever said that, the fact is, the almost solidly Democratic South, over the years since then, have become the solidly GOP South. The act opened public accommodation, jobs, and more to minorities.

In all those years, most of the black people I was aware of were in menial, low paying jobs. Is this what Trump and his minions want?

How about before 1965, when Medicare was enacted. Before then, millions of seniors lived in poverty and poor health, unable to pay for medical care that would have made their lives easier and longer. Of course, one of the GOP’s primary hopes each year is to reform Medicare and Social Security, which means, “Let’s take American backwards.

Of course, Trump and his folks want to take LGBT people backwards. Maybe not all the way to the days before June 1969 when the Stonewall riots happened. Back then, gays got arrested for being in gay bars, or dressing like women, or having sex with someone of the same gender. Their names got posted in the local newspaper, and their lives were ruined.

OMG, that still happens where police troll the parks looking for guys looking for a hook-up. At least they don’t usually hang around gay bars trying to harass customers on their way home.

How about before 1973, when the American Psychiatric Association took homosexuality off its list of mental illness. I have friends who had electro-shock treatment to ‘cure’ them of their homosexuality.

Or how about when gay men were dying by the thousands from the AIDS epidemic, and the federal government turned a blind eye.

How about before – and after – the 1986 Supreme Court decision in Bowers v. Hardwick? That decision let stand, until 2003, state sodomy laws that criminalized gay sex. That criminal status was often cited as a reason not to give LGBT people equal rights, because you don’t want to give rights to criminals, do you? In 2003, the court reversed itself in Lawrence v. Texas and decriminalized same-sex sex acts, opening the way for more rights, and for marriage.

Most certainly, they want to take us back to before the 2013 Windsor decision opened the way to expanded marriage equality, and the 2015 Obergefell decision brought it to the whole nation.

Frankly, I think the United States is a great country. It’s been one since our Declaration of Independence in 1776, which we celebrate every July. And it has gotten better over the years, sometimes with a few steps backward before moving forward. And it’s greater today than ever before. Let’s keep it that way. We don’t need to take America back to any of our past time periods.

Full disclosure, if it’s not obvious to my readers by now: I am a Democrat. And I, like conservative former Oklahoma member of Congress Mickey Edwards, wouldn’t vote for Donald Trump if he were the only person running. I hope we keep America great, by electing Hillary Clinton President in November.

The Gayly and its staff do not necessarily agree with the political opinions expressed in this column.

The Gayly – July 22, 2016 @ 2 p.m.