Luke Ford

Stacy McCain writes: Lucian Wintrich is an artist in New York who lost his job because of his “Twinks for Trump” campaign. (“Twink” is gay slang for an attractive young male.) If you think Democrats are pro-gay, you should know what kind of persecution they inflict on gay Republicans:

Wintrich had his social media accounts shut down, was continuously harassed, and then ultimately fired from his job at one of New York’s largest advertising agencies.

In a stunning exception to its normal partisan cheerleading for Democrats, NBC News did a surprisingly fair story about Wintrich:

At the LGBT for Trump event Milo Yiannopoulos hosted during the Republican National Convention, I briefly met Wintrich. Liberals have a habit of assuming all gay people are Democrats, the same way they assume all women, all black people, all Hispanics and all union members are Democrats. However, the Republicans are a party of ideas, and there is nothing about the ideas of economic freedom, national security and social conservatism that puts them off-limits to any group. The common liberal belief that all gay people are necessarily “oppressed” by social conservatism, for example, ignores the kind of a live-and-let–live attitude that most conservatives have toward what used to be euphemistically called “alternative lifestyles.” The Bible-believing Southern Baptist in Oklahoma isn’t interested in using federal authority to “impose his morals” on gay people in New York or San Francisco, but he resents very much the way liberals want to use federal authority to impose their morals on his community in suburban Tulsa. This is how the “Bake Me a Cake” issue arises, with militant gay activists as cultural bullies, and this in turn involves the Compulsory Approval Doctrine:

As a result of Supreme Court decisions . . . homosexuality has now gained the status of a constitutional right, which means that disapproval of [homosexual behavior] is effectively prohibited. This new dispensation, which we might call the Compulsory Approval Doctrine, has the consequence of abolishing religious liberty. “Marriage equality” requires universal recognition of same-sex unions. Woe be unto the baker who, for religious reasons, refuses to provide a cake or the florist who refuses to provide flowers for a gay wedding.

Carlos Lozada writes for the Washington Post:

Review of “Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right” by Arlie Russell Hochschild

Hochschild made 10 trips to southwestern Louisiana from 2011 to 2016, extended forays away from her perch at the University of California at Berkeley, to delve into her “keen interest in how life feels to people on the right — that is, in the emotion that underlies politics. To understand their emotions,” she writes, “I had to imagine myself in their shoes.” She interviewed some 60 people, including 40 professed tea party supporters, visiting their homes, communities and workplaces. It is the same technique Hochschild employed in “The Second Shift” (1989), a well-reviewed look at how couples manage duties at home when both work outside of it. In this case, however, Hochschild arrives with so many preconceived ideas that they undercut the insight she claims to desire.

Hochschild preps for her conservative immersion by reading “Atlas Shrugged,” because we know tea party types are into that. “If Ayn Rand appealed to them, I imagined, they’d probably be pretty selfish, tough, cold people, and I prepared for the worst,” this acclaimed sociologist writes. “But I was thankful to discover many warm, open people who were deeply charitable to those around them.”

When she lands in Louisiana, Hochschild realizes, “I was definitely not in Berkeley, California. . . . No New York Times at the newsstand, almost no organic produce in grocery stores or farmers’ markets, no foreign films in movie houses, few small cars, fewer petite sizes in clothing stores, fewer pedestrians speaking foreign languages into cell phones — indeed, fewer pedestrians. There were fewer yellow Labradors and more pit bulls and bulldogs. Forget bicycle lanes, color-coded recycling bins, or solar panels on roofs. In some cafes, virtually everything on the menu was fried.”

Dear God, no yellow Labs or solar panels? How do you live?