IE 11 is not supported. For an optimal experience visit our site on another browser.

Opinion: Behold The Republican Playbook: Old Tactics, New Enemy

Why are Republicans working overtime to erase LGBT people from their own tragedy?
Image: A member of the LGBT community in Bengalaru holds a candle during a memorial service following a mass shooting at the Pulse gay nightclub in Orlando
A member of the LGBT community in Bengalaru holds a candle during a memorial service following a mass shooting at the Pulse gay nightclub in Orlando, in India June 14, 2016.ABHISHEK CHINNAPPA / Reuters
IMAGE: Orlando vigil
People hold up candles against a rainbow lit backdrop during a vigil for those killed in a mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando on June 13, 2016.David Goldman / AP

While Republicans work overtime to erase LGBT people from their own tragedy by neglecting to mention that Pulse was indeed a gay bar and that the victims themselves are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender—they are simultaneously engaging in something far more sinister—pitting the LGBT community and Muslim communities against one another.

In a recent segment on his MSNBC show, host Chris Hayes spoke to LGBT activist and writer Dan Savage about Donald Trump’s outrageous reaction to the massacre. Hayes called it an unveiling of his latest tactic, “almost an importation of a certain kind of European right-wing politics… Basically saying, I am an ally of LGBT people because I will be the most anti-Muslim candidate, [and] essentially pit these two communities against each other.”

Savage followed with an observation that “you can’t draw a clean line between the LGBT community and the Muslim community because there are LGBT Muslims in the United States and all over the world.”

Exactly.

What Trump and the swath of narrow-minded Republican ilk fail to understand is that the LGBT community is a group that intersects with all other communities: we are LGBT and Muslim, LGBT and black, LGBT and Jewish and on and on, and on.

On Sunday, MSNBC host Joy-Ann Reid posed an interesting question, “Will Republican’s change their tune on LGBT issues” following the massacre of 49 LGBT Latinx and African American people in Orlando at Pulse nightclub? In other words, will they now embrace a community that they have spent decades shunning?

The sad reality is that the killer, Omar Mateen, didn’t need to look any further than his own representatives in Florida and others across the country to search for anti-LGBT sentiments, and what’s fascinating still, is that the Republican Party refuses to acknowledge how their own rhetoric may have contributed to his warped views on the LGBT community.

Is it possible that since the passage of marriage equality by the Supreme Court of the United States just one year ago this month, that the 200 pieces of legislation that have been rolled out by anti-LGBT politicians may have be attributed to Mateen’s state of mind?

These so-called Religious Freedom laws like North Carolina’s “bathroom bill,” Houston, Texas’s anti-discrimination bill and Indiana’s bill which would allow people’s faith to dictate whom they are obligated to do business with.

Could it be that the anti-LGBT rhetoric being spewed from our elected officials may have allowed for Mateen to believe that LGBT people were not only unworthy of the same rights as their neighbors, but to unworthy of existing?

We will never know what was in Mateen’s mind when he committed the largest mass shooting in the history of the United States, but history does provide us with some insight into the Republicans recent shift in messaging.

While on Reid’s show, the President and CEO of the Victory Fund and Institute, Aisha Moodie-Mills whose organization works to elect LGBT officials said, “Republicans have been dividing and conquering for years as a way to win because they have a real difficulty creating a big umbrella of acceptance for all. They have tried to pit the African American community against the LGBT community because it served them in the electorate and now they are doing it again with the LGBT community and Muslims. They don’t have new tactics to bring Americans together so they are going back to the well with the same old tropes.”

Aisha is also my wife. And sadly, these are the conversations that often plague our dinner table because unlike our friends and family members our lives are constantly up for debate and ridicule.

With this statement my wife reminded me of what happened in 2008 during Proposition 8 in California when Republicans funneled countless dollars into the coffers of African-American Christian leaders in order to buy their votes. What Republicans showed with this move and opposition to marriage equality in California is that they could indeed unite when they created a common enemy.

In 2008 Republicans decided that marriage equality and the LGBT community were the enemy and that our “gay agenda”—aka fighting for equality—would be the downfall of the “traditional family” and American civilization, as they knew it.

Now, 8 years later after an unimaginable act of terror against the LGBT community whom they have made the cornerstone of many Republican campaigns and the enemy of “traditional values,” they want to unite us against Muslim Americans.

Republicans have decided — thanks to their new leader Donald Trump — to make Muslims the new center of their fear campaign. Apparently it’s not military grade weapons or homophobia that we need to rid this country of—it’s Muslims, they are what you need to fear.

Yet, when you examine the numbers their new campaign against Muslims doesn’t have much standing. In 2015 there were 207 mass shootings that took place (which is characterized as 4 or more people killed at one time) where a Muslim committed only one. According to the Center for Research on Globalization non-Muslims carried out more than 90 percent of all terrorists attacks in America.

Regardless of the facts presented, the Republican playbook will always seek to create a common enemy that Americans can point to and hold responsible for their lot in life. Fifty 50 years ago it was African Americans that were responsible for America’s issues. Then it was the LGBT community. Then Mexican immigrants. And now Muslims.

Their playbook is clear: as long as Americans have a boogeyman to point to, Republicans can continue winning the game to divide and conquer America.But but as as Beyoncé sings in Lemonade, “when you try to play me, you play yourself.”

Republicans either need new tactics or to get out of the game altogether.