"The Middle Ground is Hard to Stand on..."
- Keith Donovan, guest contributor
- Nov 10, 2016
- 2 min read
The night of the election, I reposted an instagram photo which was trending.
It read, "If you vote for Trump today, make sure to explain to your LGBT+, female, black, latino/a, Muslim, friends why they don't matter to you."
Since then, I have read, been part of, or been witness to many discussions trying to defend the people who voted for Donald Trump. Many of these defenders have said that just because Donald may be racist or a bigot, misogynistic or a homophobe, does not mean that they as voters embody those qualities.
I find this argument to be a very slippery slope. One of my Facebook friends posted the following on their wall yesterday on this very issue. I share it here with permission:
"There is some clarification that needs to happen in regards to this election. When I say that “If you voted for Trump today, make sure to explain to your LGBT+, female, black, latino/a, Muslim friends why they don’t matter to you” I am not saying that every single person who voted for Trump is a misogynistic, racist, homophobic, xenophobic, hateful person but … for the people who voted for him, you voted for a misogynistic, racist, homophobic, xenophobic, hateful person. You allowed a man who is against woman’s reproductive rights, wants to create laws that would allow for the discrimination of the LGBT+ community, instills fear into Muslim and Hispanic communities, and uses hate speech to get what he wants, to be become the next President of the United States. So you may not be these things, like I know so many of you aren't, but you have allowed him into the position of the highest office in the nation"
I would add that by voting for Donald, you endorsed, in a very real and literal way, racism, bigotry, homophobia, misogyny, etc. as values that you believe are ok to be present in whom you saw as the best candidate for office.
The jump from saying that you endorse these qualities to saying that you embody these qualities is not a direct one, but I am hard-pressed to believe that if you endorse these qualities in our next President that you stand for black lives, that you affirm LGBT+ rights, that you are empathetic to people who look, act, love, believe differently than you do... And the middle ground here is hard to stand on for very long.
Keith Donovan is the Executive Director of a social justice retreat and education center in Chicago
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