I admit it. In recent years, I began to question whether nondiscrimination laws were still needed. I thought that maybe the negative public relations consequences that those who discriminate suffer these days are worse than any penalties that government can impose. Maybe we were at a point when discrimination was so socially unacceptable that it was virtually nonexistent. Unfortunately, the reality is that that’s not the case.

The rise of President Trump’s #MAGA movement, which fosters division and a culture of confrontation, and defiantly rejects what followers call “political correctness,” has emboldened the forces of intolerance and made the need to pass LGBTQ inclusive nondiscrimination legislation at the federal, state, and local levels just as important as it ever was. It’s helped to shine a light on intolerance that was still lurking in the shadows. A wide range of specific indicators, from white nationalists marching in Charlottesville to a surge of efforts to pass anti-trans “bathroom bills” in state legislatures around the country to ugly clashes on college campuses and mor, have all shown us that advocating for legal protections against discrimination should still be a top priority.

I’ve written before here about the growing movement against the Trump culture of confrontation and the shift toward a new culture of unity and civility. Enacting LGBTQ-inclusive nondiscrimination laws is an important piece of bringing about that national unity and civility, and the 2018 midterm elections present a critical opportunity to advance that goal at all levels of government.

As a former Republican activist, I was active in helping candidates in the 2010 Tea Party midterms. That was a year when political newcomers on the right of the political spectrum came out like never before to run for office and engage in the process. This year, as candidate filing deadlines begin to pass, we are seeing a similar phenomenon with political neophytes on the left and in the center filing for office at record rates.

One thing I learned in 2010 is that you can’t assume that all candidates and their staffs are fully informed on all of the issues. Most of these first-time candidates haven’t been lifelong activists, and they need help learning about the intricacies of the public policy proposals that they are considering. They’ve probably heard all of the quick sound bites in the media, and they may think they know their positions, but they might not realize the full impact and consequences of every policy position. It’s important for LGBTQ Americans to engage with them early so they fully understand how policies impact us.

I was heartened last month when the city where I live, Paducah, Ky., amended its human rights ordinance to include protections against discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. It was a big deal for our small town in a conservative state. As I sat in the audience for that City Commission meeting, I saw that the opponents of the nondiscrimination ordinance were well organized and armed with all kinds of false and misleading talking-points about transgender people, wedding cakes, and more. Fortunately, their misinformation campaign and scare tactics did not lead to the ordinance’s failure, but their efforts did sway one of the commissioners to their side.

That’s why it’s so important for LGBTQ Americans to engage with candidates for local, state, and federal offices early and often this year. If we don’t educate candidates with all of the facts, then the other side will have the opportunity to spread their misinformation unchallenged.

Now is the time for all of us to act and reach out to the political candidates in our communities, so that they hear our points of view before the other side persuades them to support a policy proposal that could have detrimental consequences. It won’t be long before many of these new candidates will be elected to positions of power, when they’ll have the ability to enshrine important nondiscrimination policies into law.

JIMMY LASALVIA is a politically independent strategist and commentator. He is the author of No Hope: Why I Left the GOP (and You Should Too).

Originally published at www.advocate.com on February 20, 2018.

Many of you know that a recent Harris Poll showed a decrease of the acceptance of LGBT people in America over the past year. Many have rightly placed blame for this on a cultural and political climate, fueled by President Trump’s divisiveness, that rejects “political correctness” and societal norms of civility. I guess that’s just one more of the many ways LGBT people lose in the age of Trump.

Of course, Trumpian culture didn’t just happen overnight. This culture of confrontation and fighting has been building for many years, and the Trump presidency is the culmination of a long devolution away from kindness and civility. Now, in all areas of American life, it’s become “us versus them,” a constant fight.

Fortunately, more and more of us are growing tired of all the fighting. I know I am — aren’t you?

A growing majority of us are ready to move on and chart a new unified path forward. The LGBT community has an opportunity to lead the country in ushering a new culture of unity and helping each other in the coming post-Trump years. Now is the time to start thinking about it and preparing for a new style of activism after Trump.

With a goal of bringing all Americans together to help each other to realize the American Dream, our community can gain legal equality and ultimately help to make our country better for everybody. You see, helping others to realize their American Dreams means that we don’t discriminate when we enter the public square to conduct commerce. It means that we are all paid the same for the same work. It means that those of us who have built our entire lives in this country have access to a pathway to citizenship.

Those public policy issues that may have been seen as divisive in the past strike a different tone when presented in a context of unity. That tone will resonate in the time of national healing after Trump. LGBT activism in the coming years should convey that big, broad, message of American unity. That’s the way we’ll realize our political goals and help to bring about positive cultural change.

Writer Andrew Sullivan recently caused quite a stir among LGBT activists with a controversial New York Magazine post. Some saw the article as ill-informed and his tone as caustic. While there is much to disagree with on some of his specific points and his finger-pointing delivery, his assertion that finding common ground is effective in achieving favorable political outcomes is absolutely correct. The fight for marriage equality, for instance, was won after many years of showing others how our love is the same as theirs. It was in that message of commonality that most Americans found unity around our desire to marry.

The good news is that in the coming post-Trump era, we won’t have to work to convince others that LGBT people are just like them. We’ll all recognize that all Americans, no matter who we are, are ready to stop fighting and come together to make our country better. The mantra will be “We are done fighting. We are all in this together, so let’s help each other to succeed.”

This way of framing our activism may be uncomfortable for some of us at first, because so many of us have always felt different, like outsiders. We are used to having to explain our differences to others. We may have to rethink the way we see ourselves. Remember, there are no outsiders in a unified America.

There will still be plenty of opportunities in our cultural experiences and events for discussions and celebrations of what makes us unique and different, but in the political arena, our message should be clear and undiluted. Our rainbow colors should shine as a white light of freedom and opportunity for everyone.

I know that we have many battles to fight and likely three years to go before our country can begin the process of putting the Trump presidency and the culture that created it behind us, but it’s never too early to begin to lay the groundwork to be leaders when that time comes. And I also know that cultural change doesn’t happen overnight. A switch isn’t going to flip when the Trumps leave the White House, but it is important for us to have a clear vision of what the future can look like if we work to make it that way.

My vision for a unified post-Trump America is something that I am committed to working toward. I hope that all LGBT Americans will recognize the opportunity that the future holds for us and join in the effort to bring about a new culture of civility and helping each other. The next era of LGBT activism can help to make America a country where unity wins.

JIMMY LASALVIA is a politically independent strategist and commentator. He is the author of No Hope: Why I Left the GOP (and You Should Too).

Originally published at www.advocate.com on January 30, 2018.

The reactions have been predictable and totally expected. They are exactly what the publisher wanted in the campaign to promote the book, Hacks: The Inside Story of the Break-ins and Breakdowns that Put Donald Trump in the White House, which will be released on Tuesday. The most salacious parts of books are always what publishers want distributed ahead of a book’s release. That’s to garner significant media attention and discussion. Hachette, Brazile’s publisher, has been very successful in generating a lot of buzz, that’s for sure.

Headlines such as, Inside Hillary Clinton’s Secret Takeover of the DNC and Former DNC chair torches Clinton in new book, drive the type of media narrative that publishers love, controversy and behind-the-scenes intrigue. This particular publicity campaign is also fueling a fight among prominent Democratic operatives and grassroots activists, which brings even more attention to it.

The problem with pre-release book publicity campaigns, such as this one, is that the message and point of the book can get lost in the gossip and fighting about the excerpts, and the stories and opinion pieces they generate. Many people will form opinions and make incorrect assumptions about the book, without reading it in its entirety. I’m sure that Ms. Brazile has an important message about the systemic problems in her party, and the national security risks from foreign governments’ interfering in our elections, and I hope that doesn’t get lost in the banter about controversial specific actions by Hillary Clinton’s campaign, or anyone else in 2016.

I have some experience with that. My book, No Hope: Why I Left the GOP (and You Should Too), published two years ago, carried a message about how the Republican Party is an untenable coalition, and also about how the two-party system is broken and leaves out the majority of Americans. I used my personal experiences as an openly gay Republican activist, working on issues affecting LGBT Americans, as many of my examples in making my points. Of course, the published excerpts and news stories about my book focused on the behind-the-scenes stories and what I said about specific people. Too many potential readers got the impression that my book was just about how anti-gay the GOP is, something everyone in America already knows. So, it didn’t sell very well.

Interestingly, when I run into people who have read my book, I always get praise for my take on the state of the political system. People agree with my assessment and tell me they hope everyone reads the book.

To be honest, one of my take-aways from the Brazile excerpt, is that I was absolutely correct on a major point I wrote about in my book. I wrote that both of the two-major parties are willing to do anything, including compromising their integrity, to gain and maintain power. That’s certainly appears to be what happened when the financially desperate DNC turned to candidate Hillary Clinton for help in raising money in order to stay afloat.

That’s all to say, at the end of the day, I hope that everyone takes the time to read Brazile’s whole book, rather than making assumptions on its content based on a few pages of juicy gossip that the publisher released to boost pre-sales. I know that I am interested in all of what she has to say, and will be open to learning more about our political process, based on her experiences in 2016.

Originally published at jimmylasalvia.com on November 3, 2017.

Then, I began shaking my head. All I could think was, I told ya so!

A couple of years ago, my book, No Hope: Why I Left the GOP (and You Should Too), was published. It received a lot of attention because of the behind-the-scenes stories I shared about my experiences inside the GOP around issues affecting LGBT Americans. I wrote about those first-hand experiences as examples of broader cultural problems with the modern conservative movement and Republican Party.

The over-arching theme of the parts of the book that related to the problems in the GOP was the party’s fundamental rejection of our modern multicultural reality. I wrote that issues just don’t matter, and in fact, the words “conservative” and “Republican” just don’t mean what they did before. I said that the base of the Republican Party rejects anything and anyone that don’t conform with them culturally — straight, white, christian. I also said that being a team-player and never dissenting is more important to them than ideological principles.

All of that has been proven to be true with the election of President Trump. Senator Flake, and some of his colleagues, including Senators Corker, Sasse, McCain, and others, have been outspoken about Trump’s boorish behavior, but not enough attention has been paid to the dynamics in their party that led to the election of such a despicable person. Trump is the manifestation of a long cultural devolution of the GOP. Their party is on a path toward extinction and the Trump presidency is their last hurrah.

I was wrong when I wrote in my book that the Republican Party would never win another national election, but I was correct when I said that the majority of Americans embrace our new multiculturalism and reject the divisive values of the GOP. Remember, Hillary Clinton won 3 MILLION more votes than President Trump last year. Most Americans do reject the GOP’s Trump-style cultural politics.

So why is it that a party that the majority of Americans oppose controls the US House, US Senate, and The White House? That is a result of another problem that I wrote about in my book. The two-party system is fundamentally broken. The two major parties control the process, and the Republicans have been masters at it. They have written laws and used archaic rules to help them gain and retain power. Everything from ballot access, to legislative district lines, to who can participate in candidate debates, to who can actually vote, is determined by them. So they make the rules to distort the process to benefit themselves.

The bottom line is that all the ranting from Senator Flake and others in elected office isn’t going to change the fundamental problems that have created the disaster we now have in our government. Free-market based reforms to open up the political process will help to bring in more diverse, independent points of view, that don’t fall in line with one party-line or another. That will help to elevate voices that speak to our best values, and drown out those dark voices that taint our politics today.

Read more about my thoughts on politics and other topics on my blog, Medium, HuffPost, AND my book!

Originally published at jimmylasalvia.com on October 25, 2017.

Americans are appalled, embarrassed, saddened, mad, and a whole host of other emotions at President Trump’s recent public fight with yet another Gold Star family. This fight, and his reactions to the recent string of American tragedies and crises, have made it more clear than ever that Donald Trump completely lacks the ability to empathize or have the least bit of care for people other than himself and his family.

That’s not what we expect in our president. In fact, that’s just not okay. The president should be a person who reflects the values of the American people, shouldn’t they?

We could just add the recent incidents to the long list of appalling, embarrassing, saddening, maddening, etc…things this president has done in his compulsion to constantly engage in public fights, or we could look at why we’ve allowed this to happen. How did such a despicable person become our president?

The truth is that the presidency of Donald Trump is a result of a long devolution toward a national culture of confrontation and fighting. Fueled by the mass media and social media that has consumed all areas of our lives these days, the fighting culture seems nearly impossible to escape. It’s in politics, sports, entertainment, it’s everywhere, no matter how hard we try to avoid it. We’ve reached complete saturation in the culture of confrontation, and we are also reaching a tipping point and a growing backlash.

Americans have grown tired of the fight. It seems like everywhere we go people are talking about it. We’re exhausted from it, and we just want it to end. Many of us, including me, are taking action to begin to bring about the end of the culture of confrontation and fighting.

More and more Americans are resolving to not let Trump represent our values. We are stepping up, almost in defiance of him, to go out of our way to be nice to others, and to make positive impacts in our communities and in the lives of others. There’s even a Twitter hash tag #thismandoesnotspeakforme.

With his fighting and his never-ending perpetuation of an ‘us versus them’ narrative, Trump is actually uniting us. He’s uniting us in a growing national movement toward civility and helping each other. He has sparked a backlash against his boorish behavior, and he’s actually helping to plant the seeds for a kinder, gentler America in the post-Trump years. We’re at the dawn of a new era of civility that will have very positive political implications.

Many have theorized that Trump’s election was a sort of backlash against the Obama presidency and multiculturalism. There may be some truth to that, but Trump was just the vehicle for that backlash, not the driver of it. It was building long before Trump showed up.

Now there’s a growing anti-Trump and anti-confrontation culture backlash to be harnessed. In 2020, the best opponent to Trump’s reelection will be the candidate who can tap into the new unity in a positive way, and ride it to victory.

The next president will be the person who brings us all together with a positive and inpiring message of unity. The next president will be the person who leads us into that new era of civility, and a culture of helping each other. That’s the America we are longing for. That’s the president we want.

I don’t know who that person will be, but I know that every day Trump is making it easier and easier for them to be successful.

Learn more about me and what I’ve been writing and speaking about at jimmylasalvia.com.

There are cultural and political realities that have made public policy solutions, including common-sense gun regulations, politically unattainable. The gun culture in America is an integral part of the lives of too many voters and politicians to gain enough support for immediate and substantive policy proposals to curb gun violence.

The gun culture, fueled by the gun industry and forces in the media and politics, glamorizes gun ownership. In that world, it’s cool to own guns, and the gun lifestyle and shooting is what sexy and strong men and women do. They want everyone to feel the exhilarating rush and power that comes from shooting, and those feelings get better when you shoot more exotic and powerful guns.

That gun culture has led to an over abundance of firearms in many American households. Today, too many guns are readily available for bad things to happen. Crime, of course, often happens with guns, but nearly two thirds of gun-related deaths are suicides. Guns in the home just make it too easy for a person, in a moment of emotional despair, to commit suicide. More guns in the home also increase the risks for fatal accidents or other tragedies when lapses of judgement occur.

The risks associated with the prevalence of firearms in America have been overshadowed by the industry effort to romanticize gun ownership. I’ve written before about the gun culture and the need for education about the dangers and risks of having guns in your house, but I’ve been discouraged because education efforts don’t stand a chance when up against the sexy advertising and promotion campaigns of the gun industry.

Then, I remembered smoking.

I used to love smoking. It was such a fun past-time. It was social, glamorous, made me feel good, and it was part of our culture. It seemed like everyone smoked cigarettes. It was cool. Remember?

Smoking has become socially unacceptable. What changed? Why did all of that fun go up in smoke?

Cultural and political realities around smoking changed, and that change came about with a combination of public education and public policy over decades. Those efforts started slowly, but now include regulation of tobacco advertising, and there have been massive amounts of money spent on public education efforts about the negative health effects of smoking cigarettes. Much of that money was spent because the tobacco industry was forced to fund those education programs in a landmark legal settlement in 1998.

Now, smoking is frowned upon, and it’s nearly impossible to find a public place where it’s permitted. That cultural change happened when public awareness about the health risks increased and attitudes changed, then it was politically possible to bring about public policy to codify and enforce limitations on smoking.

It took a long time, just like most all other types of cultural evolution, but we are in a place in America where fewer Americans are smoking.

Guns should be the new cigarettes.

The gun industry, including the National Rifle Association, already sponsors education efforts to teach people how to own a gun more safely, but they should be required to fund education about the real dangers of having guns in your household.

The tobacco industry was forced to fund education programs about the health risks of cigarettes in that settlement with the government, after they were sued for being responsible for smoking-related deaths. The gun industry has been protected from legal liability when crimes are committed with their products by the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, which was passed in 2005. That law should be repealed, so that eventually, the gun industry can enter into a settlement requiring public education about the risks of guns, similar to the tobacco industry settlement.

Just like when more restrictions have been placed on where smoking is permitted, the increase in understanding of the dangers of guns will help to build public support for more reasonable regulation on guns too. The cultural shift will help to drive the public policy.

Look, again, it’s never easy when culture and politics intersect, the issues are more personal and emotional. But eventually, those issues usually evolve one way or another. They usually evolve with the help of a combination of public awareness and public policy. That’s what’s needed with guns, and requiring the industry to fund part of that effort is a “no-brainer” and a good place to start.

Download

Originally published at www.huffingtonpost.com on October 5, 2017.

Earlier today, I made this video with some thoughts about the recent controversy regarding Kathy Griffin, positivity, the upcoming Comey hearing on Capitol Hill, and of course, my bees! Check out the video. Here’s the YouTube version. ->

Yesterday was my first day as a American Red Cross Disaster Action Team volunteer. Storms moved through western Kentucky on Wednesday night, and several families had damaged homes and they needed help.

I can’t tell you how good it felt to be able to help those folks. Both families couldn’t have been more grateful, and both families couldn’t have been more in need of the help. Neither had the resources to be able to recover without assistance.

My first thought when the Red Cross office called to see if I could go out and help was that I didn’t think the storms were that bad. Of course, they could have been worse in other areas, and indeed they were. The other reason the affected families needed help was that they just didn’t have shelter that was sturdy enough to weather a strong storm like that.

One family was in an older mobile home that had flying debris come crashing through the roof. Think about it. It really doesn’t take much to poke a hole in a tin can. The other family lived in a small house, a shack really, with an old metal roof that was ripped off the house.

Those structures had both been around for a long time and weathered many storms over the years, but it was just a matter of time before they would sustain serious damage. They just weren’t sturdy like the brick and mortar homes in the area that were virtually untouched by wind and rain. Their luck ran out Wednesday night.

Every day is a struggle for poor people. Just meeting basic needs is tough, and often times those needs are met with the minimum required. So the roofs over their heads are just as fragile as everything else in their lives. Lives lived on the edge are just one thunderstorm away from total catastrophe.

Those folks I met yesterday really needed assistance from the Red Cross. I truly can’t imagine what they would have done without it.

God bless the Red Cross.

You can learn more about becoming a disaster volunteer here.

Originally published at jimmylasalvia.com on April 28, 2017.

I am so grateful that I’ve found this interesting hobby that also benefits all of us. Bees are important because they perform a crucial role in maintaining our food supply. Approximately a third of all the food we eat is pollinated by honeybees and other pollinators. It’s important to protect them.

I just love watching my bees come and go from the hive I built for them this past winter. Today I was lucky enough to see a bunch of my bees gathering nectar and pollen from a bush near the hive. I could just watch them all day!

Check out this photo of one of the bees I saw in the bush earlier today.

Here is a photo I took a few days ago of the bees building comb inside their hive.

Aren’t they the coolest?! I’m having a ball watching them and learning about them!

You don’t have to be some kind of metaphysical guru to know that negativity brings more negativity. We see it every day in our lives. Negative energy feeds on itself. All of this negativity in politics isn’t good for our country. It just brings more confrontation and negative results in our government.

The most prominent example of this is the election of President Trump. He is the ultimate product of our modern confrontation-style of politics. He has built his political career on the fighting, and he’s exactly what we get as a result of our political devolution into fighting for fighting’s sake. He feeds off of the fight. He loves it, and I’m sure he’s just tickled to death to see all of the protestors in the streets today. It gives him a great target in his us versus them political narrative, and it’s something for him to tweet about all day!

Many of us engage in that us versus them, confrontation-style of politics because we think it’s the only way to have an impact. After all, it’s what we see done every day. It’s become the new normal in our country, and it has resulted in a government that rarely produces any positive accomplishments.

The mass media fuels our fighting in their quest for ratings and website clicks. Their news-talk programming format and opinion writing has all but replaced straight journalism as our primary source of information about the world around us. Then our engagement with that information on social media personalizes and perpetuates the fighting in our own lives.

It’s not good for our country. It’s not good for us as individuals, either. It’s time for a national intervention, and some political self-help. It’s time for each of us as individuals to make the decision to choose positive civic engagement over negative confrontation.

It won’t be easy. The media and the two major political parties gain their money and power by fanning the flames of the fighting. Fortunately for us, we will ultimately be the decision makers in determining what kind of country we want. So let’s do it.

Let’s all start by doing more to articulate political positions and policy proposals that we are in favor of, instead of only making our voices heard when we are against something. Then make a real effort to relay that positive message to our elected representatives and other government policy makers.

One thing to remember, and it’s a big one, is that civic engagement is a lot more than politics and public policy. Not all of the solutions to our problems can be found in government. There are many ways we can work to improve the lives of all Americans.

Let’s take a step out of the political arena and do something good to make our local communities better, or do something that has a national impact. If you are motivated, like me, to help others, then do it. I recently signed up to be a Red Cross volunteer. Nobody does more to help people who need it than the American Red Cross!

We don’t have to participate as a volunteer in an organized effort to help people. Individuals helping individuals is one way we can have the biggest impact. If each of us championed another person’s dream as our own, and helped them to realize it, then just think of the impact that would have. Nothing the government could do would help realize more “American Dreams” than that!

Maybe it’s as simple as making an introduction for someone who needs to meet the right person to help them start a small business. Maybe it’s watching your friend’s children once a week so they can take a class in order to further their career goals. There are so many things, big and small, we can do to help others overcome barriers to their success. That’s a big way we’ll ultimately make our country better, by improving the life of one American at a time.

Helping others through community volunteerism or on an individual basis will also do a lot to help diffuse the negativity of the political fight, because when we work together we are brought closer together on a personal level. We’ll see how much we have in common, and see that we all are really motivated by the same thing — to improve the lives of all Americans.

So, go ahead. Protest President Trump today, if you must. But remember to also take positive steps to help change the negativity in our politics. The bottomline is that the Trump Administration has a finite term of office, and our country will be here after he’s gone. We can work to improve all of our lives over the next four years by committing to finding more positive forms of civic engagement.

Originally published at www.huffingtonpost.com on April 15, 2017.