Tulsi Gabbard has a bigotry problem. She’s tried to explain it away by pointing to an emotional epiphany she found in military service serving alongside LGBT military, explaining this is why she has completely changed her political views on an energizing tenet of her early political career — religious opposition to government-enforced marriage equity.
But she no longer frames her deep and continuing personal religious conviction against both abortion and LGBT rights as principled political opposition to gay marriage and abortion. She no longer frames her political views as religious conviction victimized by government liberalism - as the fight for religions’ deeply held convictions to be free from forced government control (aka Hobby Lobby), instead she now says she’s changed because she opposes the “imposition of religious views by government” (aka The Taliban).
This is a subtle switch in framing. A clever switch. It suggests that she now believes that her own impassioned efforts, and that of her father conservative Catholic politician Mike Gabbard, to use the power of the Hawai’i state government to impose a religious view against marriage equity was wrong. That religion has no place in secular governance — that’s the lesson she’d like us to believe she learned in Iraq. So are we to believe she she opposes efforts by extremist religious groups within the US to use the American political process to impose their religious beliefs on US law, just like the Muslim extremist in Iraq and Syria? Would such efforts be anti-American? Is it paramount that a secular state does not impose a religious view through law on a secular nation?
Here’s the problem for Tulsi — she clearly doesn’t understand what she claims she learned in Iraq. And the evidence? She’s recently angrily, and rather bizarrely, denounced another member of the Hawai’i delegation, Mazie Hirono, (she also denounced Kamala Harris, too) for “religious bigotry” with a kind of zeal rare for a Hawai’i politician. This line of denunciation was amplified by Fox News, conservative press, and conservative Catholics. Tulsi chose to define as “religious bigotry”, Hirono and Harris’ advise & consent judicial committee questioning of a Trump judicial nominee’s extreme conservative religious views against abortion and gay marriage (views not held by the majority of Americans)(but also, curiously, views on abortion and gay marriage that Tulsi still personally holds). They grilled the nominee whether those deeply held religious views would unduly influence his objective judicial ability in a secular nation, to make objective legal decisions if it conflicted with his deeply held religious beliefs. Rather than defend secular American governance to be free from extremist religious views, Tulsi called Harris and Hirono’s questioning about anti-abortion, anti-gay Christian fundamentalism in that judicial nominee’s record “bigoted.” Would Tulsi have also called the questioning by members of the Iraq government of the impartiality of a judicial nominee with deeply held Sharia views, as an example of “religious bigotry”? Who knows? I don’t think she does.
One more thing about her chronology of epiphany. Her service in Iraq ended in 2009, which is when her epiphany allegedly happened. In 2013 Hawai’i had a Special Legislative Session on same-sex marriage, it was a critical and very consuming issue. US Senator Hirono and US Senator Schatz and US Representative Hanabusa all publicly weighed in, and each sent representatives to testify in favor of marriage equity, each publicly supporting equal rights for all Hawai’i citizens. But one Washington politician refused to use that moment to explain her Iraq epiphany and weigh in, refuse to send a representative home and show up to fight for equality, and that was Tulsi Gabbard whose staff blithely explained that the Representative does not get involved in local state politics. Of course, now her campaign cites her January 2013 statement as complete evidence of her epiphany, ignoring her refusal of the subsequent request from the Hawai’i LGBT Caucus asking her to send a representative to the October session. So in October 2013, despite the public and forceful denunciation by the leadership of the Catholic, Mormon, and conservative Evangelical Protestant Hawaii Family Forum and Hawaii Family Advocates (who gave Dad Mike Gabbard a 100% rating) to marriage equity in the Special Session, Mazie, Brian, and Colleen each sent a representative to testify, but not Tulsi. That’s not a lesson learned about religious bigotry, that’s not courage of conviction, that’s not leadership. That’s Tulsi.
I have no doubt Tulsi Gabbard is opposed to religious bigotry if imposed by a conservative Muslim theocratic government. It’s still not clear if she’s opposed to religious bigotry if it’s imposed by conservative American theocratic politicians. Or does Tulsi just believe that principled defense of a secular nation from the imposition of conservative American theocracy is the only “bigotry” worth denouncing?