Why Tom Cotton is Wrong about LGBT Rights
April 6, 2015 § 6 Comments
Last week, Senator Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas) had a very clear message to LGBT folk in the United States: “In Iran they hang you for the crime of being gay.” This comes as Cotton’s defence of the now amended Defence of Religious Freedom Act passed by the Indiana legislature the week before.
So this is what is has come to. A senator of this country is telling a group of its citizens that they’re lucky they don’t live in Iran. In other words, shut up. For Senator Cotton the United States should not strive to be leader of human rights in this world. In his mind, the country should just forget the statement that “We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal.” Nope. We should just forget what the State Department says on its webpage:
The protection of fundamental human rights was a foundation stone in the establishment of the United States over 200 years ago. Since then, a central goal of U.S. foreign policy has been the promotion of respect for human rights, as embodied in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The United States understands that the existence of human rights helps secure the peace, deter aggression, promote the rule of law, combat crime and corruption, strengthen democracies, and prevent humanitarian crises.
None of this matters to Senator Cotton. And this is very sad. Politics in this country is a blood sport, at least symbolically. Whenever people throw up their arms and express frustration at the current impasse between Democrats and Republicans, I like to gently remind them it’s never really been any different here, dating back to the first fights in Congress between the Federalists and the Republicans (not, of course, the same party as that today, which dates from the 1850s). On the one side, the Federalists, led by Alexander Hamilton and John Adams, believed in a strong federal government; the Republicans, led by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, preferred a smaller national government and favoured personal liberty, free from government interference.
Nonetheless, there was a general belief in the right of Americans to dignity and a protection of their human rights (unless, of course, one was African American). But we’ve already fought this fight. In the 1960s, Americans sought a “Great Society,” one which provided care for its dispossessed and one that sought to protect its vulnerable citizens. Congresswoman Kay Granger (R-Texas) perhaps summed up how human rights work, including in this country:
Human rights are not a privilege granted by the few, they are a liberty entitled to all, and human rights, by definition, include the rights of all humans, those in the dawn of life, the dusk of life, or the shadows of life.
Cotton clearly has this equation backwards, he seeks to refuse basic rights to LGBT people in this country. It is not just that Cotton’s greatest ambition in terms of equality is to ensure American LGBT people are treated at least as well as the 75th ranked country on the 2013 Human Rights Index (the US, for reference, is ranked 5th). That is not good enough and violates everything that this country is supposed to stand for. And it does not represent the country that the vast majority of Americans hope for.
Tom Cotton should be deeply ashamed of himself.
Matthew Barlow 
I live in Arkansas. Tom Cotton does not represent my politics. I did not vote for him. I would, however, vote to send Tom to Iran. I would even contribute money, for a one-way ticket. Let’s try Kickstarter…
Lol! Well, that’s just it. I know a few Arkansians (is that even right?) and even the Republicans are offended by Cotton. So, yeah, let’s start us that Kickstarter: “Send Tom Cotton to Iran!”
Very well said! This speaks volumes.
Thanks!
Nicely said.
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