Perfectly Unclear -- On LGBTQ, what did the President 'understand' and when did he understand it?

Someone who in 1971 referred to Archie Bunker as “a stupid old fellow” may not sound like a Nixon person, but it was in fact Richard Nixon himself who called his greatest fictional ally those words.

A White House tape reveals that as well as much that is more vintage reactionary Nixon, but also a mystery -- call it the “other” gap in the White House Tapes.

On this recording, Nixon tells H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman of a recent evening when, after watching a televised baseball game, he stumbled upon what he thought was a movie.

Nixon describes how in this broadcast he saw a “stupid old fellow” named Archie, two intelligent young men and a “nice girl” sitting in a living room. The characters are talking in a manner the 37^th President believed was “glorifying homosexuality.”

Haldeman explains to his boss that this was a weekly show, not a movie, though he never gets the name “All In The Family” out before Nixon cuts him off and launches into a detailed description of the plot.

In this episode, called “Judging Books by Covers,” an ascot wearing intellectual friend of Mike’s named Roger is presumed to be gay, or as the leader of the free world puts it in that tape, “queer.” At the episode’s conclusion, however, a virile, bulked up former pro football player, who is an acquaintance of Archie’s and a regular at the bar down the street, comes out to a disbelieving Archie as gay.

Nixon is appalled by this TV show and his strong reaction to it is part of a long Nixon-esque rant in this tape against gays (whom he calls “fags”) and the emerging movement for LGBTQ equality. The president asserts gay rights will weaken the United States, absurdly claiming that France and Britain fell from world superpower status because homosexuals became more visible in those nations.

Though he acknowledges gays likely include Aristotle, Socrates, and the wedding planner setting up Tricia’s upcoming nuptials, a hateful Nixon mixes up homosexual with pedophile during his tirade, and lumps the new visibility of gay Americans in with drug abuse as measures of moral decline.

Though statements like those coming from Richard Nixon would seem unsurprising, one thing about the president’s diatribe on this tape gives pause.

Though history remembers there was an 18-minute gap in a crucial 1972 tape three days after the Watergate break in, let us talk about an obscure 14-second gap in this tape. It includes a beep tone lasting that long, and its precise timing hints at the Chief Executive covering something up. Yeah, Nixon and cover ups go back a long way, though I concede the evidence is far from perfectly clear.

And since there’s no pardon in the works for me if I get in trouble over this, I’ll say that this is just unfounded crazy speculation.

But there has to be some reason why the White House tape has 14 seconds missing. Here’s how the tape goes:

NIXON: “But the point is, I do not mind the homosexuality. I understand it.... (14 second beep tone)... But nevertheless, the point that I make is that, God damn it, I do not think you glorify, on public television, homosexuality.”

One can’t imagine the beep's purpose being to cover up excessive anti-gay statements, because of the level of vitriol in what we have already heard. Was the language just too foul? C’mon, these are the Nixon tapes.

So that would leave the possibility that what’s blocked just after Nixon says he understands the homosexuality is an elaboration on just how he understands it.

                   ABOVE, listen to the TV Critic and Homophobe-in-chief

 

Could Nixon have said:

“I do not mind the homosexuality. I understand it. I mean from San Clemente to Key Biscayne, nobody decorates better than I do!”

Or…. “I do not mind the homosexuality. I understand it. Why do you think I was sweating so much in the ‘60 debate? Standing that close to Kennedy -- hubba hubba!”

Or… “I do not mind the homosexuality. I understand it. The day someone fixed me up with a blind date named ‘Pat,’ I spent the week looking forward to some cute Irish guy!”

Or not. But this is a man who built his political career on a string of illogical insinuations that his opponents were communist-leaning, so Tricky Dickey may have earned a little innuendo.

                                                                                                          ____________________________________

Brian Arbenz lives in Louisville, Ky. USA, where he never missed All in the Family while growing up.  He turned out just fine, despite Richard Nixon's warning that the kids of America could be harmed by this episode:

CLICK to go to "Judging Books By Covers" from 1971, via Daily Motion

On state ballot questions, voters took the nation considerably leftward Nov. 3

No, Oregonians won’t be running through the streets singing “Tomorrow Never Knows,” but the state’s voters seemed to heed that John Lennon song’s lyrics which sum up drug trips as: “this is not dying” Nov. 3 when they approved controlled medical use of Psilocybin.

That’s the hallucinatory ingredient found in certain mushroom varieties which hippies, rock stars and other drug culture devotees have long sworn can take us to enlightenment, peace, or saber tooth tigers jumping out of walls in “bad trips.”

Oregonians approved ballot Measure 109 by 56 to 44 percent Nov. 3 directing the state to set up, over two years, a system of administering Psilocybin in supervised and licensed therapy sessions.

The campaign for the measure got a boost from a two-year study published in 2020 in the Journal of the American Medical Association concluding that in controlled therapy sessions, depression and anxiety patients can receive help from Psilocybin. The drug is a natural substance similar to the lab-created LSD, and which creates somewhat similar psychedelic mental experiences.

Measure 109 says patients using Psilocybin must be at least 21, among other qualifications. Users will not be allowed to leave the clinics until all mood altering effects have passed, which can take up to six hours.

Voters also approved measure 110, which revamps Oregon’s drug laws to end criminal penalties for small amounts of illicit drugs and expand treatment and recovery programs. It passed by 59 to 41 percent.

The Oregon drug policy reforms are the most influential of several important ballot initiatives approved by the voters in various states in November 2020, most of them decidedly in the progressive direction, but a few toward the right.

Colorado voters defeated an initiative to ban late term abortions by 59 to 41 percent; they voted by 58 to 42 percent to create a statewide program for family and medical leave; and approved by 51 to 49 percent restoring grey wolf populations on designated lands.

The wolf initiative gained momentum when the federal Interior Department in October took the species off the endangered list, raising a sense of urgency to protect the animals. But farmers and ranchers vehemently opposed the measure, saying grey wolves, which were nearly wiped out in the 1920s by hunting, will harm their livelihood and their communities’ economies. Still, the restoration plan approved by voters includes state reimbursement for those who lose livestock to grey wolves.

Is the clunky 1700s method on the way out?

Another close vote by Coloradans Nov. 3 adds their state's backing to a movement launched by the late U.S. Senator Birch Bayh of Indiana to end the archaic Electoral College. Colorado voters voted 52 to 48 percent to have their state join the Interstate Popular Vote Compact. That compact would direct all states to have their electors automatically vote for whichever candidate won the national popular vote for president, making the Electoral College moot.

The Democrat Bayh championed the Popular Vote Compact after leaving office in 1980. His U.S. Constitutional Amendment to replace the Electoral College with the popular vote was tabled or filibustered six times from 1967 to ‘77.

Colorado voters, by a 63 to 37 percent margin, also gave the nod Nov. 3 to a measure reflecting rightist passions, a state constitutional amendment to require voters in Colorado elections to have U.S. citizenship.

As they voted 68 to 32 percent Nov. 3 to create a tobacco and nicotine tax, Coloradans also voted 58 to 42 percent to cut the state income tax. Taken together, those changes may amount to pushing the tax burden more to the poor, called regressive taxation, since cigarette use nationwide has heavily gravitated toward the lowest incomes.

Arizonans pointed the way unambiguously toward more progressive taxation (meaning taxing the wealthy more than the poor), passing the Invest in Education Act by 52 to 48 percent. The act, vocally opposed by many pro-corporate groups, raises the state income tax rate on earners of $250,000 or more by 3.5 percent, which is expected to generate a billion dollars in revenue to boost teacher salaries and make other improvements in public schools.

Illinois voters rejected by 55 percent to 45 percent a proposed amendment rescinding the state constitution’s requirement of a flat income tax rate. The amendment would have allowed a graduated income tax, which could have taken more from wealthy earners.

New Jersey’s state legislature passed and its governor signed a bill in September boosting income taxes on the well-to-do by dropping the level at which the top rate of 10.75 percent is levied. Formerly, New Jersey residents making $5 million or more paid that amount, but now those making $1 million or more will be taxed at that level.

In Virginia, which like Arizona is transitioning from a red state toward blue, voters in the D.C. metro area counties of Arlington, Fairfax and Loudon, voted yes on 13 out of 13 bond issues for health and human services, public safety, public transit, public schools, parks or general capital improvements. "Yes" vote margins were from 66 percent to as high as 81 percent.

Add to this, the much maligned 2016 election featuring a record number of public school tax referenda approved around the nation, and it is clear that Americans are no longer giving a free pass to the tax cut mantra.

Two non-taxation referenda reflecting what could be called anti-big brother feelings passed overwhelmingly.

Michigan voters approved 89 to 11 percent a referendum requiring a warrant to search a person’s electronic data. Georgians voted 75 to 25 percent to curb sovereign immunity, making it easier to challenge through lawsuits the constitutionality of a state action.

Several Georgia supreme court decisions since 2014 had expanded the doctrine of sovereign immunity from lawsuits in cases where litigation had sought to have certain state laws declared unconstitutional.

  

Brian Arbenz is a writer, commentator and activist living in Louisville, Ky.