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Monday Miscellany, 8/31/26

Monday Miscellany, 8/31/26

Last updated on: August 31, 2026 at 6:00 am by Gene Veith

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Monday Miscellany, 8/31/26 2026-08-24T13:58:39-04:00 Gene Veith

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The Right to Worship Act. Gay Republicans drop the “T” in LGBT. And Trump’s approval rating is underwater in 47 states.

The Right to Worship Act

Anti-semitic, pro-Hamas protesters have been targeting Jewish synagogues. For example, in New York City, some 200 protesters chanted Hamas slogans and “We need to make them scared!”, as families tried to go inside to worship to taunts of “baby killers!” and “Zionist pigs!” Last year there were 530 cases of this kind of harassment at synagogues.

Christian churches too have faced the similar protests. Pro-abortion activists organized wide-scale protests at Catholic masses after Roe v. Wade was overturned, entering the churches and disrupting the services by shouting down the worshipers with pro-abortion slogans. LGBTQ activists have done the same thing to both Catholic and Protestant churches that publicly oppose homosexuality. Recently, in Minnesota, during the protests against immigration enforcement, nearly 40 shouting activists swarmed inside an evangelical church because one of its pastors moonlighted as an immigration officer. Mormons, Muslims, and other religious groups have received the same treatment.

So a bipartisan coalition in both houses of Congress has introduced the Right to Worship Act. The bill is sponsored by Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) in the Senate and Reps. Tom Suozzi (D-N.Y.) and Brad Knott (R-N.C.) in the House. The proposed law.

As described in an op-ed piece by the Anti-Defamation League in the Hill, “The Right to Worship Act would establish a 100-foot safe access zone around places of religious worship, prohibiting conduct intended to disrupt religious services or impede people from attending them.”

Sound familiar? The “100-foot safe access zone” seems modeled after various laws to restrict protests at abortion clinics. The difference, of course, is that religious liberty is a specific constitutional right. But it seems fitting that houses of worship receive at least the protection given to abortion clinics.

Gay Republicans Drop the “T” in LGBT

The Log Cabin Republicans, an organization of gay conservatives (of whom there are many, including in the Trump administration), is dropping its advocacy for the transgender movement. To the point of dropping the “T” in “LGBT.”

The head of the organization, Ross Hemminger, issued this statement, posted at the conservative website Townhall:

After significant discussion with our membership, our Board of Directors voted to refine Log Cabin Republicans’ national advocacy focus to concentrate specifically on issues of sexual orientation and conservative values — in other words, we are an LGB advocacy organization, as our founders envisioned and as our moral center calls us to be.

Sure enough, the Log Cabin Republican have scrubbed “LGBT” (an acronym for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transexual) and replaced it with just “LGB.” (The organization has never used the “Q” for “queer,” as in the more up-to-date LGBTQ, considering that assertion of “gender non-conformity” to be a political identity rather than a sexual identity.)

Hemminger explains the group’s action:

The transgender movement has ceased focusing on adults at all — nearly all of their efforts and those of their aligned special interest groups focus on minors. They push schools to teach radical gender ideology; they want biological men in women’s sports regardless of the consequences; perhaps most offensively, they support gender reassignment treatments for minors, often without the knowledge or consent of the parents, knowing full well these treatments are mostly irreversible.

We have come a long way from the founding of our organization. We have fought for the right to legally marry who we love, serve our country and our communities openly and proudly, and to enjoy the same inalienable rights afforded to all law-abiding Americans — and we succeeded. However, the new era of gender identity politics is not the movement we supported and fought for.

Some homosexuals oppose the transgender movement because young people with same-sex attraction are now often thinking, “I’m not gay! I’m just a boy/girl!”

Some Islamic countries, particularly Iran, coerce homosexuals to get transgender treatment. Iran even pays for it. In some Islamic countries where homosexual activity is punishable by death, gays can avoid that penalty by getting a sex-change operation.

Trump’s Approval Rating Is Underwater in 47 States

President Trump’s popularity keeps going down. A recent YouGov/Economist poll has found that his approval rating is underwater–that is, more people disapprove of him than approve of him–in 47 states.

That includes states that he carried overwhelmingly in the presidential election. In my native Oklahoma, Trump won every single county, with a 34% margin of victory. Today More Oklahomans disapprove of him than approve of him by 7 points. Texas went for Trump by a 14% margin. Today, Trump’s approval rating in the Lonestar State is underwater by 22 points!

The only states that still like Trump are Wyoming (where more people approve of him than disapprove by +14 points), Idaho (+9), and West Virginia (+6).

What happened? The war and the economy have turned much of his working-class base against him. He is 48 points under water on the issue of inflation, with nearly three-quarters (72%) of Americans disapproving of how he is handling it. Folks in the heartland don’t like his full-throated support of AI and data centers. Farmers and ranchers don’t like his plan of importing meat to drive prices down. Hispanics, who had been flocking to him, are turned off by his heavy-handed immigration enforcement. Many pro-lifers feel betrayed. Businesses hate his unpredictable tariffs and his starting a trade war with Canada, our biggest export market. In addition, I think Americans are just tired of all the drama, suffering from Trump fatigue.

There is, however, one group that is still loyal, though in a shrinking way: Evangelical Christians. At one time, during the election, over to four out of five of evangelicals (82%) supported Trump, but, as of earlier this summer, that proportion has fallen to only a shade over half (52%).

gays vs. transgenderism

President Trump' approval rating

President Trump's base

Protests at worship services

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