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Tulsi Gabbard is Not Who You Think She Is
From homophobia to Islamophobia to cultism, she is no progressive's dream.
By Eoin Higgins | November 22, 2016 | 9:12amTulsi Gabbard is Not Who You Think She Is
To some progressives, the news Monday that Tulsi Gabbard was meeting with President-Elect Donald Trump for consideration of a position in his administration must have been confusing.
Gabbard’s February 2016 endorsement of Bernie Sanders’ quixotic run for the Democratic nomination for president involved publicly resigning her seat as DNC Vice Chair. Her name has been floated as a possible candidate for 2020. And at a glance, her positions seem in line with the liberal wing of her party.
But a deeper look at Gabbard’s political career shows that she is devoted to attaining power and to the perpetuation of extremist, fringe ideology. She adopts and sheds extremist positions at will, but one thing remains constant: her consistent embrace of hard-right politics.
The 35-year-old Congresswoman from Hawaii was raised in a politically powerful household. Her father, Mike Gabbard, is a well-known firebrand in Hawaiian politics— his most beloved issue is a virulent rejection of homosexuality and gay rights.
The younger Gabbard protested against a bill advocating civil unions during her tenure in the Hawaii Congress, holding up signs decrying the proposition. The bill eventually stalled.
Gabbard replied to a request for comment on her father’s connections with cult leader Chris Butler (more below) in 2004 with an oddly worded email accusing Honolulu Magazine of a homosexual conspiratorial attempt to discredit her father.
“I smell a skunk,” [Gabbard] wrote. “It’s clear to me that you’re acting as a conduit for The Honolulu Weekly and other homosexual extremist supporters of Ed Case.”
This political position held until 2012, when she made an about face and declared she supported gay rights— just in time for the election for Hawaii’s 2nd District. And that wasn’t the first time she had shed a piece of her past in order to make herself more palatable to voters.
Gabbard’s first marriage, to a man named Eduardo Tamayo, lasted from 2002 to 2006. Tamayo and Gabbard were both involved with a man named Chris Butler, the leader of a Hare Krishna spinoff called the Science of Identity Foundation that is located in Honolulu County.
The Hawaii Free Press notes that a number of Butler-connected Hawaiians have contributed to Gabbard and that her involvement with the cult is still an open question.
Gabbard has scrubbed all mention of her past with Butler’s cult, and with Tamayo, from the internet. The only evidence that is publicly available that Tamayo and Gabbard even know each other— excepting her Wikipedia page— is from anti-cult site Flashlight on Roaches. It’s grainy, but it does show the two together. It’s also the only known photo of Tamayo that is publicly available.
Today, Gabbard would prefer not to be known for her Butler-cult related past. The only way to find it is to dig deep into Hawaiian-centric newsletters and publications. But for those in Hawaii, it’s an omnipresent part of her political and social history. As the Honolulu Civil Beat reported on March 16, 2015:
The Gabbard family’s ties to Butler still hound her — in the hallways of the Hawaii State Capitol, on blogs of political observers, on pages of online discussion forums, and in commentary sections of various news sites, including Civil Beat’s.
Now, the mysterious world that’s been swirling around Gabbard all her life is coming under closer scrutiny as the 33-year-old congresswoman’s stature on the national stage steadily rises, and her views on national and international issues — whether she’s standing up for veterans or challenging President Barack Obama over his stance on the Islamic State — continue to draw the media spotlight.
By now, Gabbard has left any ambiguity about her religious beliefs behind. She identifies as a member of the Gaudiya Vaishnavism Sect of the Hindu faith.
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https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2016/11/tulsi-gabbard-is-not-who-you-think-she-is.html
