The Terrible Anti-LGBTQ First Year Of The Promised Pro-Gay President Trump

[Initech]

As a presidential candidate, Donald Trump thrilled conservative gay leaders. He promised to “do everything in my power to protect LGBTQ citizens” and described himself as “fine” with marriage equality, which he said had been “settled” by the U.S. Supreme Court. Gay Republicans, who have had little experience with candidates expressing anything other than hostility, lost all sense of perspective. Chris Barron, a co-founder of GOProud, pronounced Trump “a better friend to the LGBT community than Hillary Clinton could ever be.” Breitbartista Milo Yiannapoulos went even further, declaring, “Donald Trump is the most pro-gay candidate in American electoral history.” Both statements were obviously and wildly untrue, as Trump’s damaging first year in office has made clear. As Miranda’s recent post noted, this was the year that the Religious Right moved into the White House. And the consequences for LGBTQ people have been predictably awful.

It is true that Trump once held up a rainbow flag someone handed him at a rally. But more often he was on stage at Religious Right events waving his Bible and pledging to make Christian conservatives more powerful while giving them the Supreme Court of their dreams. There was no way that Trump could keep his promises to the Religious Right—which delivered an overwhelming majority of white evangelical voters to Trump—without sacrificing the rights and well-being of LGBTQ Americans.

Indeed, last December, anti-LGBTQ extremist Scott Lively celebrated the election of Trump, who he said wisely concealed his anti-equality agenda as a candidate. Lively predicted that after Trump named new Supreme Court justices, “Kennedy and his homosexualist fellow travelers will presumably never again be able to repeat their past acts of violence to the Constitution and its Biblical foundations.”

Many LGBTQ people have been or will be harmed by broad-based Trump-GOP policies, like the tax bill and its assault on the Affordable Care Act, that also affect millions of non-LGBTQ Americans. But LGBTQ Americans are also facing very focused attacks from the Trump administration. That’s why NBC called Trump’s first 100 days “fear-inducing” for LGBTQ Americans. And by mid-year, German Lopez at Vox was calling Trump’s campaign promises to the LGBTQ community “total bullshit” and Luke Darby at GQ was calling the administration “a disaster for LGBT Americans.” The Human Rights Campaign’s Sarah McBride went even further, writing in Cosmopolitan that the Trump administration has “revealed itself to be the ugliest, most explicitly anti-LGBTQ presidency in U.S. history.” Journalist Michelangelo Signorile seconded that emotion in September.
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/the-terrible-anti-lgbtq-first-year-of-the-promised-pro-gay-president-trump/

"But hey it's cool, you can trust me, OK? Because I have the best LGBT in my administration! And the Fake News media doesn't report on this! Sad!"

[Behind the Aegis]

1. Gay people don't matter to him or most people.

We are a "convenient cause" for people and not seen as "real" people worthy of respect, dignity, or concern unless it is to further someone's agenda.