Politics February 23, 2017
Here’s one campaign promise broken – Donald Trump’s pledge to support the LGBTQ community.
The Trump administration has rolled back guidelines that had been put in place by the Obama administration regarding which restrooms transgender students can use.
They required schools to allow transgender students to use restrooms matching their chosen gender rather than what is on their birth certificates.
But now that he has nixed the guidelines, potentially putting transgender students in danger, many are pointing out a hypocritical June 2016 tweet. “Thank you to the LGBT community! I will fight for you while Hillary [Clinton] brings in more people that will threaten your freedoms and beliefs,” Trump had written.
In his RNC convention speech last year, Trump promised to “do everything in my power to protect our LGBTQ citizens from the violence and oppression of a hateful foreign ideology.” Those remarks were made in condemnation of the Orlando nightclub shooting.
It would have been nice to think those words were sincere. But as many remarked at the time, it seemed like someone had written “LGBTQ” on a piece of paper for him right before he went out, with the then-presidential nominee disjointedly spitting out the letters as if he had never seen them together previously.
It is also possible that Trump only even mentioned the Pulse shooting in order to get another chance at condemning the “Islamic terrorists” he is always going on about. Maybe he’s okay with “hateful ideology” as long as it is domestic.
But still, people tried to have faith that he would keep his promises to protect the LGBTQ community. I mean, he is all about keeping his campaign promises, isn’t he? His recent bizarre, rambling press conference slammed the media and their “lies” while praising himself for accomplishing supposedly more than any president ever has before him.
“In other words, the media’s trying to attack our administration because they know we are following through on pledges that we made and they’re not happy about it for whatever reason,” he bragged.
Perhaps what Trump had meant was that his word was only valuable to the people who had voted for him. He’s certainly going full steam ahead on anti-immigration measures and working on that heinous Dakota Access Pipeline.
But even those who have stood alongside him are calling this act into question. Jackie Evancho, the “America’s Got Talent” runner-up who famously made the much-maligned decision to sing at Trump’s inauguration, is certainly feeling forgotten as new legislation threatens her sister’s safety.
“I am obviously disappointed in the @POTUS decision to send the #transgender bathroom issue to the states to decide. #sisterlove,” she wrote, sharing her support for older sister Juliet, who came out as trans in 2015.
Jackie also took the opportunity to reach out to Trump, trying to start a dialogue about why this decision is so important and dangerous. She tweeted, “.@realDonaldTrump u gave me the honor 2 sing at your inauguration. Pls give me & my sis the honor 2 meet with u 2 talk #transgender rghts,” with a heart emoji.
And shockingly, even Education Secretary Betsy DeVos didn’t want to sign off on the order. CNN reports that according to three Republicans with knowledge of the internal discussions, DeVos was uncomfortable with Trump’s choice, but was pushed by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who you may remember as the man “deemed too racist to be a federal judge” in the 1980s.
Allegedly, when forced to decide between resigning her office or defying the president, she seemingly lost what moral compass she did have and went along with it. The order had to come from the Justice and Education Departments. And so it has.
A host of celebrities such as Ellen DeGeneres, George Takei, Patricia Arquette, Charlize Theron and Chris Evans railed against the measure as well. Arquette, who lost her trans sister Alexis this past September, went with a more light-hearted tweet, joking as she made the serious point that the transgender community is not a threat.
“I spent half my life sharing a bathroom with a #Transgender sister. Trust me there’s nothing to be afraid of other than running out of TP,” she wrote.
However, the battle for trans rights is far from over, with the case of Gavin Grimm, a Virginia high school student who identifies as male, set to come before the Supreme Court in April.
Last April, a federal appeals court ruled in favor of Gavin after his Virginia School District filed several lawsuits trying to challenge the Obama administration’s guidelines. It will next go before the Supreme Court.
The court’s ruling could have a major impact on bias against transgender men and women, a subject even more important now that President Trump seems unlikely to uphold his campaign promises to protect LGBTQ rights.
“For transgender people, the stakes of this case are incredibly high. Whatever the court rules in Grimm may ensure that transgender people are accepted and included as equal members of our society, or it may relegate them to outsiders for decades to come,” said Shannon Minter, a transgender man and legal director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights.
LGBTQ supporters will hope that the Supreme Court will make a better decision than Donald Trump just did. Oh, and that support grows for organizations like Trans Lifeline.
