Earlier today, the Washington Post published an article by Jeff Guo titled\u00a0Donald Trump is teaching the GOP a different way to embrace gay rights<\/a>. I read the entire article through, and I am so<\/em> not on board. There is absolutely nothing in the article to suggest that either Trump or the GOP are embracing gay rights\u2014unless one believes that the real threat to gay rights comes from radical Islamic terrorism, as Trump seems to. Have a look at this line, for instance:<\/p>\n It would be a stretch to call Trump a gay-friendly candidate \u2014 he still opposes same-sex marriage\u00a0\u2014 but he supports other LGBT rights and has publicly declared himself a \u201creal friend\u201d to the community.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Nope<\/em>. So much nope. What \u201cother\u201d LGBT rights does Trump support, pray tell? Guo mentions that Trump came out against trans bathroom bills during the primary, but even Guo admits that quickly backtracked that. Here\u2019s Guo\u2019s take on this:<\/p>\n Though\u00a0he\u00a0has tried to\u00a0walk back some of his statements<\/a>\u00a0recently, his liberal reputation on social issues endures.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I\u2019m sorry, what?<\/em>\u00a0Is this<\/em> what the Washington Post has come to? It doesn\u2019t matter if a candidate has a \u201cliberal reputation on social issues\u201d if his positions<\/em> are avowedly conservative\u2014isn\u2019t it the media\u2019s job to cut through misinformation and present the facts? How hard would it be to mention that\u00a0Trump\u00a0has\u00a0pledged to nominate<\/a>\u00a0anti-gay justices to the Supreme Court?\u00a0Or that Trump has\u00a0pledged to sign<\/a>\u00a0legislation that would permit businesses to discriminate against LGBT individuals?\u00a0Or that Trump\u00a0has embraced<\/a>\u00a0far-right religious leaders and radio personalities who call for the death penalty for homosexuals?\u00a0Trump\u00a0has been cozying up to<\/a>\u00a0anti-LGBT activists for some time now. A simple google search would have let Guo know this.<\/p>\n Guo\u00a0next\u00a0talks about Millennial Republicans\u2019 support for marriage equality and other LGBT\u00a0rights, which is genuinely interesting. But then he\u00a0writes this:<\/p>\n These trends stand in stark contrast to the Republican Party platform, which continues to champion \u201ctraditional marriage and family, based on marriage between one man and one woman.\u201d\u00a0To be fair, the Democratic Party platform technically did not support same-sex marriage until\u00a02012<\/a>; but the party has opposed discrimination against sexual orientation since 1980.<\/p>\n Yet the latest Republican platform, freshly ratified in Cleveland last month,\u00a0omits<\/a>\u00a0any mention of LGBT people. Its section on tolerance condemns discrimination by \u201crace, sex, religion, creed, disability,\u201d \u2014 even \u201cnational origin\u201d \u2014 but remains silent on discrimination against gay, lesbian and transgender Americans. Despite another\u00a0round<\/a>\u00a0of lobbying efforts this year from LGBT Republicans, the party did not budge on this stance.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The platform does not<\/em> in fact remain silent on discrimination against gay, lesbian, and transgender Americans. Sure, if you\u00a0search\u00a0those specific terms you\u2019re not going to find anything, but the platform nevertheless comes down resoundingly in favor of<\/em> discrimination against LGBT people. Have a look:<\/p>\n We endorse the First Amendment Defense Act, Republican legislation in the House and Senate which will bar government discrimination against individuals and businesses for acting on the belief that marriage is the union of one man and one woman.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n That doesn\u2019t look like silence to me. It looks like a pretty sound endorsement of allowing businesses and individuals to discriminate against LGBT individuals.<\/p>\n It\u2019s also not all there is in the platform. Look at this, for instance:<\/p>\n We support the right of parents to determine the proper medical treatment and therapy for their minor children.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n That is a reference to state bills banning the use of gay conversion therapy on minors.<\/p>\n And then there\u2019s this in the platform\u00a0too:<\/p>\n Every violation of state sovereignty by federal officials is not merely a transgression of one unit of government against another; it is an assault on the liberties of individual Americans. \u2026 In obedience to that principle, we condemn the current Administration\u2019s unconstitutional expansion into areas beyond those specifically enumerated, including \u2026\u00a0school restroom policies. We pledge to restore the proper balance and vertical separation of powers between the federal government and state governments \u2014 the governments closest to, and most reflective of, the American people. We encourage states to reinvigorate their traditional role as the laboratories of democracy, propelling the nation forward through local and state innovation.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n And that<\/em> is a stance against new federal guidelines that grant transgender students access to bathrooms that match their gender identity, and in favor of allowing states to pass bills like North Carolina\u2019s HB2, which bars\u00a0transgender individuals from using public bathrooms that match their gender identities and is currently being challenged in court by Obama\u2019s justice department.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n There are two problems here. First, a party\u2019s presidential candidate typically has a decent\u00a0amount\u00a0of influence over the party\u2019s platform. \u00a0Trump, for his part,\u00a0chose to stay out<\/a>. \u201cHis guys have not shown up and said, \u2018Change this, change that,\u2019\u201d one\u00a0platform author reported to the New York Times in the article linked above. Guo does not address this. If Trump were indeed pushing the GOP to change its approach to LGBT rights, you would have expected to see him influencing the platform committee to reflect that change. He most expressly didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n Second, Guo fails to\u00a0mention that this was in fact the most anti-gay<\/em> platform in the history of the Republican Party.\u00a0Instead, he writes that despite lobbying from LGBT Republicans, \u201cthe party did not budge.\u201d This is simply not true. The party did<\/em> budge\u2014a lot\u2014and all of it toward more forceful<\/em> GOP opposition to LGBT rights.<\/p>\n But we\u2019re still<\/em> not done. Toward the end of Guo\u2019s\u00a0article, there\u2019s this:<\/p>\n At the state level, meanwhile, the culture wars have never been more raucous. Recent legislative fights over religious freedom, the rights of Christian bakeries and transgender people in public bathrooms have created the impression that hot-button social issues still command the political discourse around the nation. LGBT activists characterize these trends in state lawmaking as part of the conservative backlash to the Supreme Court decisions legalizing same-sex marriage.<\/p>\n But Trump has given us a hint of what that future party might look like. In the wake of the shooting at an Orlando gay nightclub, where a man pledging allegiance to the Islamic State killed 49 people, Trump connected his sympathy for the LGBT\u00a0community with his\u00a0suspicion<\/a>\u00a0of immigrants and Islam.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n My jaw is on the floor here. For one thing,\u00a0the national Republican Party platform absolutely did include all of these issues. This isn\u2019t just a state level thing. It\u2019s a national level thing. It\u2019s not just growing \u201cmore raucous\u201d at the state level, it\u2019s also affecting the national platform, which is far to the right on LGBT issues than any other platform ever<\/em>. For another thing, this very\u00a0week Trump is speaking at<\/a>\u00a0a \u201cRediscovering God in America\u201d conference in Florida, alongside these speakers<\/a>:<\/p>\n \u2014Mat Staver, whose Liberty Counsel Action sent out the invitation to the event and who is scheduled to speak, has\u00a0gained a national reputation<\/a>\u00a0by representing\u00a0Kim Davis<\/a>\u00a0and Alabama Chief Justice\u00a0Roy Moore<\/a>\u00a0through the affiliated\u00a0Liberty Counsel<\/a>. Last month, Staver denounced memorial gatherings for the victims of the Orlando nightclub attack as \u201chomosexual love fests<\/a>.\u201d Staver has\u00a0claimed<\/a>\u00a0that gay people are \u201cdemonic<\/a>,\u201d\u00a0seek to abuse children<\/a>\u00a0and are similar to\u00a0terrorists<\/a>, and has warned that gay rights victories could lead to \u201cforced homosexuality<\/a>\u201d and \u201canother civil war<\/a>.\u201d At the same time, he has\u00a0praised countries that outlaw same-sex relationships<\/a>. (Learn more about Mat Staver here<\/a>).<\/p>\n \u2014David Barton, a Republican Party activist who styles himself as a historian,\u00a0thinks<\/a>that God is justly preventing a cure for HIV\/AIDS because it is\u00a0a divine \u201cpenalty\u201d for homosexuality<\/a>, and has lamented that public schools try to\u00a0\u201cforce\u201d students \u201cto be homosexual\u201d<\/a>\u00a0when homosexuality really should be\u00a0regulated by the government<\/a>. (Learn more about David Barton here<\/a>).<\/p>\n \u2014Maine pastor Ken Graves preaches against \u201cmilitant homofascism<\/a>\u201d that he says \u201cseeks to take over our land and make it Sodom\u201d and argues that gay people cannot build happy families because they are \u201cdepressed<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2014Bill Federer, a Religious Right activist and\u00a0conspiracy<\/a>\u00a0theorist<\/a>, believes that gay rights are\u00a0bringing<\/a>\u00a0about<\/a>\u00a0the Islamist takeover of America.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n That\u2019s right, Trump is speaking alongside some of the most virulent anti-gay voices in the nation\u2014and granting them legitimacy by doing so\u2014the very week Guo published his article on Trump showing the GOP \u201ca different way to embrace gay rights,\u201d and Guo doesn\u2019t even mention this<\/em>. How much research did Guo actually do for this piece, exactly? This just seems sloppy!<\/p>\n And what exactly is this \u201cdifferent way to embrace gay rights\u201d that Guo says Trump is teaching the GOP? It\u2019s this:<\/p>\n Trump alluded to this idea again last month in Cleveland, where he\u00a0apparently became the first\u00a0Republican presidential nominee to reference gay people in his acceptance speech. \u201cAs your president, I will do everything in my power to protect our LGBT citizens from the violence and oppression of a hateful foreign ideology,\u201d he said at the GOP convention.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Do you see the problem here? Trump says he\u2019ll do everything in his power to protect LGBT people \u201cfrom the violence and oppression of a hateful foreign ideology\u201d while doing utterly nothing to protect LGBT people from the violence and oppression of a hateful domestic<\/em> ideology\u2014that of his own party.<\/p>\n Reading\u00a0Guo\u2019s article was frustrating because\u00a0he could have written a very\u00a0interesting and insightful piece with the same basic information if he\u2019d taken a slightly different direction. He could have used his statistics\u00a0on Millennial Republicans to argue that the GOP needs to change its position on LGBT rights or it will lose voters. He then\u00a0could have\u00a0suggested\u00a0that Trump could have<\/em> found a way to do this, had he stood up against the GOP\u2019s anti-gay positions rather than caving to absolutely all of them. Then, he could have\u00a0closed\u00a0out his article by presenting the Trump phenomenon as a lost opportunity for the GOP to move away from unpopular political positions that will\u00a0dog the party in the future\u2014an opportunity Trump blew when he chose to cosy up to anti-gay activists and give the platform committee free reign. Now that<\/em> is an article I would have actually gained something from.<\/p>\n But who am I kidding?\u00a0Even the\u00a0title<\/em> of Guo\u2019s article is misleading. After all,\u00a0Trump can\u2019t teach the GOP\u00a0\u201ca different way to embrace gay rights\u201d\u00a0when the GOP has never embraced gay rights to begin with. That\u2019s how English works.<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Earlier today, the Washington Post published an article by Jeff Guo titled Donald Trump is teaching the GOP a different way to embrace gay rights. I read the entire article through, and I am so not on board. There is absolutely nothing in the article to suggest that either Trump or the GOP are embracing gay rights—unless one believes that the real threat to gay rights comes from radical Islamic terrorism, as Trump seems to. <\/p>\n Click through to read more!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":845,"featured_media":29954,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[282,110],"class_list":["post-29943","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-lgbt","tag-lgbtq"],"yoast_head":"\n