Not only is Donald Trump a crooked businessman prone to lies and demagoguery, but he poses a mortal threat towards LGBT rights and equality as he courts the leaders of virulently anti-gay "family values" organizations, a number of which have been certified as hate groups, including Family Research Council ("FRC"). Trump will make a pact with the devil to further his self-promotion, and there is nothing that the Christofascists demand more than special rights for themselves and the denigration of LGBT individuals and their families. A column in Huffington Post looks at the threat that Trump poses. Here are excerpts:
Contrary to those in the media and elsewhere who claimed he was “far more accepting” on LGBT issues than other GOP candidates, Donald Trump is proving that he very much will be a force against LGBT equality if elected president. And he’s doing it in a more insidious, under-the-radar way than any previous GOP presidential nominee.
Though he rarely raises his positions against LGBT rights on the campaign trail, Trump is making pacts with anti-LGBT forces. Today, Trump spoke at the Road to the Majority summit in Washington, an event attended by Christian right activists and sponsored by the Faith and Freedom Coalition and Concerned Women for America, both of which fight against LGBT rights. “I’m with you 100 percent,” he said, and, knowing the event was televised live on the cable networks, he spoke with a dog whistle on LGBT rights, alluding to attacks on “marriage and family” and championing “religious freedom,” which of course has been the term used by evangelicals to deny LGBT people of rights. The crowd roared with approval.
And on June 21, in New York, Trump will have a private meeting with over 400 of the most bigoted, most homophobic and most influential anti-LGBT advocates in the United States — from Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins to James Dobson, founder of the Focus on the Family — the bedrock of the religious right, which has been a prominent part of the base of the Republican Party for decades. Many of these groups, like Family Research Council, have been labeled as hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center. No GOP president in roughly five decades has been elected without the religious right turning out in big numbers. No GOP president has been elected in modern times without evangelical pastors railing from pulpits across the country, telling followers that the only way to save the country is to support the GOP presidential candidate. Ben Carson, who has taken a prominent role in Trump’s campaign, will moderate the discussion between Trump and the hundreds of anti-LGBT activists, which is closed to the media and thus tightly controlled.
Trump had already quietly made pacts with some anti-LGBT forces, and promised to do what he can to overturn the Supreme Court’s historic Obergefell ruling, which he called, “shocking.” He promised he’d appoint justices to the Supreme Court who might do that, and certainly the list of extreme judges he provided recently shouldn’t give LGBT people any comfort.
Though he opposes marriage equality and supports a bill in Congress that will allow religious exemptions for anti-gay individuals and businesses that don’t want to provide services to LGBT people, The New York Times, for example, focused on Trump’s sending a congratulations note to Elton John eleven years ago on his civil union as one among several weak examples that supposedly show him to be more gay-friendly.
As I pointed out a few weeks ago, simply having Ben Carson prominent in his campaign — a man who compared homosexuality to bestiality and pedophilia — is an affront to LGBT people. And as RightWingWatch’s Brian Tashman noted, Trump has also “partnered with Harlem’s notorious ‘stone homos‘ pastor James David Manning and far-right radio show host Alex Jones, who thinks the LGBT rights movement is a ‘suicide cult’ bent on the destruction of humanity.”
Christian right leaders got behind Ronald Reagan, who was divorced, and George H. W. Bush, who formerly supported abortion rights, after they were romanced a bit and quietly forged pacts with the candidates, including regarding stopping advancement on gay rights. That process is happening right now with Trump. His campaign, and certainly Republican leaders, know he cannot win without motivating a large portion of evangelicals. And right now anti-LGBT laws and measures meant to blunt equality are animating religious conservatives in a big way, . . .
No matter what Trump has said in the past, or what the media or desperate gay Republicans may say now, there’s no question that Trump must bow to an anti-LGBT agenda if he wants to win the presidency. That makes him a mortal danger to LGBT equality.
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