Trump’s Second Term Agenda on LGBTQ Issues Is Alarming

I continue to be disturbed by supposed friends who claim to like me, my husband and a number of our gay friends yet vote for Republican politicians at both the state and federal level who not only oppose LGBT rights but also surround themselves with anti-LGBT extremists and hate group leaders. If confronted, they scoff at my concerns and waive their betrayal as merely "political differences" and ignore the reality that the politicians they support are a very real threat to LGBT rights and my safety and security from discrimination. Naturally, if positions were reversed, I suspect they would sing a very different tune and accuse me and other gay friends as false friends. Simply put, one can't claim to care about or even love others and then vote for politicians who seek to actively harm their supposed friends.  All of which brings me to the very real threat Donald Trump and his mini-me, JD Vance, pose to LGBT Americans in both red and blue states.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at the threat that a second Trump regime would pose to LGBT Americans and revisits some of the anti-LGBT actions taken by Trump during his time in the White House between 2017 and 2021 when he lost the White House to Joe Biden.  The Human Rights Campaign also list some of Trump's past actions here. The following are article highlights from the Post article:

Penny Nance slid a form across the table to Donald Trump at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J. Her Christian nonprofit, Concerned Women for America [a certified hate group], wanted Trump to pledge in writing that a person’s “gender identity” doesn’t “overrule their sex,” and that if he becomes president again, “all federal agencies will be directed to uphold this fact in every policy and program at home and abroad.”

Such a promise would have wide-ranging implications, the form emphasized, affecting schools, prisons, shelters, health-care providers, the military and more. But it was an easy sell, Nance recalled of her June 2023 conversation, and Trump soon signed the pledge. On the trail a few days later, Trump marveled aloud at the crowd’s standing ovation for his promise to crack down on “transgender insanity.”

The former president, who has shifted his position over the years on LGBTQ issues, is planning to lead the GOP charge on gender identity if he returns to the White House, according to his campaign and interviews with allies, testing the legal limits of federal action as the Supreme Court also takes up the issue. He says he wants to kick providers out of Medicare and Medicaid for offering gender transition care to minors, such as hormone therapy and surgery; pull federal funding from schools if officials suggest a child “could be trapped in the wrong body”; and purge anything in the federal government deemed to promote transgender identity. The moves would go against the advice of leading medical groups.

He has said far less about gay rights, an issue where he is sometimes out of step with his most conservative Christian supporters. . . . But the first Trump administration fought efforts to extend anti-discrimination laws to cover sexual orientation, and social conservatives are eager for Trump to pick up where he left off. Trump is also expected to try to appoint more conservative judges on the federal bench who could influence future landmark decisions on LGBTQ issues.

Civil rights groups are already raising alarms and preparing to challenge Trump’s agenda in court. A detailed memo the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) released in June argues many of Trump’s proposals are illegal or unconstitutional. The group’s lawyers see many opportunities to push back but also say it’s hard to predict how courts might rule, especially after the former president’s success pushing the federal judiciary to the right.

“I think a lot of folks feel if they live in a so-called blue state, they’re safe from whatever impact a second Trump administration can have, and that’s just not true,” said Leslie Cooper, deputy director of the ACLU’s LGBT & HIV Project. The Trump team, she said, is “saying what they would try to do.” She added: “I think we should believe them that they mean it.”

Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, has also promoted LBGTQ rights as Republican-led states pass laws restricting gender transition care and discussion of LGBTQ issues in schools.

Republicans who were on the defensive for years on same-sex marriage have turned much of their focus to gender transition and found public support for some restrictions.

Polls show Americans support same-sex marriage by big margins, and a Washington Post-KFF poll last year found that large majorities support laws prohibiting discrimination against transgender people in workplaces, education, the military and other settings.

Trump regularly portrays transgender people as a threat to women in his campaign speeches, mocking their participation in women’s sports before laughing crowds. Last month at a Washington, D.C., summit for the activist group Moms for Liberty, Trump misrepresented the process of gender transition for minors, falsely suggesting schools rather than parents consent to a child’s medical “operation.”

Trump’s plans, if successful, would have enormous impact. Pulling Medicare and Medicaid eligibility for health care providers that offer gender transition care to youth could effectively halt most of that treatment across the country, experts said, building on laws restricting the procedures for minors in more than 20 states.

Advocates for LGBTQ rights say denying those options is cruel, and note that major medical organizations support the procedures. Some are urging state officials to set aside their own funding for gender-affirming care to blunt potential loss of access under a Trump administration.

Trump’s “Agenda 47” videos, which promote his policy plans, dwell on trans issues at length without discussing sexual orientation. But civil rights groups say they anticipate a second Trump term would be consequential for gay rights, as well.

In Trump’s first term, multiple federal agencies quietly removed references to sexual orientation from anti-discrimination guidelines, and the administration argued in court against interpreting discrimination law to cover sexual orientation.

In the summer of 2020, Trump appeared to publicly accept a 6-3 Supreme Court ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County, written by Trump appointee Neil M. Gorsuch, that concluded a federal ban on sex discrimination in employment extends to bias against gay and transgender people. “They’ve ruled, and we live with the decision,” Trump said.

But Trump’s Department of Justice suggested a narrow interpretation of the high court’s ruling, emphasizing potential exceptions for religious views and First Amendment rights and saying in a memo the justices’ interpretation did not necessarily translate to areas besides employment.

Roger Severino, who led the Office of Civil Rights in the Health and Human Services Department under Trump. . . . argues for reversing the Biden administration’s assertion that the Affordable Care Act bans federally-supported health programs from discriminating based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

[T]he 2022 Supreme Court ruling striking down the long-standing right to abortion — and conservative Justice Clarence Thomas’s suggestion at the same time that gay rights cases need reexamining — has made the LGBTQ community nervous that other precedents could fall, especially if Trump makes more judicial appointments.

Severino’s chapter in the Project 2025 policy book encourages the next Health and Human Services secretary to endorse the idea that “married men and women are the ideal, natural family structure.”