Trump Is Trying to Erase the LGBTQ Community

This blog originated as part of my coming out saga at the recommendation of my therapist who was helping me overcome the emotional and psychological abuse I experienced being raised in a conservative Catholic household. The blog eventually morphed into a LGBT rights and political blog.   Along the way, including the 2008 LGBT Blogger Summit in Washington, DC - underwritten by Microsoft and Progressive Insurance - I had the good fortune to meet a number of amazing LGBT activists and bloggers with whom I have remained in contact over the last almost 10 years.  Over the last almost 12 months, the Trump/Pence regime has waged an unrelenting war against LGBT Americans.  The most recent salvo is the establishment of a "Conscience and Religious Freedom" division of the Department of Health and Human Services which will allow Christofascists who are health care providers or pharmacists to refuse provide services to LGBT individuals, those seeking abortions or who otherwise "offend their religious sensibilities." A piece in Time recommended by one of my activist friends looks at Trump/Pence's efforts to erase the LGBT community and to deny us the rights afforded other citizens.  Here are highlights:

It’s been almost a year to the day since my life – both personally and professionally – changed profoundly. It can only be described as moving from a place of possibility and progress to a nightmare for myself, my family and the LGBTQ community at large.

Personally, under the Obama administration, I stood on the White House lawn with my wife and our twins for the Easter Egg Roll. I attended LGBTQ Pride receptions and helped plan LGBTQ panel discussions at The White House. I celebrated as the White House was lit in a rainbow after marriage equality became law of the land.

More importantly, however, during those years LGBTQ rights and visibility expanded in new, historic and unprecedented ways. In fact, throughout my life there has always been forward motion — albeit sometimes trudging — on LGBTQ rights.

But on January 20th of last year, Donald Trump assumed the presidency of the United States, and since day one – when references to LGBTQ people were purged from the White House website – the LGBTQ community was forced to face a new world order.

The administration’s anti-LGBTQ actions are as numerous as they are insidious. President Trump announced his attempt to ban transgender people from the military, the LGBTQ community was erased from the National Survey of Older Americans, a budget was proposed that cuts funding to HIV and AIDS research, guidance protecting transgender youth in schools was rescinded, World AIDS Day passed without any mention of LGBTQ people and I could go on. But it’s not only about policy, it’s also about culture. Trump is waging a culture war with our communities, the likes of which I have not seen in my lifetime. He aims to roll back rights and protections, but also general acceptance of LGBTQ people in society and culture. The White House was radio silent during LGBTQ Pride Month for the first time in eight years. At GLAAD we wake up and go to work every day to create a culture of visibility and acceptance for LGBTQ people. Think about LGBTQ young people who are just coming out now in an environment where they’re being attacked daily and erased by our own government. That world is not acceptable to us, and we will resist it.

GLAAD and the LGBTQ community have always been fighters – that is our legacy. Everything that our communities have achieved in the course of our history, we have fought for, and this time will be no different.

In response to the administration’s onslaught of erasure and hate, GLAAD created the Trump Accountability Project to hold Trump and those in his administration accountable for their actions and statements. We joined other LGBTQ people in the streets during the Women’s March and protests against the rollback of DACA and the implementation of the travel ban. Our community spoke out when Trump, Attorney General Jeff Sessions and their allies tried to write discrimination into law with “religious exemptions” guidance.

GLAAD also leaked audio of Mark Green, Trump’s nominee for Secretary of the Army, making discriminatory remarks towards transgender people, which resulted in Green’s decision to withdraw from consideration. And when there were rumblings of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention censoring certain words from their 2018 budgets, including “transgender” and “diversity,” LGBTQ leaders were some of the first to denounce it. We will not be removed. And to those young people coming out right now in this political environment – we have your backs. We will shape the future — our future — together.

Amen to the author's sentiments.  As for "friends" who continue to support Trump/Pence and the vile attacks on people like me and my husband, do not delude yourself into thinking that were are not watching your conduct. The time is coming when your must decide whether you are on the side of hate, ignorance and bigotry or not.  Yes, your friendships are at risk.  And for those friends who are actively resisting the cancer that Trump/Pence and  the Christofascists represent on American society, we must redouble our efforts to defeat Republicans whenever and where ever possible until Trump and Pence and their GOP enablers are driven from office.  To do otherwise will set America on a path akin to what Germany witnessed in the 1930's.  Good and decent people must resist.  Silence is equal to complicity. 

Why I and Others Continue to Resisit

Two of the things that madden me about numerous "friends" who voted for Trump/Pence are (i) statements that I need to "move on" and/or "get over it," and (ii) their refusal to see the damage their foolish and/or bigotry inspired vote is doing to others and the country as a whole. Others focus on the unimportant much like proverbial soccer moms who obsess over children's sports and PTA squabbles as things around them turn ominous.   The mindset - beside being one of "we won" - is that if evils, corruption and bigotry are ignored, somehow they cease to exist and things will be OK.  As the previous post demonstrates, ignoring the toxicity of the Trump/Pence regime is not something LGBT citizens can do when we so clearly have a bull's eye on our backs. Trump and the Christofascists in his base have every intention of lessening our rights and making us less than full citizens. Individuals who would be outraged if they themselves were turned away by businesses or faced housing discrimination have no problem looking the other way when it happens to others.  Simply put, bad things happen when good people do nothing or worse yet allow themselves to ignore wrongs being done to others.  Nazi Germany shows where such indifference can lead.  A column in the New York Times makes the case for why resistance is essential.  Here are excerpts: 

When Congress has to pass a joint resolution condemning white supremacy and plunk it on the desk of the “president” — in an effort to force him to sign it and daring him not to — you know that we as a country are beyond the pale.

When Donald Trump’s fraudulent voter-fraud commission openly entertains the loony and unworkable idea of further winnowing the voter rolls by forcing potential voters to undergo the federal background check used for gun buyers, you know that this administration is trying every way it can to ax voter access and re-establish Jim Crow poll tests.

When Robert Mueller is circling this White House like a hawk preparing to descend on a chicken coop, you know that the stench of corruption emanating from this administration reaches to the heavens.

Indeed, on Tuesday, Axios reported this intriguing line:

“Republicans close to the White House say every sign by Mueller — from his hiring of Mafia and money-laundering experts to his aggressive pursuit of witnesses and evidence — is that he’s going for the kill.”

I often hear from Trump enthusiasts and accommodators that at some point resistance must submit, that the time for outrage is term-limited, that at a point, complete opposition registers as unfair and unpatriotic.

This always settles on me in a most unsettling way. How is it, precisely, that right becomes less right and wrong less wrong simply by the passage of time and the weariness of repetition?  How is it that morality wavers and weakens, accommodates and acquiesces?

It seems to me the oddest of asks: Surrender what you know to be a principled position because “moving on” and “moderation” are the instruments that polite society uses to browbeat the radical insisting on righteous restoration.  I see no value or honor in this retreat.

[E]very day that I wake and recall that a bigoted, sexist, intolerant, transphobic scoundrel is president, my stomach turns and my skin crawls.

We are now talking about an administration that is attempting to dramatically reshape the demographics of the eligible electorate, in particular striking at groups who overwhelmingly vote for Democratic candidates and overwhelmingly voted against Trump.

We are talking about the basic concept of whether our government, and by extension our country, advances unity or division, love or hate.

We are talking about an assault on our democracy by a hostile foreign power, the contours and scope of that assault coming into greater clarity every passing day.

It is crystal clear what Russia’s motive was: to get Trump elected. As CNN reported this week, Vyacheslav Nikonov, a member of the Duma, the lower house of the Russian Parliament, said on a Sunday political show that to achieve world dominance, “the U.S. overextended themselves.” He went on to say that the intelligence services slept “while Russia elected a new U.S. president.”

How can any of us, if we are true patriots, be expected to simply calm down and suck it up when the Russians are bragging that the “president” of this country isn’t ours but theirs?

None of this is normal or right, and Trump’s chief of staff, John Kelly, in my opinion, has become one of the most dangerous men in America because he is endeavoring to make the abominable look acceptable. No, thanks, sir, I prefer my disasters not to wear a disguise.

Good people of good conscience are seeking to do what Trump only gave lip service to, and in his way bastardized. We, patriots, will not stop resisting this destruction. It is we who will Make America Great Again by trying to limit the damage Trump can do to us until he feels the reckoning of the damage he has done to himself.

To me, one of the ironies is that those who proudly wear their white Christian nationalism on their sleeves see nothing wrong with any of these horrors.  Indeed they voted for it and remain Trump/Pence loyalists.  Meanwhile, I left Catholicism years ago and, given what the Christofascists have done to Christianity, generally don't even consider myself a Christian anymore.  Yet, I still know the difference between right and wrong and will not close my eyes to hatred and evil.  Which model would Christ endorse?  I suspect that it would not be the one pushed by Trump's evangelical Christian supporters.