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In this article, Kai Torrie explores the marginalisation of the LGBT+ community under the Trump administration. The recent reversal of several laws means that LGBT+ individuals lack vital protection against workplace discrimination, which has become a problem rampant within the Department of Justice. Most recently, Trump has ruled that doctors have the right to refuse treatment to transgender patients. The decision was announced on the four-year anniversary of the Pulse nightclub shooting.
According to the Human Rights Campaign President Alphonso David, “Trump has taken many “unprecedented” steps, but those steps have been to undermine and eliminate rights protecting LGBT people”, rather than empowering them. He continues: “the Trump-Pence administration is the most virulently anti-LGBT administration in decades.” In his 2016 electoral campaign, Trump posed for a picture holding a pride flag with the words ‘LGBTs for Trump’, but ever since he has been in office the only steps he has taken for the LGBT+ community have been backwards. Much of the progress that had been made by President Obama seems to have been reversed by the Trump administration.
For example, Trump’s Department of Justice erased previous DOJ inferences of the Civil Rights Act that aided in the protection of transgender and non-binary workers from discrimination in the workplace. The DOJ also ceased anti-discrimination protections that were at the time being actively enforced, while there is also evidence of hostility to LGBT+ workers in court. Trump is also credited with creating a hostile work environment for LGBT+ federal employees as ‘[The Trump Administration] fostered a climate where six staffers, who are LGBT described removing their wedding rings before coming to work in the morning, taking down photos of their partners and families or ultimately finding new jobs further away from certain political appointees.’ Two employees even “feared being reassigned for being gay”.
On June 4th, 2020, the Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to allow adoption agencies to discriminate against same-sex couples in the name of religion. The Department of Justice’s attorneys have submitted a 35-page brief to the Supreme Court asking it to rule in favour of the Catholic Social Services (CSS), a Philadelphia based adoption agency that insists it should be allowed to turn away same-sex couples under the First Amendment. The Department of Justice notes that CSS will only work with married heterosexual couples or single people “because it adheres to the belief that marriage is the union of a man and a woman”. This blatant show of distaste for LGBT+ couples and their wish to adopt/foster children shows that CSS and Trump’s administration are willing to deprive a child of a loving home just for the sake of a belief system so outdated that, somewhat ironically, even the Bible doesn’t support it: “Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law.” (Romans, 13:80:10).
On June 12th, 2020, the Trump administration once again hindered the progression of LGBT+ rights as they finalized a regulation that will erase protections for transgender patients against discrimination by doctors, hospitals and health insurance companies. The move was announced on the four-year anniversary of the massacre at a gay nightclub and in the middle of pride month. The rule, which has many similarities to that of a proposed version released last year, is part of a broad effort by the Trump administration across multiple areas of policy - including education, housing, and employment, as well as healthcare - to narrow the legal definition of sex discrimination so that it does not include protection for transgender people.
There are many other proposed bills and legislations that would drastically decrease the rights that transgender people have in the USA. Trump has also opposed the Equality Act which guarantees anti-discrimination protections for LGBT+ people among other crucial rights. He has used his power to appoint openly anti-LGBT+ judges with alarming homophobic records to almost every level of the judicial system. Of Trump’s nominations, Lambda Legal lists 16 as having staunchly homophobic pasts, including Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch; John K. Bush, confirmed as an appeals judge, and Kyle Duncan, whose nomination is pending; and Jeff Mateer, whose nomination was withdrawn.
A new report on President Trump’s judicial appointments finds that one-third of the judges Trump has appointed to the federal appeals court have a demonstrated history of anti-LGBT bias. In 2017, he joked about Vice President Pence’s anti-gay agenda by saying: “Don’t ask that guy - he wants to hang them all!”. This is just part of how far Trump is willing to go to demonstrate his bigotry; his actions have shown us that he doesn’t care about the minorities within his country, even going as far as to mock those with disabilities in front of a national audience.
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