Make America Gay Again Make America Gay Again Hat
For three years, President Donald Trump has rolled back LGBTQ equality in unprecedented means. This makes his ongoing and preposterous attempts to portray his White House equally a supporter of LGBTQ rights fifty-fifty more infuriating. Case in point, his entrada'southward LGBTQ pride merchandise, including rainbow-themed "Make America Great Again" hats and T-shirts. According to the Donald Trump website, the pride chapeau is currently sold out.
Merely who is buying this gear? The Trump rainbow apparel is non only monumentally hypocritical and insulting; information technology's as well part of a long list of attempts to grab media attention that momentarily makes Trump appear every bit an ally of LGBTQ people — at least to those who don't read past the headlines.
The Trump rainbow apparel is part of a long list of attempts to grab media attention that momentarily makes Trump appear as an ally of LGBTQ people.
This is a cynical attempt to courtroom heterosexual voters who might exist turned off by blatant bigotry. And, ironically, it's a testament to the great progress on LGBTQ rights over the past two decades: An administration that bows to anti-LGBTQ extremists in its base still fears being perceived as harsh, specially heading into an ballot year.
This was true when Trump sent a tweet supporting LGBTQ pride last June, and when his administrator to Germany last February announced a supposedly new campaign to fight the criminalization of homosexuality effectually the world (which turned out to simply be the continuation of an existing Obama-era policy). Simply these pronouncements, similar the selling of Pride merchandise, paper over the fact that Trump has been among the nigh hostile presidents in history on LGBTQ rights.
In the past, breathy anti-LGBTQ policies — and a refusal to fifty-fifty acknowledge queer people — were more than politically and culturally acceptable. For years, they could even help candidates running for national office. Now, as support for equality has dramatically shifted, a large portion of the electorate is repelled past anti-LGBTQ attitudes in a mode similar to how they perceive the overt shunning of other minorities.
And that explains why the superficial embrace of LGBTQ people by Trump isn't actually targeted to LGBTQ voters. Trump and his campaign directorate know that the vast majority of LGBTQ people, after witnessing Trump ask the Supreme Court to allow bigotry confronting them in employment, and after seeing Trump movement to strip anti-bigotry protections from them under the Affordable Intendance Human action, aren't going to vote for him. Indeed, co-ordinate to get out polls only fourteen pct of LGBTQ people cast a vote for him in 2016.
The larger groups that Trump's campaign is worried most include much-coveted straight suburban voters, many of whom support LGBTQ rights and have moved abroad from Trump and the GOP. The campaign is hoping these voters aren't paying much attention to the deep rollbacks on civil rights — which often get short shrift given how much chaos emanates from this administration — while Trump makes empty gestures of support for LGBTQ people and other minorities.
Trump's aides are also often shameless in the claims they make, attempting to gloss over the horrendous damage he's washed.
"President Trump has never considered LGBT Americans second-class citizens and has opposed bigotry of any kind against them," White House spokesman Judd Deere recently told The New York Times, even every bit Trump's executive orders and other actions have been aimed at allowing bigotry in the proper noun of "religious liberty."
Trump'due south aides are also often shameless in the claims they make, attempting to gloss over the horrendous damage he'south done.
Top presidential adviser Kellyanne Conway even claimed in 2018 that Trump came into office "approving of the gay marriage." In fact, Trump courted religious conservatives throughout his 2016 campaign, stating emphatically that he was opposed to marriage equality at the federal level and promising to place judges on the Supreme Court who might overturn it. While he has given a diversity of interviews on the topic since so — maxim he is "great" with Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg's same-sex spousal relationship, for example — his tape tin can by no ways be construed as proactively in favor of same-sex marriage or other rights.
Indeed, the best way to judge Trump'southward record is by looking at his biggest supporters. The religious right hasn't reacted at all to Trump'due south attempt to appear LGBTQ-friendly, because anti-LGBTQ leaders know that Trump has no desire to really further equality. This is all just for show.
I was nowadays at the 2016 GOP convention in Cleveland. Right afterward Trump's credence speech vowing to protect the "LGBTQ community," I interviewed Tony Perkins, president of the anti-LGBTQ Family unit Research Council. He, too, was confident Trump would button his calendar, no matter statements like the 1 he had just made from the stage.
"[Trump] has said that these issues should be dealt with at the state level and he has not been for the authorities forcing it on people," Perkins told me of LGBT rights. And that's something Trump has certainly followed through on: Dismantling federal protections for LGBTQ people while paying lip service to equality in the abstract.
That's why LGBTQ activists, besides as those in the media, must be vigilant. The horrendous truth must ring out louder than any rainbow-colored Trump entrada T-shirt.
Related:
- Trump'south lies and cruelty accept atomic number 82 to a reckoning: Welcome to the existent resistance
- Is at that place a 'gay factor'? The problem with studies connecting genetics and LGBTQ identity
- Whitney Houston confidante Robyn Crawford confirms their queer relationship — and reclaims her time
Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/trump-s-lgbtq-pride-merchandise-hypocritical-insult-queer-americans-ncna1098701
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