His “religious liberty” executive order wasn’t as discriminatory as LGBTQ advocates had feared. While Vice President Pence has been unequivocal in his opposition to LGBTQ rights (having once supported the use of federal funding to treat people “seeking to change their sexual behavior” and tried unsuccessfully to amend his home state of Indiana’s state constitution to ban same-sex marriage), Trump’s position on this, as on many other issues, varies.
GLAAD, the world’s largest LGBTQ media advocacy organization, maintains The Trump Accountability Project (TAP at ), a resource for journalists which catalogues the anti-LGBTQ statements and actions of Trump and those in his circle. Questions flooded the offices of LGBTQ advocacy groups nationwide following Trump’s victory. His unholy alliance with socially conservative evangelical Christians would drive his agenda, as it has other Republicans. Trump’s daughter Ivanka may count LGBTQ people among her friends, but there was no illusion that she could protect them. They, like other marginalized Americans, Muslims, and undocumented immigrants, knew that they had a great deal to lose with an unsupportive, indeed an antagonistic, administration. Members of the campus LGBTQ community wept uncontrollably. The one that I joined at New York University, where I serve as Humanist Chaplain, was especially painful. We held circles here at Ethical with our staff and members. When the result of the 2016 presidential election sank in, many social justice organizations and community groups gathered their members to assess the impact it would have and to mourn.