People — mostly broadcast journalists — who have been praising Presidential Candidate Donald Trump for saying “LGBTQ” at his nomination acceptance speech, those people need to stop praising him.
During his Presidential nomination acceptance speech July 21 in Cleveland, Trump said, “Only weeks ago, in Orlando, Florida, 49 wonderful Americans were savagely murdered by an Islamic terrorist. This time, the terrorist targeted [the] LGBTQ community. No good. And we’re going to stop it. As your president, I will do everything in my power to protect our LGBTQ citizens from the violence and oppression of a hateful foreign ideology. Believe me.”
This means that he thinks LGBTQ people, along with all other legal citizens of the US, should not be gunned down by people acting on hateful foreign ideology.
It is clear that Trump would not protect LGBTQ people from domestic threat or domestic ideology.
He has never claimed to think that LGBTQ people should be regarded like heterosexual people, and he has vowed to harm LGBTQ people in several very specific ways.
Trump and the Republican Party platform are extremely threatening to LGBTQ people:
Trump has vowed to rescind marriage equality. Trump has always opposed marriage equality — enabling gay people to enjoy the freedoms and benefits of marriage traditionally reserved for heterosexual couples. He does not believe that gay people should be allowed to marry, despite the fact that the US Supreme Court has ruled that gay people are allowed to marry.
Trump has endorsed the “First Amendment Defense Act (FADA),” a bill that would enable the kind of discrimination that Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis inflicted on gay couples who sought to obtain their marriage certificates, pursuant to the ruling of the US Supreme Court on marriage equality.
According to the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), “FADA would allow organizations and businesses contracting with the federal government to circumvent critical federal protections designed to protect same-sex couples and their families from harmful discrimination. It would also enable federal employees to refuse to fully perform their duties if they believe they conflict with their objection to same-sex marriage. For example, an employee at the Department of Veterans Affairs could refuse to process a claim for survivor benefits for the same-sex spouse of a service member.”
Trump supported North Carolina’s HB2, which would allow anti-LGBTQ governors to write discrimination into the laws of their states. Under a Trump presidency, if a state wanted to implement a law that put LGBTQ people in line to receive discrimination, he would stand aside. He also believes that states should be free to violate federal laws, such as Title IX, denying LGBTQ people equal legal treatment.
Trump would repeal President Obama’s Executive Orders, including the Executive Order protecting LGBTQ employees working for federal contractors.
The Republican Party Platform, in addition to arguing against enabling LGBTQ people to marry by saying that that right should be eliminated, says that LGBTQ youth should receive “conversion therapy,” a debunked “therapy” practice intended to convert gay people to become heterosexual.
Conversion therapy has been condemned by the American Psychological Association, World Health Organization, American Medical Association, American Academy of Pediatrics, American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and American Counseling Association. These organizations have condemned it because it can heighten LGBTQ people’s already-high chances of mental health issues, depression, and suicide — which are the result of discrimination by heterosexual people.
Of course, none of the heterosexual Republicans think that any heterosexual person could be “converted” to be homosexual, so it boggles the mind to think that it would be possible to convert a homosexual person to be heterosexual.
Donald Trump’s presidency would create harsh pain for members of the LGBTQ community. That he acknowledged the existence of LGBTQ people and said that they should not be gunned down by people with “foreign ideology” is not some sort of great humanitarian gesture worthy of praise.