With Trump's loss to Biden, anti-LGBTQ evangelicals will hopefully lose their White House access

With Donald Trump losing the election to Joe Biden, anti-LGBTQ Trump officials such as Roger Severino (bottom pic) will hopefully be out of a job and conservative evangelicals (posing with Trump in the first pic) will lose their ability to dictate White House policy. 

There are a lot of reasons why I, as a gay man, am looking forward to  the upcoming Biden Administration. Probably at the top of the list will be an elimination of the open door policy the White House had with the anti-LGBTQ right. 

Because of the support white evangelicals gave Trump in 2016 and beyond, he pretty much became their sugar daddy. When not personally obliging their wishes (such as creating a nonsensical ban on trans people serving in the military based on false information) he let them run amok in his administration and they not only did a lot of what they wanted to endanger LGBTQ equality and safety, they also bragged about their access.

 

The Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins said in August (2017), “I’ve been to the White House I don’t know how many more times in the first six months this year than I was during the entire Bush administration.” The Susan B. Anthony List’s Marjorie Dannenfelser said she visited the White House seven times in Trump’s first 100 days in office. 

Penny Nance of Concerned Women for America said in September, “I’m told from people before me that even under George W. Bush, we didn’t have this kind of access. It certainly is unprecedented and we’re very grateful.” Land gushed about evangelicals having “unprecedented access” to the White House, adding that there “are more evangelicals in this administration as personnel than any administration in my lifetime.”

 In exchange for access and help on their policy priorities, Trump has earned the love of the Religious Right. Some called his election a miracle. Others determined that he must have personally come to Christ. Many have gone to bat for Trump’s most controversial comments and positions. An early campaign faith adviser started a group called POTUS Shield that is dedicated to shielding the president from spiritual attack. 

 

In exchange, Perkins and company continued to give Trump support or cover whenever his excesses attracted too much negative attention. The word "mulligan" comes to mind.

In addition, the Alliance Defending Freedom, a behind-the-scenes but very powerful group known mostly for opposing the LGBTQ community via the courts and writing anti-LGBTQ legislation which it passes along to state legislators, reaped a lot of influence in the Trump Administration. Several of its former employees, including Kerri Kupec, Matt Bowman and Roger Severino, took prominent positions in federal agencies. According to Media Matters, it was through federal agencies which the Trump Administration pushed policies meant to strike down LGBTQ rights.

The Trump-Pence administration has enacted many of its worst anti-LGBTQ policies through federal agencies. For example, the Department of Health and Human Services has implemented policies making it easier for health care workers to refuse care to LGBTQ people based on religious beliefs; the Department of Defense has barred transgender service members from serving; and the Department of Education has rolled back guidance protecting transgender students, just to name a few. All of these departments employ ADF allies who may be able to affect and interpret LGBTQ-related policy changes.

Severino in particular, as the director of the Office of Civil Rights at HHS, became the face of the Trump Administration's passive-aggressive attack on LGBTQ people.  LGBTQ equality groups and several allies raised the alarm when he was picked due to his history of working against LGBTQ equality. And while at HHS, Severino did nothing to assuage their fears.  In 2018, The Advocate claimed that he was attempting to "erase trans people out of existence" by pushing a memo which would say that gender identity doesn't exist and that gender is set at birth and defined by genitalia. 

Severino was also responsible for an attempt to create a rule which would roll back protections for the trans community against discrimination through Obamacare, and  a "conscience rule" which said any healthcare worker could deny services to LGBTQ people based on "moral or religious" reasons. In November 2019, three different federal courts struck down the rule and one court found that HHS exaggerated a justification for the rule. Severino was pointed out in an NPR article to have contributed to that exaggeration. 

While Severino's handiwork received a lot of attention, it merely scratched the surface when it came to the many ways the Trump Administration pushed a silent but vicious war against LGBTQ Americans in order to shore up his conservative evangelical support.

A list, compiled by the Human Rights Campaign, is exhaustive in its length and a heartbreaking when one remembers the tweet Trump sent before being elected claiming that he would fight for LGBTQ Americans.

But in the long run, Trump lost. Come January, he will be gone and most assuredly, so will Kupec, Severino, and the rest, along with conservative evangelical  access to the White House.

Meanwhile,  the LGBTQ community will have survived again. A little war-torn and battle-tired, but still on our feet.