Thursday, April 30, 2020

In 2016, Trump's promise to protect the LGBTQ community brought people to tears and applause. What now?




When it comes to Donald Trump's war against the LGBTQ community since he took office, actions highlighting  his attacks may seem petty. But what do you do when you have a leader who tries repeatedly to lie and rewrite history. There is no doubt that he will mostly likely try to rewrite the history of his negative relationship with the LGBTQ community.

The first video above is from 2016 when he gave his speech at the Republican National Convention. It highlights the part when he promised to protect the LGBTQ community and how that promise brought some people to tears and on their feet. The second video features the full context which shows that he was merely using us to fan the flames of Islamophobia.

Still,  I wonder, after taking into account all he has done to reduce our rights,  how these people feel now; particularly the Republican mother of the gay son.

From his Administration arguing in front of the Supreme Court that it was legal to fire LGBTQ people simply for our sexual identities or gender expressions to banning trans men and women from serving in the military to opening up his Administration to anti-LGBTQ groups and personalities who have then worked steadily to  strip away even our dignity as taxpayers and basic healthcare protection, Trump has continuously put LGBTQ health and safety at risk. 

It seems to me that Trump's way of protecting the LGBTQ community from religious terrorists was to enact laws and policies which would lead us depressed enough to do ourselves harm before the terrorists even showed up.

Trump obviously manipulated people in those videos. Of course the vast majority of LGBTQ people knew he doing this, but the videos underscore just how evil and insidious that portion of his speech was. Trump was lying to that Republican mother who was rightfully concerned about the livelihood of her gay son. He lied to all of those folks who were brought to their feet . They believed him at his word and some probably voted for him because of what he said. They inaccurately translated his promise to protect us from religious terrorists as blanket protection. It wasn't and I'm sure Trump knew that. 

The rest of us who knew better could be blase. We could say "we told you so," but that would be a mistake. The villain in this piece aren't those those believed Trump, but Trump himself who mostly likely knew at the time that he was bullshitting them. It's something we should never forget, nor let anyone else forget.


Related post - Under Trump, LGBTQ Progress Is Being Reversed in Plain Sight