Donald Trump had praise heaped on him last week while hosting a lavish anniversary gala for the Log Cabin Republicans at Mar-a-Lago. But that didn’t include the top LGBTQ advocacy groups, nor the LGBTQ voters who may have been decisive in booting him from office in 2020.
“We’re fighting for the gay community and we’re fighting and fighting hard,” Trump told the gay conservative group which was marking its 45th anniversary, Politico reported. There was irony in the timing, the report said, noting that the long-planned event took place just days after President Joe Biden signed into law the historic Respect For Marriage Act.
The event showcased the likes of former Ambassador Ric Grenell, who became the nation’s first openly gay acting Cabinet member with his appointment by Trump as acting director of national intelligence. Former State Department spokesperson Morgan Ortagus emceed the evening in a feathered turquoise gown, Politico reported.
But the Los Angles Blade --a leading LGBTQ newspaper had quite a different take:
“The Log Cabin Republicans differ sharply from those held by LGBTQ organizations and LGBTQ Americans more broadly — at least, as evidenced by the percentage of LGBTQ voters who supported Trump in the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections.
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“One of the first actions President Joe Biden took after taking office last year was to repeal the Trump administration’s ban that prohibited thousands of transgender Americans from enlisting and serving in the armed forces.”
The Gay Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) maintains a Trump Accountability Project detailing more than 200 examples of homophobic policies of the Trump administration – or of anti-LGBTQ statements made by him before, during and after it. The most recent example cited in GLAAD’s exhaustive registry came from Trump’s announcement of a third run for the presidency:
“(Trump) baselessly targeted schools for “radical civics and gender insanity” (without defining what those are) and stated inaccurate and inflammatory promises such as “We will not let men, as an example, participate in women’s sports.”
One telling example from the GLAAD registry was the last one cited from the Trump administration:
“The day after Trump supporters stormed the Capitol in a deadly rampage, HHS went public with a final rule to rescind regulations barring discrimination against LGBTQ Americans seeking to adopt or be adopted, or health services including HIV prevention.”
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During the Trump administration, the Human Rights Campaign had maintained a similarly exhaustive list of “Trump's persistent attacks against the LGBTQ community.” HRC President Alphonso David attacked a Republican National Committee claim that Trump had taken “unprecedented steps" on behalf of LGBTQ citizens:
“The RNC is hallucinating and advancing misleading and disingenuous rhetoric. Yes, Trump has taken many ‘unprecedented’ steps, but those steps have been to undermine and eliminate rights protecting LGBTQ people, not empower us. Appointing a small handful of gay people out of thousands of nominations and making a very few -- and unfulfilled -- pledges can hardly qualify as accomplishments. Don’t gaslight us. The Trump-Pence administration is the most virulently anti-LGBTQ administration in decades -- the RNC cannot put lipstick on a pig.”
Trump apparently paid a dear price at the polls for his anti-LGBTQ record. A Washington Post analysis noted that “Had LGBT voters stayed home, Trump might have won the 2020 presidential election.” The Post cited the decisive role played in the key battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
GLAAD also claimed after the 2020 election that LGBTQ voters made “the deciding difference for Biden. GLAAD’s polling found that Biden received 81 percent of the LGBTQ vote, spurred by a turnout of 93 percent of registered LGBTQ voters.