Trump Ignored Pride Month While Texas GOP Dismantles Marriage Equality Rights. The two are NOT Unrelated; a War for LGBTQ Rights is Coming.
Two out of four of our last presidents acknowledged June as Pride Month, a month to celebrate how far LGBTQ people have come in our fight for our rights, how far we’ve gone for social acceptance, and — despite the hate we face daily — how far we’ve come in our struggle to love ourselves. Can you guess which two presidents snubbed LGBTQ citizens everywhere? That’s right, Donald Trump and George W. Bush. Bush was responsible for a number of attacks on LGBTQ rights, including supporting an amendment to our constitution to ban same sex marriage. He literally wanted to use the very document that gives us our rights to take them away. He also supported “states’ rights” to ban marriage equality, but believed in civil unions. That sounds a lot like Donald Trump’s beliefs on LGBTQ rights, where Trump has allowed and even approved of states’ actions to take away rights from LGBTQ people, such as North Carolina’s anti-trans “bathroom law,” and other such laws attacking transgender children in the classrooms.
Donald Trump hasn’t come forward and stated that same sex marriage should be banned. In fact, he says that the issue of marriage equality has “already been decided,” that is, the Supreme Court has made it the law of the land already. This is the stance of many within the Republican Party, who take issue with same sex marriage, but do not want to alienate socially liberal voters by condemning it, or homophobic voters by supporting equal rights for gay people. During the campaign, Trump held up a rainbow flag (upside-down, by the most traditional orientation of the flag) with the words “LGBTs for Trump” hastily scrawled on the flag in black permanent marker. Trump supporters who do not hate LGBTQ people pointed to this as proof that Trump was pro-LGBTQ. However, his campaign promises, rhetoric, approval of states’ anti-LGBTQ laws, ignorance of pride month, and Supreme Court picks point to a more hostile stance against LGBTQ people. In fact, Trump has already telegraphed exactly how his administration is going to dismantle marriage equality entirely.
In fact, Trump has already telegraphed exactly how his administration is going to dismantle marriage equality entirely.
The key to understanding how Trump will dismantle LGBTQ rights actually comes from another group of marginalized people fighting for basic human rights under Trump: women. Donald Trump has stated that he intends to stack the Supreme Court with radically conservative judges who would be willing to overrule Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court ruling that stated that women have a right to control their own bodies, that abortion must be legal in the United States. Women in America could never be considered free without power over their own bodily autonomy. This proves Trump has no respect for cases that have “already been decided.” If Trump wants to appoint justices who are willing to dismantle basic human rights, decided by a previous court over 40 years ago, it seems obvious that these heavily conservative judges would be willing to overturn marriage equality altogether, or at least dismantle the protections it provides. Donald Trump doesn’t care that women’s and LGBTQ people’s rights have already been granted, he doesn’t care that they’re previously decided, he just knows that support for LGBTQ rights is higher than it has ever been in the country, and it would severely damage his ability to court undecided voters if he came out as anti-LGBTQ.
But he is.
Trump laid the groundwork, leaving the rest of the Republican Party to pick up the slack. They did. With Trump’s approval of states attacking LGBTQ rights, and his stacking of the Supreme Court with radical conservative judges willing to overturn or undermine previous rulings, Trump created the perfect storm for dismantling LGBTQ rights, and states have already begun to take advantage. In fact, Texas just launched the biggest attack against LGBTQ rights, something they couldn’t have done with Obama as president or if Hillary Clinton had won, but because Trump won, they may be successful in dismantling marriage equality nation-wide.
Maybe that’s why he couldn’t look us in the eye and acknowledge Pride Month.
The Texas Supreme Court ruled this week that married same-sex couples can be legally denied the same rights given to married opposite-sex couples. Basically, the Texas Supreme Court ruled that, while LGBTQ people can get married, states don’t have to give them any of the rights that marriage entails for straight people. This includes insurance, government benefits, and, with other laws Texas and other conservative states have pushed, denial of service, or even admittance to hospitals. Obviously this is discrimination based on gender. It’s saying that the people involved in a marriage can have different rights depending on the genders of the two people in the marriage. It’s absurd to even consider it, and reflects the struggles of those in interracial marriages before they were recognized nationwide. The Texas Supreme Court is making an absurd statement, based solely on homophobia: “you might be married, but that doesn’t mean we have to accept that you are because of who you are.” It’s legalized discrimination, plain and simple.
Normally, no one would be entirely worried about this. A decision this blatantly discriminatory would be crushed by the Supreme Court of the United States faster than you can say “illegal discrimination based on gender.” However, we don’t have a normal situation right now. Donald Trump has pledged to stack the Supreme Court with radical (that is, willing to undermine previous rulings) heavily conservative judges, and that’s conservative in both the judicial and political stances. Trump wants simple readings of the constitution to create rulings from justices willing to undermine civil rights. His first Supreme Court pick was just that kind of man, a man who stated that Hobby Lobby’s discrimination against a transgender woman was perfectly ok. We won marriage equality in a 5–4 vote, with a more conservative justice breaking the tie by voting in favor of equality. Gorsuch replaced Antonio Scalia, an anti-LGBTQ justice who voted against equality. This means the current court is still 5–4 on equality, but the swing vote, cast by Justice Kennedy, could swing the other way. Even so, this more moderately conservative justice has considered stepping down. If Trump could fill his seat with one of his right-wing justices before the Texas case reaches the supreme court, then marriage equality will definitely be dismantled nationwide.
This is exactly what Trump and the Republican Party wanted. We will likely lose marriage equality.
What can we do to defend LGBTQ rights?
Normally this is the part where I tell people there’s hope. “You can vote in the mid-term elections,” I’d say. “You can go to town halls and demand your politicians do not confirm anti-LGBTQ justices,” I’d state. But here’s the thing, if Kennedy steps down, the court is left with a 4–4 tie. If the Supreme Court cannot make a decision, the ruling is deferred to the lower court. In this case, that lower court decided it’s perfectly legal to discriminate against people in a same-sex marriage. So even if we can hold off this case until 2018 and even if we can turn the House (unlikely) and Senate (more likely) towards the Democrats, all we could do is block the appointing of another justice. That wouldn’t be enough to prevent this tragedy from occurring. For this case in particular, our only hope is that it’s heard by the Supreme Court of the United States before Kennedy steps down. Kennedy has not made any official announcement about stepping down, and seems to love his job defending the constitution and our rights. However, this is just the first of many assaults against LGBTQ rights, and we won’t have a court full of moderate justices for very long if Trump and the GOP gets their way. Eventually, Trump will likely get a chance to fill at least one more opening, and that’s all he needs to dismantle our rights.
We have to prepare to lose this battle.
Realistically, we have to prepare to lose this battle within the next four years. But we can set ourselves up to win the war. We can make sure all eyes are on Donald Trump, Mike Pence, Paul Ryan, and the entirety of the Republican Party when they dismantle LGBTQ rights. We can make sure that everyone in the country finally realizes that a vote for any Republican is a vote against LGBTQ rights. We can use this to take over the Senate, fight the immoral and often illegal gerrymandering that keeps the House of Representatives conservative, push bills that support LGBTQ rights legislatively, block anti-equality bills, defend transgender rights, and, in 2020, elect a Democratic president who wants to protect and stand for the rights of all Americans. In 2020, we can begin to undo the damage that Trump and the Republican Party will have done to LGBTQ rights. We can convince people within our community (mostly wealthy, white, gay men) that the Republican Party will never support our struggle.
Remember this moment now. During Pride, Donald Trump couldn’t look us in the eye while his party dismantled marriage equality in Texas. He couldn’t even mention us during our most important month. Never forget that. Go out and vote, get your friends riled up about voting, go to town halls with your local Indivisible group and press your representatives to support everyone. We may not be able to stop this from happening, but we can ensure that the damage is erased in short order.
Sources/Further Reading:
- Joan Biskupic, CNN: “Anthony Kennedy loves his job — and he’s still here.”
- Garlands Franke-Ruta: “George W. Bush’s Forgotten Gay-Rights History.”
- Jon Herskovitz, Reuters: “Top Texas court sides against same-size couple marriage benefits.”
- Ruth Marcus, The Washington Post: “The terrifying and terrible prospect of Justice Kennedy retiring.”
- Tom Michael, The Sun: “Rainbow Rally Donald Trump looks slightly awkward holding up LGBT flag handed to him by fan as support in community slips to 12 per cent.”
- Michelangelo Signorile, Huffington Post: “How Justice Neil Gorsuch Is Helping Texas Undermind Marriage Equality.”
