Comprehensive Impacts of Trump’s First Year: LGBT
It has been a surreal year. Just when we think things can’t get any worse, lo and behold, a new tweet comes out. Or a new policy is introduced. Or a new world leader is so offended that we get closer to doomsday. Trump’s election has normalized and publicized the proverbial anonymous yahoo comments, and it’s hard to imagine that he still has a small but loud base of support and that people chose this narcissistic, sexist, racist sociopath consciously. He has exemplified our slow, subtle transformation from intelligent citizens to mindless consumers to salivating spectators who have a constant need for entertainment and outrage.
I always said that when voting for president, what we’re really voting for was the Supreme Court. I am going on record to say that I was wrong. Dead wrong. Trump has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that there are so many ways a president can be harmful other than by Supreme Court appointments. To be sure, judicial appointments are one major way that Trump is detrimental to the country, and it will take at least a generation to recover from those appointments alone. But this document shows that a president can do deep and lasting damage in many ways.
Although I vacillate between disgust and defeat and anger, I am trying very hard to channel all of those feelings into fighting against our spiral toward Idiocracy. The only way to do this is for everyone who is eligible to actually get out and vote in every single election. This November’s midterm elections will tell us if Americans are really ready for progress or if they’re apathetic enough to continue our moral, ethical, and constitutional decline.
There have been several year-end round-ups about Trump’s first year. Many of them are laughably revisionist. But there were some informative ones. Axios created a great chart of search trends for some of the biggest news events of the first year, showing how we’ve all jumped from one four-alarm news fire to another. Rolling Stone summarized the damage of Trump’s first year. And Roger Cohen with the New York Times editorialized our frightening reality in If This is America.
This piece is meant to be a comprehensive assessment of the impacts of Trump’s first year as President of the United States of America (let that sink in). There are many things that happened during the campaign that are not included. Included are impacts from January 20, 2017, to January 31, 2018 (in some cases, February 1). There are sure to be things missing, but I have done my best to record these impacts. The impacts are listed under 19 different categories:
3. Women & Families;
4. LBGT;
5. Judicial/Constitutional;
6. Ethics;
7. Targeting free press/free speech/Privacy;
8. Health & Safety;
9. Consumer Protections;
10. Education;
11. Transportation/Infrastructure/Housing;
12. Immigration;
13. Social Contract;
14. Business/Economy/Budget;
15. Military/Defense/Police;
16. World;
17. General Governance;
18. Character; and
19. Some good news. Because there is always some good news.
Of course, some of the impacts may fit under multiple categories. For example, does Trump’s encouragement of police to treat suspects violently fall under Health and Safety or Law Enforcement? Or maybe Ethics or Character? There are many such conundrums, and I have tried to categorize each example appropriately. Some may disagree on the categorization. And that’s OK. As a researcher, I’m still pondering good ways to visualize all of this data, but in the meantime, it’s listed here. Fair warning: This is long. The items may not necessarily be in chronological order.
Since this will take me months to write, I will publish each section as I complete it. This article is on impacts on the LGBT population.
I want to acknowledge Amy Siskind’s weekly list of subtle changes that experts in authoritarianism say to watch out for. Amy’s in-depth listings were invaluable, and a must-read itself.
Buckle your seatbelts.
LBGT
The Republican Party has historically been harmful and dangerous to the LGBT population, including pushing for sexual orientation to be a legally unprotected status, not recognizing same-sex marriage, advocating for “conversion therapy,” and supporting the exclusion of gay people in the military. The current GOP platform is no exception to the party’s history. It’s been called the most anti-LGBT platform in history by none other than the president of the Log Cabin Republicans (who are perhaps the only group of people more self-loathing than female Republicans). The platform, among other things, pushes to overturn same-sex marriage, make it legal to discriminate against LBBT people, discourage gay people from adopting, and make “conversion therapy” legal for minors. Trump has exacerbated the anti-LGBT sentiment by filling his administration with people who oppose LGBT rights. Writer Peter Montgomery has called Trump the best thing that has happened for the religious right. And writer Samantha Allen spelled out the disastrous and long-term effects on LGBT rights that this administration will have. In only a year, Trump has managed to erase years of progress and protections for LGBT people.
· Within hours of being sworn in, Trump removed all mention of LGBT rights from the White House web site.
· Trump’s pick for chief scientist for the Department of Agriculture, Sam Clovis, continues to claim that homosexuality is a choice, and has compared same-sex marriage to pedophilia.
· In fact, Trump filled his cabinet with people who have histories of anti-LGBT sentiments (see Cabinet Appointments).
· Cabinet members aren’t the only worrying appointments. Trump has nominated terrifying anti-LGBT judges to the bench, including five who have a history of things like comparing transgender students to satan, encouraging parents to opt their kids out of schools that treat LGBT students equally, defending conversion therapy, supporting state laws that encourage LGBT discrimination, and representing legislators on behalf of North Carolina’s draconian HB2, which would have barred trans people from using government building and school bathrooms in accordance with their gender identities.
· Trump also nominated Sam Brownback as “ambassador at large for international religious freedom.” Brownback is not only a prime example of failed leadership, but also an example of notorious anti-LGBT sentiments and actions. Pence cast the tiebreaking vote to confirm him.
· Trump issued a memo directing the Defense Department to ban transgender people from the military. Worse, he announced his plans on twitter before consulting at all with Department of Defense people, forcing the military into a frenzy to figure out what it all means. The memo instructed the military to ban all new transgender recruits from enlisting, kick out transgender people currently serving, and prohibit transition-related surgery for service members. Thankfully, not one, but two, courts blocked this ban, using Trump’s own ranting tweets against him.
· Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who has a long history of anti-LGBT sentiments, reversed a policy from President Obama that protected transgender workers from discrimination.
· Trump also rolled back ACA protections against discrimination, making it easier for doctors and medical professionals to deny treatment and discriminate against transgender people and women who have had abortions.
· Trump also appears to be accepting of businesses to have signs saying that they won’t serve gay people.
· Trump’s Department of Justice intervened in a case in the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals to advocate that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bans employment discrimination on the basis of sex, does NOT also apply to sexual orientation. In direct contradiction to President Obama’s DOJ, the Trump administration directly urged the court to rule that employers can fire LGBT people simply because they’re LGBT. (Good news spoiler alert: as of March 2018, two federal court rulings decided that sexual orientation is, in fact, a protected class and employees can’t discriminate against transgender workers.)
· But transgender students are still at risk for discrimination. Trump rescinded President Obama’s protections for transgender students to use the bathroom of their gender identity. Surprisingly, none other than anti-student, anti-LGBT, anti-women Betsy DeVos was a main opponent of this recension. The results of this were immediate. The case of Gavin Grimm, a trans student who had been forced to use an “alternative” restroom in his Virginia school, was sent back from the Supreme Court to the fourth circuit, putting the case back two years. The Obama protection policies informed the fourth circuit to begin with, so without those, it’s unclear whether discrimination against transgender students will continue with impunity.
· Sessions also thanked an anti-LGBT group for “their important work” during a closed-door meeting.
· After attempts to include questions regarding sexual orientation in the US Census, Trump quickly squashed the idea that LGBT people should be counted. With no data, it is challenging for federal agencies and researchers to accurately track the size, demographics, and needs of the LGBT community.
· As the rest of the developed world acknowledged June as National Pride Month, which President Obama did, Trump refused to acknowledge Pride Month at all or issue a proclamation for it.
· He did, however, acknowledge World AIDS Day, but excluded any mention at all of LGBT people or people of color.
· Although he acknowledged World AIDS Day, he seems bent on harming people around the globe: His proposed cuts to global public health programs, which include antiretroviral drugs, will result in at least one million deaths, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa.
· Any acknowledgement was negated when about a quarter of the members of the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS resigned, claiming that Trump simply does not care about HIV or AIDS. A few months later, Trump abruptly fired the remaining members of the Council. He informed them of their firing with no explanation by FedEx. We are closer to living in a reality TV show than ever before.
· In a show of character for both Trump and Pence, during a discussion about gay people, Trump motioned to Pence in a meeting and said, “Don’t ask that guy — he wants to hang them all!”
Next up: Judicial/Constitutional
