Gay and bisexual men make up over half of people with HIV.Īt this point, then, would it really make a difference for Trump to issue a proclamation declaring June Pride Month? Wouldn’t LGBT groups just ream him as hypocritical, the same way Ivanka Trump was criticized on Twitter for mentioning Pride Month?
This Tuesday, incidentally, was National HIV Testing Day. And earlier this month, six members of the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS resigned, saying that Trump “simply does not care” about stopping new infections. Mark Green for Army secretary-who had a history of making anti-LGBT remarks. Along the way, Trump has made controversial nominations-like Tennessee State Sen. Census Bureau opted not to include questions about LGBT identity on the 2020 Census. The very next month, the Trump administration withdrew federal guidance on transgender students, effectively scuttling a pending Supreme Court case on transgender student rights.
In January, when rumors were swirling that Trump would sign an anti-LGBT executive order within a few weeks of becoming president, the White House issued a statement claiming that he “continues to be respectful and supportive of LGBTQ rights, just as he was throughout the election.” Trump didn’t sign the rumored executive order but the accompanying statement didn’t stay relevant for long. In fact, in April, The New York Times ran a piece with the headline: “Donald Trump’s More Accepting Views on Gay Issues Set Him Apart in G.O.P.” (It was the Times’ own editorial board, as HuffPost took relish in pointing out, that would later refer to the election-year theory that Trump was an LGBT-friendly candidate as a “fallacy.”)īy now, that narrative of an LGBT-friendly Trump has all but crumbled. Last year, even before Trump became the first Republican presidential nominee to make a specific appeal to the LGBT community in his acceptance speech, the narrative had already emerged that he presented no true threat to LGBT people compared to other Republican candidates. “Candidate Trump was lip service and now President Trump is absolutely erasing LGBTQ people.” “I think it’s more of the same,” GLAAD CEO Sarah Kate Ellis told The Daily Beast of the White House’s Pride Month silence. So what happened to the Trump who held up the Pride flag-the Trump whom gay conservatives like former United Nations official Richard Grenell told us had an “easy and consistent embrace of the LGBT community” that was “rarely highlighted” by a biased media? This year, as Newsweek noted, Trump vowed on Twitter to “NEVER FORGET” the 49 people who were killed but made no mention of the LGBT community.Įven Marco Rubio-who scored a “0” on the Human Rights Campaign’s latest congressional scorecard- acknowledged this year in a tweet that the horrific mass shooting was “an attack on the LGBT community.” Last year, after the horrific massacre at an Orlando LGBT nightclub, he tweeted, “Thank you to the LGBT community! I will fight for you while Hillary brings in more people that will threaten your freedoms and beliefs.” And never was Trump’s silence louder this month than on the anniversary of the Pulse shooting.