The lineup of anti-LGBTQ officials in the Trump administration “has been a catastrophe,” said one trans rights activist quoted in a New York Times editorial, adding that “every twitch we’ve seen from the administration has been anti-L.G.B.T.” Of course, most LGBTQ Americans who have been paying attention to Trump for the past two years already knew this, with no help from a ridiculous claim from the NYT itself last year that he was somehow “gay-friendly” because he was once in a skit with a dragged-up Rudy Giuliani. Still, the editorial has a good-but-scary roundup of just how dangerous administration picks have been when it comes to the LGBTQ rights movement and the victories we’ve won so far:
The Department of Health and Human Services, which worked to expand access to health care for gay and transgender Americans, is now being led by Tom Price, who was a vocal opponent of gay rights as a congressman. The agency’s civil rights office, which oversaw regulatory changes that made it easier for transgender people to get insurance coverage for medical care, is now run by Roger Severino, an ultraconservative activist who last year accused the Obama administration of attempting to “coerce everyone, including children, into pledging allegiance to a radical new gender ideology.”
Mr. Obama’s last secretary of the Army, Eric Fanning, an openly gay man, was instrumental in nudging the Pentagon brass to allow transgender people to serve openly. Mark Green, a Tennessee state senator nominated to replace him, last year called being transgender a “disease.”
On Mr. Trump’s watch, federal agencies are rolling back efforts to collect data on the needs of L.G.B.T. Americans. Last month, Health and Human Services amended two surveys of the elderly to remove a question about sexual orientation. The Census Bureau, meanwhile, has scrapped plans to include questions about sexual orientation and gender identity in the 2020 Census and the American Community Survey.
“The only good news for the L.G.B.T. rights movement this year has come from the courts,” it goes on to say.
“Early this month, the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit issued a ruling that the 1964 Civil Rights Act protects gay people from discrimination at work. For the foreseeable future, the federal courts are likely to be the only avenue for progress.” This is certainly true when it comes to putting a stop to Trump’s failed Muslim bans. But with anti-gay groups “salivating” over the nomination and eventual confirmation of Neil Gorsuch, the Supreme Court could be a whole different story. Check out the rest of the editorial here.