Just a few days after Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III claimed that his Justice Department will “protect the rights of all transgender persons,” the Trump administration has hired Bethany Kozma, an anti-LGBT activist who fought to restrict bathroom access for trans children, to the office of Gender Equality and Women's Empowerment in the US Agency for International Development.
With just hours left in Pride Month 2017, guess Donald Trump couldn’t help but offer one last F-U to LGBT Americans, after failing to even acknowledge the occasion with a presidential proclamation for the first time since the George W. Bush administration:
In July 2016, Kozma published a post at the Daily Signal, a publication of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, calling for a national campaign in opposition to the Obama administration's guidance saying transgender students have the right to use bathrooms matching their gender identity. She called the campaign "United We Stand," and made her case against the policy by repeating the unsubstantiated assertion that policies allowing transgender people to access the bathroom matching their gender identity leads to sexual assault.
"To put it simply, a boy claiming gender confusion must now be allowed in the same shower, bathroom, or locker room with my daughter under the president’s transgender policies," she wrote. "When I learned that predators could abuse these new policies to hurt children in school lockers, shelters, pool showers, or other vulnerable public places like remote bathrooms in national parks, I realized I had to do something."
Kozma celebrated Donald Trump ending former President Barack Obama’s guidance earlier this year, writing that "the silent majority must no longer be silent. With Trump, we now have a president who is focused on remedying the lawlessness of the prior administration." Happy Pride from Donald Trump!
Buzzfeed notes that the US Agency for International Development supports the kind of pro-LGBT policies that Kozma has fought against in the past:
USAID has backed programs in several countries with the goal of supporting LGBT economic empowerment, access to housing and health care, and political participation. The agency also adopted guidelines in late 2016 barring contractors overseas from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity in providing services.
When asked whether Kozma's appointment signaled a change in policy, the agency spokesperson responded, "USAID has not taken any measures regarding the discrimination policy for contractors, as is the case with many other policies. USAID is committed to promoting a work environment that is free from sexual-orientation and gender-identity discrimination, in accordance with existing federal law."
Buzzfeed talked to someone from the known anti-LGBT hate group Center for Family and Human Rights, who offered this totally not bigoted defense in defense of the totally not bigoted activist: "Bethany Kozma is a lovely, sweet woman who just happens to believe that girls with penises just ought not to be showering next to girls without penises.”