Are LGBT Rights About to Get Trumped?

Written by guest contributor and author Lee Schubert.

The day after the presidential election, suicide prevention hotlines lit up all across the country, as LGBT people expressed their panic about what a Trump presidency will mean for the future of their freedoms. The fear is real and palpable and understandable. But it may also be somewhat exaggerated and premature. In reality, Donald Trump himself has not said a lot of negative things about either sexual orientation or gender identity. Nor is he as conservative as many people think he is. The conservatives are well aware of that, though liberals tend to throw him into the same bag as Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio. And whatever Trump’s actual goals turn out to be, there are serious limits to the power of the president. We also have the courts and Congress. And even though the Republicans have majorities in both houses, those majorities are not very wide and many Republicans are not about to fall lock-step behind this political newcomer.

Not that there is no cause for concern. There are several reasons to worry about a Trump administration. The broadest one is the general tone of intolerance that Trump projected throughout the campaign. He did not seem to care a lot about people who are not white, male, and Christian. It is not a big stretch to add “straight” to that list. And whatever his own views may be, some of his supporters may view his victory as license for discrimination and even violence. There was some very disturbing evidence of this in the wake of the election.Another cause for concern is the people Trump will be surrounding himself with. First there is Mike Pence. In addition to being generally more conservative, the vice-president-elect has a seriously poor record on LGBT issues.

Then there are the various appointees in the administration. Just as an example, there is some fear that Betsy DeVos (Trump’s choice to head the Department of Education) will roll back the effort to stop bullying and advance the safety of gay and transgender students. And of course there is the big issue of who Trump will appoint to the Supreme Court. He will be under great pressure from conservatives in both his administration and Congress to choose a justice who would vote to limit LGBT rights in some key ways. Since our next president has never held public office, there is no way to know how susceptible he will be to the influence of those around him, though during his campaign he did tend to do things his own way.

Now let us turn from generalizations to how a Trump presidency might affect some particular issues of concern to the LGBT community. Probably the two biggest issues are marriage equality and transgender bathrooms. Trump has been hard to pin down on either of these, changing positions and equivocating. In both cases, he seems to like the idea of ducking the question by saying it should be left to the individual states. This is not the worst position from a LGBT perspective, since at least it would not involve the kind of discrimination by the federal government exhibited in the dreadful Defense of Marriage Act. But it would still allow discrimination by individual states. What most LGBT people want is equal rights guaranteed throughout the country. And that ultimately depends on the Supreme Court. Therefore these two extremely important issues will be especially dependent on who is nominated (and confirmed) to sit on that court.

There are various other types of discrimination against LGBT people who might be more likely under the new administration. One type is discrimination on religious grounds. Religious organizations sometimes claim that they should not have to hire people, such as gays and lesbians, whose behavior violates their religious beliefs. Recently even businesses have claimed the right not to employ or do business with such people. Since the legalization of same-sex marriage, some people have refused to provide cakes or other goods or services related to weddings, based on their religious beliefs. During the Obama administration, the trend has been not to allow that type of discrimination, despite the religious freedom arguments. Trump has given some indications that he might be more sympathetic toward the religious freedom arguments.

The fear of increased discrimination is further fueled by the fact that Mike Pence has opposed anti-discrimination legislation designed to protect LGBT people. He was also opposed to allowing gays in the military, and some fear a possible return to the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” era, though a reversal on that would be very difficult to engineer.Because of Trump’s interest in limiting immigration, there is concern that changes in policy might interfere with marriage for international couples and with the treatment of LGBT people seeking asylum from persecution in their home countries. Another possible target of an anti-gay backlash is adoption by same-sex couples. There are also certain medical areas that could be impacted. “Conversion therapy,” or the attempt to treat gay people by making them straight, has been generally rejected by mental health professionals. But in the past Mike Pence advocated it, and some fear that it might come back into use.

Another medical issue arises from the likelihood that Obamacare will be repealed or at least massively overhauled. It does not allow discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity and that has been extremely important for transgender people, who previously often had great difficulty obtaining certain types of health care. So there it is. On one hand, there is a very real possibility that the Trump presidency will create some serious problems for many in the LGBT community. On the other, it is much too soon to predict the type of wholesale oppression that many in the LGBT community fear. On balance, rather than assuming the worst, we would do better to wait until we see what particular changes are proposed and then fight to defend whatever rights of LGBT people are actually being threatened.  

Lee Schubert is the author of Woman Incognito.