Trump Sets The Tone For Global War Against Gays
Donald Trump stood on stage during an election campaign rally holding a rainbow flag that proclaimed, “LGBTs for Trump”. It did not read the other way around: “Trump for LGBTs”.
On his first day in office, an information page on LGBT rights was removed from the White House website. Trump chose Mike Pence, a radical Christian extremist who has suggested HIV/AIDS funding should be redirected into gay conversion therapies, as his Vice President. He installed Betsy DeVos, who has donated millions of dollars to gay conversation organisations, as his Education Secretary. He has banned trans people from serving in the US military. In the past month, he has been the guest speaker for an anti-LGBTI organisation that is recognised as a hate group. He wants to legislate “religious freedom” protections for individuals and organisations but which, in reality, will be a way of making discrimination against the LGBT community legal.
In the months since his inauguration, atrocities against the LGBT community around the world have increased. Trump is not to blame for the anti-gay actions of Chechnya, Egypt or Indonesia, but his tacit acceptance, some might say embrace, of bigotry has emboldened these states to act on impulses they may once have not. When Uganda introduced what was known as the “Kill The Gays” bill, President Obama and other world leaders were quick to condemn it.
But if Trump won’t defend the rights of the LGBT community in his own country, why would he speak up for our rights under the jurisdictions of other sovereign states?
As the most powerful man on Earth, Trump’s words and actions have both real consequences and symbolic value. If Chechnya can round up and torture gays without consequence, other states will follow the lead and, indeed, that’s exactly was has happened in Azerbaijan.
I’m not suggesting that Trump is directing or coordinating a global campaign against LGBT people. But his actions at home are a green light to every tin-pot dictator or religious zealot who has been itching to discriminate and persecute with impunity.