LGBT issues present Trump with loyalty test
WASHINGTON >> There was candidate Donald Trump in Colorado, waving a rainbow flag emblazoned with “LGBTs for Trump,” a photo opportunity meant to signal he was a new brand of Republican when it comes to protecting LGBT Americans.
Four months later, faced with a major decision point on the issue, Trump’s White House held up another slogan: defense of states’ rights.
The administration’s decision this week to revoke guidance on transgender students’ use of public school bathrooms was an early test of Trump’s loyalties — between the gay and lesbian community he said he supports but largely did not support him, and the social conservatives who helped drive his victory. It’s a tension Trump could find difficult to manage throughout his presidency, when the hot-button social issues he worked hard to avoid during the campaign are impossible to ignore.
“In a weird way and sometimes a clumsy way, I think President Donald Trump is trying his best to balance issues of LGBT equality and the constituency of evangelical Christians that helped propel him to the White House,” said Gregory T. Angelo, president of the Log Cabin Republicans, which represents lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender conservatives. “On LGBT issues in less than a month, we have seen the president go into two separate directions.”
Late in January, the White House released a statement declaring Trump would enforce an Obama administration order barring workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual identity. The unusual announcement of a decision not to act — essentially affirming the status quo — followed an internal debate over revoking the order. Trump sided with LGBT activists at the urging of his daughter Ivanka Trump and her husband, White House adviser Jared Kushner, both of whom are viewed as moderating influences on the president.
This week, Ivanka Trump and Kushner were publicly silent on the transgender bathroom debate.
The restroom decision set off tensions within the administration. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos expressed reluctance to rescind protections for transgender students and clashed with Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who supported the change, according to a person who was familiar withtheconversationsbutnot authorized to speak publicly about internal discussions and so requested anonymity.
After Wednesday’s announcement, DeVos released her own statement, stressing that the administration had a “moral obligation” to protect LGBT students, which she said was “not only a key priority for the department, but for every school in America.” Speaking Thursday to the Conservative Political Action Conference, she framed it as a legal matter, “a very huge exampleoftheObamaadministration’s overreach.”