Throwing another bone toward the progressive left, President Trump announced on Tuesday morning that he would not be dismantling an order made by President Obama which protects federal employees from sexual orientation-based discrimination while working as federal contractors.
The move appears to have been one entirely up to the president himself as he moved against traditional Republican stance to defend the order by his predecessor.
The order was the first of its kind to protect federal employees on the basis of sexual orientation, and though Trump has protected it, there is much more that he has not yet pledged to keep.
Even as this order is protected, there are rumors that the Trump administration is planning an anti-LGBT order sometime this week, possibly attacking LGBT adoption rights or another issue close to the heart of the LGBT community.
During the election, Donald Trump said that he was personally against marriage equality, though he has indicated that he considers the constitutional amendment which established marriage equality to be “settled law.”
Long before he began to run as a Republican, Donald Trump appears to be pro-gay, though he has shown several times now that his conservative stance is here to stay.
Still, his selection of an anti-gay Vice President in Mike Pence, a man whom has gone on record believing in gay conversion therapy, has many rightfully concerned about what LGBT rights will look like in Trump’s America.
If Trump truly wanted to show that he is a pro-gay president, he would work to expand the protections provided to federal employees to all employees and citizens of the United States. In most states, it is still 100% legal to discriminate against people on the basis of their sexual orientation. In the far past, Trump indicated that he would support such legislation – will he do so again?
If he changes that, maybe we can start calling him a pro-LGBT president. Until then, it’s just a bit of soft political grandstanding.
