Trump is President … Here’s What it Means for Queer People

In a shock to progressives, minorities, and queer people everywhere, Donald Trump has been declared the winner of the 2016 presidential race.

What does this mean? We aren’t exactly sure. With the small amount of policies put out by Trump, and his ever changing opinion on our community, there is no way to predict how this may go for us.

What we do know is that we are hurt. We are tired of being labeled as second-class citizens. We are scared for our future as queer people. We can also take a look at the list of queer issues facing this country, and where our new president and his team likely stand on them.

Marriage Equality

Trump has been against marriage equality since 2000 when he said, “The institution of marriage should be between a man and a woman.”

Back in January, Trump told Fox News that he disagrees with the Supreme Court’s decision to legalize same-sex marriage and hopes that it could be changed in the future.

“It has been ruled upon. It has been there. If I’m elected I would be very strong in putting certain judges on the bench that maybe could change thing, but they have a long way to go,” he said. “I disagree with the court in that it should have been a states’ rights issue.”

But, he has been quoted saying that the decision has been made, and he must respect it. “The decision has been made, and that’s the law of the land,” he said in one interview. In another he says, “I mean at some point, we have to get back down to business… they have ruled on it. I wish that it was done by the state.”

In 2006, Trump’s running mate, Mike Pence, claimed “societal collapse was always brought about following an advent of the deterioration of marriage and family.” That same year he supported a constitutional amendment banning marriage equality in Indiana.

But wait, seven years later he signed a bill jailing same-sex couples who attempted to apply for a marriage license.

Transgender Rights

The fight for trans rights will be directly influenced by whomever Trump nominates for the Supreme Court. He has vowed to replace the late Antonin Scalia — one of the high court’s most homophobic jurists — with someone who follow in his footsteps. Now, this will cause a lot of trouble for queer people.

One in particular is Gavin Grimm — the teen who was denied the right to use facilities matching his gender identity. Gavin’s case is the first time the Supreme Court will tackle the issue of trans rights.

The justices will determine whether Gavin, a 17-year-old student at Gloucester High School in Virginia, is protected by Title IX of the federal Education Amendments Act of 1972, which prohibits discrimination based on sex at publicly funded schools.

Again, it’s unclear where Trump stands on the issue of trans rights. Initially Trump said he favored allowing trans people to use the bathroom of their choice, but closer to Election Day, he came out in support of North Carolina’s HB2.

“I’m going with the state. They know what’s going on, they’ve seen what’s happening,” he told reporters. “I’ve spoken to your governor, I’ve spoken to a number of different people, and I’m going with the state.”

Mike Pence, meanwhile, has also vowed an “immediate” review of executive orders issued by President Obama — which could include his directive to schools to allow students to use facilities matching their gender identity.

Anti-Queer Legislation

Trump has pledged to sign the First Amendment Defense Act, which protects discrimination on religious grounds and prohibits the government from taking action against anyone who “believes or acts in accordance with a religious belief or moral conviction that marriage is or should be recognized as the union of one man and one woman.”

It’s eerily familiar to the bill that lost Indiana $60 million and alienated the queer community from the Hoosier state — The Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

The measure would  invalidate President Obama’s executive order from 2014 barring federal contractors from discriminating based on sexual orientation or gender identity.

Trump/Pence’s win also effectively kills the Equality Act, or any effort to protect queer Americans from discrimination in the workplace, housing, healthcare, or other arenas.

On his website, Pence declared, “Congress should oppose any effort to recognize homosexuals as a ’discrete and insular minority’ entitled to the protection of anti-discrimination laws similar to those extended to women and ethnic minorities.”

Hate Violence

“As your president, I will do everything in my power to protect our LGBTQ citizens from the violence and oppression of a hateful foreign ideology,” Donald Trump promised after the attack at Pulse Nightclub. 

We appreciate the sentiment, but what about the native threats that continue to plague our community?

The massacre in Orlando in June was the worst mass shooting in American history and the deadliest terrorist attack on US soil since Sept. 11. Sadly, this was not the outlier.

Although the magnitude and violence of the attack was unusual, the targeting of LGBT Americans is sadly common.

In 2014, the number of hate crimes stemming from sexual orientation and gender identity clocked an alarming 1,115 incidents. Eighteen of those were directed toward heterosexuals, however. So the total number of reported hate crimes targeting queer people comes in at 1,097.

Of the nearly 5,500 hate crimes in the US in 2014, about a fifth were motivated by bias against a sexual orientation or gender identity. Of those incidents, 54 percent targeted gay men specifically. Only two groups were the targets of more hate crimes than gay men: black and Jewish people — although these communities are not mutually exclusive.

Queer Americans, however,  are targeted in hate crimes at 8.3 times the rate you’d expect based on the size of their population; that’s higher than the rate for both Jews (at 3.5) and black people (at 3.2).

Mike Pence, meanwhile, complained when the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Bill was signed into law in 2009. He insisted it was part of a “radical social agenda” that would have “a chilling effect on religious expression, from the pulpits, in our temples, in our mosques, and in our churches.”

HIV/AIDS

Trump has not issued a policy statement about addressing HIV/AIDS in America or worldwide.

His VP Mike Pence, however, has a checkered past when it comes to HIV. One of his defining moments as Indiana’s Governor was enabling a massive HIV outbreak spurred by public-health funding cuts and Pence’s moralistic stance against needle exchanges.

Pence first laid the groundwork for Indiana’s HIV outbreak as a congressman back in 2011, when the House passed his amendment to defund Planned Parenthood. Then in 2013, Pence’s first year as governor of Indiana, Scott County’s one Planned Parenthood closed in the wake of public-health spending cuts. Since that particular Planned Parenthood was also the county’s only HIV testing center, there was no longer a place for the county’s 24,000 residents to get tested.

Fast-forward to 2015. Local health officials began to report HIV cases linked to intravenous prescription opioid use in Scott County. Scott County residents were sharing needles to inject their opioids, and nobody was getting tested.

At the height of the outbreak, 20 new cases of HIV were being diagnosed each week, reaching a total of nearly 200 cases by the time the outbreak was finally under control.

Gay Conversion Therapy

Mike Pence also supports the debunked efforts to “cure” queer people. On his campaign website he wrote, “Resources should be directed toward those institutions which provide assistance to those seeking to change their sexual behavior.”

This summer, the Republican Party approved a platform that included a rejection of state laws preventing the practice of conversion therapy on minors. The Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins, now a member of Trump’s “pro-life advisory council,” fought for the platform to endorse the practice even more strongly.

Perkins has said that Trump’s campaign was the only GOP campaign in recent history that he hasn’t had to fight with over issues of “human sexuality” in the party platform.