Why Are Queer People Voting for Trump?

Recent headlines have been reading that a stark 45 percent of queer men said they would be voting for Trump in the upcoming election. But, where is this percentage coming from, and who exactly is crunching these numbers?

The 45 percent refers to the 540 queer, American males who answered a survey posed by the dating app Hornet. The app asked around 1,200 queer, American males whom they planned to vote for come November, and just under half of them chose Trump. The poll also found that a mere 11 percent said they “generally disagree” with Trump’s stances, and a slimmer 10 percent said they “do not support him at all.”

Trump and his administration claim to be LGBTQ-friendly; however, their policies such as the rollback of trans healthcare protections or their banning of the pride flags on U.S. embassies say otherwise. But, it doesn’t end there; the Human Rights Campaign released Trump’s Timeline of Hate‘ last year, which catalogs all of his anti-LGBTQ decisions just within his first 100 days of office.

The story of Trump’s outreach to LGBTQ voters starts with the creation of OUTspoken, which is a Republican-led multimedia campaign tasked with creating pro-Trump LGBTQ content, a difficult task to manage when the only picture of Trump being LGBTQ-friendly seems to be him holding a pride flag that someone had tactfully written ‘LGBTs for Trump’ upon.

OUTspoken’s first video, released just a month ago, features Richard Grenell (the first out cabinet member) stating  that “President Trump is the most pro-gay president in American history.” Grenell continues to boost Trump’s allegiance to queer people with remarks such as, “the fact that I’m gay didn’t even faze Donald Trump,”  giving us a look at just how low the bar is being set for Republican allies.

This would not mark the first election that LGBTQ people voted against their own self-interest. Since the 1970s, queer Americans have routinely given the GOP as much as a quarter of their vote in presidential elections, even as religious conservatives began to dominate the Republican Party and actively demonized LGBTQ lifestyles.

Most queer Republicans agree with the party’s economic and defense platforms, not so much the social issues the GOP is known for. Many of these voters feel they represent the GOP’s true philosophy of liberty, individual rights, and a small federal government as opposed to the religious conservatives who dominate the party today. They feel the best way to enact change is to do so from within the Republican party.

On the presidential campaign trail in 2015 and 2016, Trump made history by directly appealing to LGBTQ voters. At a Colorado rally, he waved the infamous ‘LGBTs for Trump’ flag while on stage. Elsewhere, he promised he would be a “better friend” to LGBTQ+ Americans than Hillary Clinton, and he later became the first Republican nominee to say “LGBT” in an acceptance speech.

While frequently highlighting its LGBTQ appointees—such as Patrick Bumatay, a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit; Tyler Goodspeed, acting chair of the Council of Economic Advisers; and five U.S. ambassadors, including Grenell—the Trump administration has waged a steady assault on LGBTQ rights behind the scenes, especially against trans people.

While many LGBTQ Republicans appreciate that Trump isn’t directly spreading the homophobic rhetoric of the past, their willingness to camouflage a campaign that directly opposes LGBTQ rights may prove to be more harmful in the long run.