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: defence 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.”