Not, “We would never dream of signing such a reactionary piece of garbage,” just no plans at this time. Originally published February 8, 2017 Reprinted from Windy City Times The LGBT movement faced its first big test of the Trump presidency this past week, and fortunately passed. The administration Continue Reading \u2192<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":493,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55,2],"tags":[5,41],"class_list":["post-524","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lgbt-rights","category-trump","tag-donald-trump","tag-lgbtq-rights"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gayliberation.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/524","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gayliberation.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gayliberation.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gayliberation.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gayliberation.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=524"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gayliberation.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/524\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":525,"href":"https:\/\/gayliberation.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/524\/revisions\/525"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gayliberation.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gayliberation.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gayliberation.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gayliberation.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![](\"https:\/\/gallery.mailchimp.com\/57c194ba9b4712be34160a911\/images\/ab37851d-96b3-464e-be87-3bfc845379ff.jpg\")
<\/a>The LGBT movement faced its first big test of the Trump presidency this past week, and fortunately passed. <\/strong>
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\nThe administration floated, and rescinded, attacks on LGBT protections in federal employment and federal contractors. The administration then floated, and rescinded, attacks on a broad range of LGBT rights using \u201creligious liberty\u201d as the mask for its bigoted actions.<\/strong>
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\nFortunately, LGBT activists around the country reconnected with each other and pre-emptively made plans for immediate response protests to mobilize our community and allies, taking inspiration from the large women\u2019s marches, immigrant and refugee rights airport actions, and other anti-Trump protests.
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Fortunately some \u2013 though still too few \u2013 brought LGBT presences to those \u201cother\u201d issues, showing solidarity before LGBTs per se <\/em>were attacked. This sent an important message that large sections of our community are not the stereotypical white gay middle-aged male \u2013 narrowly concerned only for our rights, and the hell with everyone else — and could perhaps thus enlist the support of non-LGBTs if\/when we\u2019re under the gun.
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\nWe\u2019ll probably never know for sure, but these preparatory actions by our community probably were critical to preventing these anti-LGBT proposals from becoming Trump\u2019s latest Executive Order atrocities. Rather than toss a risk-free bone to his bigoted base, Trump had to contend with an enlarged backlash at a time when he\u2019s already taking heat from newly re-energized immigrant, Muslim, Arab American and women\u2019s rights activists. So we owe a debt to the activists in these \u201cother\u201d movements for preparing the ground for LGBTs.
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\nConfronting the on-again, off-again Trump anti-LGBT measures, some activists complained of the seemingly endless \u201chead fakes\u201d and \u201ctrial balloons\u201d coming out of this administration. But these are a staple of every administration, Democratic and Republican. And however frustrating they are to deal with as organizers, these head fakes are in fact a good<\/em> sign for us.
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\nThe frequency of these head fakes suggests a regime that is insecure and cognizant of how deeply unpopular it is. After all, the purpose of a trial balloon is to test the waters to see if a new policy is politically viable. That this government has had to expend political capital floating several of them, just to be shot down, is a sign of weakness. The repeated retractions raise doubts in their political base while giving confidence to their opponents.
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\nOur own LGBT history shows the disastrous consequence of not<\/em><\/strong>adequately responding to these trial balloons, by energetically organizing for the worst while hoping for the best.
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\nIn 1993 the Clinton administration swept into office in part on the promise of equal employment rights for Lesbians, Gays and Bisexuals in the military. As a bigoted, bipartisan congressional attack mounted against the incoming administration, LGBT non-profits and \u201cfriend of Bill\u201d Clinton gay activist David Mixner counseled calm, and asked us to withhold criticism of Clinton.
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\nThen a month before the huge 1993 March on Washington, Clintonfloated<\/a> the idea of segregating gays in the military as a condition of letting us in. This utterly repulsive proposal got only muted push-back, if any, from the LGBT non-profits, including at the then-largest ever LGBT march \u2013 a tremendous missed opportunity.
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\nThe result was an historic defeat for our community — the infamous \u201cDon\u2019t Ask, Don\u2019t Tell\u201d was introduced by gay Congressman Barney Frank and passed a few months later.
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\nFast-forwarding to today, while we won round #1 vs. the current administration, their weak disavowals of these anti-LGBT measures should give us no cause for complacency: “We do not have plans to sign anything at this time<\/em><\/strong><\/u> [concerning anti-LGBT \u201creligious freedom\u201d executive orders] but will let you know when we have any updates,” said<\/a> a White House spokesperson. (emphasis mine)<\/p>\n
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\nSo some LGBTs have caught a break for now. But Arabs, Muslims, refugees, Native Americans, immigrants especially from the global South, and others \u2013 many of them also LGBT \u2013 remain in the direct line of fire.
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\nIt is not good enough for those of us who are not part of these communities to simply verbally denounce the bigotry of the Trump administration\u2019s actions. We must show up<\/em> and respectfully participate in the defense activities organized by groups more marginalized and under the gun than we currently are.
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\nThis includes groups, such as Muslims and Arabs, whom many white gays hold revolting stereotypes about as being universally sexist and homophobic\u2026.so as to excuse their own Islamophobia. As with many people in the past who held homophobic attitudes, these Islamophobic attitudes are typically held most fervently by those who have never known a person of the Muslim faith.
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\nAs an activist who has had steady contact with Arab and Muslim activists in the decade and a half since 9\/11, I can tell you that yes, homophobic attitudes do indeed exist in the Arab American and Muslim American communities \u2013 as they do in all<\/em> communities, since no community is monolithic in its social and political opinions.
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\nMore hopefully, I can tell you that in each and every instance where I as an openly gay activist encountered homophobia from one or more persons in these communities, other members of those communities forcefully stood up in my defense against the homophobes, and prevailed in each instance with my doing little more.
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\nIn the fight against bigotry of all kinds, someone has to take the first step. Using one\u2019s latent Islamophobia as an excuse to not stand up and take action against Trump\u2019s bigotry against Arabs and Muslim is unforgiveable when today they are the foremost targets of his scapegoating.
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\nTo paraphrase Pastor Martin Neimoller from Nazi Germany, \u201cFirst they came for the Arabs and Muslims, and I didn\u2019t speak up\u2026\u201d White LGBTs have caught a break\u2026for now\u2026but that could change if others are defeated under Trump\u2019s onslaught.
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\nIn recent years LGBTs have received a great deal of help from non-LGBTs in order to win the rights we have today. I\u2019d say it\u2019s time we extend that same courtesy to others whose rights are most under attack.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"