Washington Post Ludicrously Claims Gay Voters Don’t Think Trump Wants to Prevent Them From Getting Married

Do Gay Voters See Trump as Wanting to Change the Constitution to Prevent Them From Getting Married?

One of the best-known and one of the most respected political reporters at The Washington Post in a well-received analysis of Democrats post-election made one gigantic statement that deserves pushback from readers and, frankly, a correction. Why? Because it’s The Washington Post and because its reporter is so well-respected, many Americans will take it as true, and it’s anything but.

“Gay voters don’t see a president-elect who wanted to change the Constitution to prevent them from getting married,” David Weigel writes, “they see one who ceded the issue and literally waved a rainbow flag.”

The piece, published New Year’s Eve, is getting widespread attention on social media Monday.

A great many members of the LGBT community, since the moment Donald Trump was elected president, have been living in fear of what he will do directly to the advances President Barack Obama and his administration delivered, and to those advances Obama supported – including same-sex marriage. We’re also living in fear of the anti-LGBT and anti-minority sentiment Trump has unleashed and empowered, the post-election spike in hate crimes a vivid indicator of what’s to come.

Trump has said he opposes marriage equality, and has promised to nominate to the Supreme Court justices who will reverse the Obergefell marriage decision (along with Roe v. Wade). He’s specifically said he would “strongly consider” appointing justices who would overturn Obergefell. Regardless, every one on the list of Supreme Court nominee candidates Trump published – a list put together by the very anti-gay Heritage Foundation – would likely overturn Obergefell. 

While Trump, yes, once at a campaign rally for a 10 seconds held a rainbow pride flag handed him by someone in the audience, that’s as LGBT-supportive Trump is.

Trump hasn’t made a habit of targeting same-sex marriage, but literally every of his cabinet and top administration picks, with the exception of one, opposes same-sex marriage – some vehemently. And he has surrounded himself with leaders and supporters of the religious right, including Franklin Graham and Tony Perkins, and even his own vice president, Mike Pence.

Trump has promised, on day one, to roll back or otherwise destroy, many or most of President Barack Obama’s executive orders. Those executive orders contain many of the advances in civil rights the LGBT community has seen in the past eight years. They are not law, they are policies of the chief executive and can and will disappear under Trump. (That LGBT civil rights advances delivered by President Obama are effectively written in pencil is a troubling fact NCRM has pointed out repeatedly for years.)

How The Washington Post could get this point so incredibly wrong is troubling, but that it is leading millions of Americans to think LGBT people aren’t living in daily fear right now is incredibly damaging.

Countless articles have been written post-election about the exponential increases in calls to LGBT hotlines, from people scared they will lose their rights, their marriages, and even the feeling they can walk around town securely, hand in hand with a loved one. 

Do gay voters see Trump as wanting to change the Constitution to prevent them from getting married?

Hell yes. And that’s just for starters.

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Image by Dominic Massa via Twitter