‘Undeniable’: Journalist Warns LGBT Civil Rights ‘Are Already Being Stripped Away Right Before Our Eyes’

‘It Often Doesn’t Matter What the Majority of Americans Believe’

Michelangelo Signorile is a veteran journalist who for many years has hosted his own show on SiriusXM radio. He’s also the editor-at-large for HuffPost’s Queer Voices. And he’s out with an eight-point alert for LGBT people: our civil rights are in danger. In fact, our rights “are already being stripped away right before our eyes,” he warns in a post at HuffPost titled, “It’s Now Undeniable That LGBTQ Rights Are In Danger Of Being Rolled Back.”

Signorile says it’s “naive and enormously dangerous” for LGBT people to think our “rights are secured ― while not seeing the perils ahead.”

By way of example, Signorile says “some recent exchanges and interactions I’ve had lead me to believe that many people, queer and straight, still believe that LGBTQ rights are secure and advancing. They point to public opinion polls, to cultural changes and to progress even in the most conservative corners of the country.”

“One person, educated in the history of the LGBTQ movement, told me that he couldn’t believe that the Supreme Court would undo something that the majority of Americans now supported ― marriage equality ― and implied a lot of the sounding of the alarm was for the conspiracy-minded.”

Many people think that.

One highly-respected LGBT civil rights legal group, after Trump was elected, published an FAQ saying marriage was not in immediate danger. But they noted related equality rights for gay people certainly could be.

(Since then, several have noted just how easy it could be to effectively take marriage away from same-sex couples. Or even overturn Obergefell. And some states are working to revoke marital benefits from same-sex couples.)

“Even though the Court is extremely unlikely to take away your marriage, there are ways short of reversing a marriage decision in which the new administration could make life harder for same-sex spouses and their children, such as by permitting discrimination against these families in some contexts,” Lambda Legal wrote in December last year. “It is also possible that the new administration could reduce the respect given by federal government agencies to the marriages of same-sex spouses.”

We’re seeing that, and similar actions against LGBT people being taken already. Betsy DeVos’ Dept. of Education offers several  examples, as does Jeff Sessions’ DOJ.

Here’s the crux of Signorile’s very valid argument:

“It often doesn’t matter what the majority of Americans believe ― over 90 percent support universal background checks on gun purchases, after all, but we can’t get the legislation passed. The Supreme Court has handed down ruling after ruling that reversed precedents and defied the majority of Americans’ beliefs on voting rights, corporate money in politics, immigration and so many other issues. What is happening in our country right now is clear: a powerful minority is in control and is trying to get the fix in so that it can rule from the minority for a long time to come. “

And to prove it, he offers these eight events:

• “Donald Trump’s Supreme Court pick Neil Gorsuch”
• “Mississippi last year passed the most far-reaching anti-LGBTQ law”
• “Texas joined Michigan, South Dakota and Mississippi in allowing bans on adoption to same-sex couples by state-funded adoption agencies”
• North Carolina’s newly-elected Democratic governor signed a so-called repeal of HB2 that “still bans local LGBT rights ordinances statewide and regulates transgender people until some time in the future ― when it will surely be extended.”
• “The Trump administration has thrown transgender students overboard”
• “Trump has essentially made LGBTQ people invisible,” by not issuing an LGBT Pride month declaration and removing questions about sexual orientation and “refusing to collect vital data”
• “Some Democratic strategists are advising that the party move away from “’identify politics,’ and that means steering clear of LGBTQ rights”
• And this vital observation: “Trump’s cabinet and undersecretaries include some of the most ardent foes of LGBT rights, from Housing Secretary Ben Carson and Attorney General Jeff Sessions to Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Tom Price and his director of the Office of Civil Rights at HHS, Roger Severino, an anti-LGBTQ advocate who last year accused the Obama administration of attempting to ‘coerce everyone, including children, into pledging allegiance to a radical new gender ideology.’ Already, we’re seeing important programs that affect LGBT people in jeopardy.”

“None of us can believe any of the rights we’ve fought for are safe,” Signorile rightly warns. “But more importantly, we need to wake up and see that they are already being stripped away right before our eyes.”

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