Trump's Claim to Gay Conservatives: He's 'Fighting Hard' for LGBTQ+ Americans

In a Dec. 15 gala hosted at Mar-a-Lago, former president Donald Trump made the claim that he's "fighting for the gay community... and fighting hard" – a boast not entirely supported by history.

Politico reported that the gala was in celebration of the 45th anniversary of the Log Cabin Republicans, an organization of LGBTQ+ conservatives who have long applauded Trump and, more recently, homophobic legislation from the likes of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who signed that state's "Don't Say Gay" measure into law earlier this year.

"Trump and his administration had a mixed record on LGBTQ issues," Politico recalled. "He's been criticized for driving a wedge between gay and transgender communities, and for promoting extreme religious liberty policies and executive orders" that "allowed for discrimination against LGBTQ people that pushed the movement backwards."

But the group's president, Charles Moran, seized on Trump's claims, and "challenged other 2024 hopefuls to also say they are willing to fight for gay rights," Politico reported.

"I just heard a Republican candidate for president stand up and say he is willing to fight and I challenge every other Republican to make the same pledge Donald Trump made tonight," Moran declared.

It's uncertain whether that will come to pass. So far, Trump is the only Republican to declare candidacy for the 2024 presidential election, and he has recently lost support even among members of his core constituency in the wake of the midterm elections, in which Democrats strengthened their majority in the Senate and Republicans won a far narrower majority in the House than either historical trends or their own predictions for a "red wave" had suggested would be the case.

Meantime, DeSantis, who has been polling well against Trump, seems likely to mount a White House bid of his own. Politico noted that "the gala centered around the new same-sex marriage law," the Respect for Marriage Act, which President Joe Biden signed last week, and which cleared the House and Senate with bipartisan support – but which had also met with resistance from GOP lawmakers, despite religious liberty provisions having been added. DeSantis, for his part, has "said there was 'no need' for the Respect for Marriage Act and called the right's concerns over religious liberty 'valid,' " Politico noted.

The Human Rights Campaign has a timeline that tracks the anti-L:GTBQ+ actions taken by the Trump administration, starting on Jan. 20, 2017, when, "Less than two hours after Trump and his virulently anti-LGBTQ+ activist Vice President Mike Pence were sworn into office, all mentions of LGBTQ+ issues were removed from the official White House webpage."

In subsequent actions, the Trump administration attacked transgender youth, barred transgender Americans from military service, sought to legally erase LGBTQ+ Americans from anti-discrimination protections, and removed questions related to sexual orientation from two Health and Human Services surveys as well as the 2020 Census, along with other controversial moves.

Among Trump's actions during his single term were the appointments of three right-wing justices to the Supreme Court, which now has a supermajority of conservative jurists on its bench. The Court, newly energized, struck down its own precedent from half a century ago when, this past June, it overturned Roe v. Wade, rolling back the Constitutional right of women to seek an abortion.

That action by the court, and signals from Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito that they would welcome a chance to similarly revisit other matters of settled law and overturn Supreme Court rulings around the rights of heterosexual married couples to obtain contraception, as well as the rights of same-sex couples to enter into fully legal matrimony, prompted this year's Congressional action to usher the Respect for Marriage Act into law.