Why President Trump Isn't Anti-Gay Enough for the Religious Right
The Religious Right is angry that the Trump administration will keep Obama’s LGBT rights envoy. But they may still get the anti-gay legislation they desire to see signed into law.
SAMANTHA ALLEN
02.17.17 1:00 PM ET
The Trump administration has been a rollercoaster for anti-LGBT groups on the religious right.
This Monday the State Department announced that Randy Berry, the Special Envoy for the Human Rights of LGBTI Persons under President Obama, would keep “his role under the current administration,” as Foreign Policy first reported.
That move is the latest in a long line of mixed signals that the Trump administration has been sending on LGBT issues: First, Trump disappointed the anti-LGBT religious right in late January by refusing to reverse Obama’s 2014 executive order protecting LGBT federal contractors from discrimination. Then, they hitched their hopes to a potential “religious freedom” executive order that was swirling around Washington but still has not been officially announced.
Finally, the Trump administration threw the anti-LGBT crowd a bone last Friday when the Department of Justice, now headed by Jeff Sessions, announced that it would not defend the Obama administration’s guidance on transgender students. But now that news has got out that Randy Berry is keeping his job, opponents of LGBT equality are none too pleased.
“They very much understand Randy Berry to be a leftover remnant of Obama’s international homosexual agenda and are deadset on effectively cleansing the State Department of all pro-LGBTQ, pro-reproductive justice elements,” said Cole Parker, an LGBTQ and gender justice researcher for the small social justice think tank Political Research Associates, in an interview with The Daily Beast.
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http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/02/17/why-president-trump-isn-t-anti-gay-enough-for-the-religious-right.html
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