So did anyone besides me notice the granny disguise the president-elect was wearing, along with his carefully-coiffed hairdo?
“Grandmother, what if you appoint a judge…” Red tried to ask, but was cut-off. Trump “wolfsplained” it to her.
“It’s irrelevant because it was already settled. It’s law. It was settled in the Supreme Court. I mean it’s done,” said the wolf, reassuring Red.
The next thing she should said was, “Grandmother, what big teeth you have!” But given Trump’s record on telling the truth, no one really expects him to truthfully admit the answer is, “All the better to eat you with!”
Because president-elect Donald Trump has not consistently addressed this question of supporting LGBTQ rights including marriage, and the record shows he and his cronies have in fact already pledged to do what they can to overturn them.
It should be noted that legal eagle Shannon Minter, the legal director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, has already repudiated the possibility of Trump overturning Obergefell v. Hodges, saying “There are only two ways for a SCOTUS ruling to change. 1) the court reverses itself, or 2) a constitutional amendment. Neither are likely anytime soon.” You can read more about that here.
But that does not mean Minter or anyone else in LGBTQ advocacy believes President Trump won’t try to find a way around that decision, and is going to attempt to roll back our rights, especially people like Minter and myself, who are transgender.
“In a very real sense, our lives, our ability to work, to attend school, to obtain health care, are at the mercy of a new administration,” Minter told Reuters last week.
Trump has been all over the map on marriage equality. Earlier this year, Trump told FOX News that he’d “strongly consider” overturning same-sex marriage, and in February he urged evangelical leaders to “trust” him to protect “traditional marriage.”
“I think they can trust me on traditional marriage… and frankly, I was very much in favor of having the court rule that it goes to states, and let the states decide. And that was a shocking decision for you and for me and for a lot of other people, but I was very much in favor of letting the states decide and that’s the way it looked it was going and then all of a sudden out of nowhere came this very massive decision and they took it away. But I was always in favor of state’s rights; states deciding.”
Then Trump flip-flopped while talking to a lesbian journalist, stating that he’d “move forward on LGBT rights.” The Log Cabin Republicans produced a video demanding he say where he stands one and for all.
Writing in his blog, Peacock Panache, Tim Peacock is among those eloquently calling out Trump as a liar today:
“Besides the fact that an entire swath of the population would find his dismissal of the concept as ‘irrelevant’ pretty offensive, Trump has given no indication that he’s telling the truth when he says that. Moreover, history tells us Trump lies when it’s politically expedient.
“Earlier in the interview, in fact, Trump literally blamed the fear many Americans are experiencing in the wake of last Tuesday on the press (rather than the hundreds of documented cases of hate, harassment and violence that have spiked across the nation).
“‘I want to ask you about something that’s going on right now around the country. A lot of people are afraid. They’re really afraid. African-Americans think there’s a target on their back. Muslims are terrified,’ Stahl said to Trump.
“‘I think it’s built up by the press,’ Trump responded. ‘Frankly, they’ll take every single little incident that they can find in this country…and they’ll make into an event because that’s the way the press is.’
“When Stahl segued into treatment of LGBTQ people with that question, Trump quickly interrupted her saying, ‘I mentioned them at the Republican National Convention!’
“He added, ‘Everybody said, ‘That was so great.’ I have been, you know, I’ve been — a supporter.’
“What he actually said at the RNC, for the record, is that he opposes the murder of LGBTQ people. He said:
‘Only weeks ago, in Orlando, Florida, 49 wonderful Americans were savagely murdered by an Islamic terrorist. This time, the terrorist targeted the LGBTQ community. No good, and we’re going to stop it. As your president, I will do everything in my power to protect our LGBTQ citizens from the violence and oppression of a hateful foreign ideology. Believe me.’”
Can we believe him? Really?
“Step one when listening to Donald Trump is remembering he’s a liar,” wrote Lucas Grindley in his excellent op-ed in The Advocate. “Step two when listening to Donald Trump is remembering he needs to divide us. Only then can he keep conquering. Trump is counting on our innate, human instinct for me-first. So he’s making sounds that might lull you into a state of complacency.”
Peacock concluded:
“Don’t doubt for a minute that if given the opportunity Trump will appoint one of the justices in his Heritage Foundation-produced list of judges that will actively seek out a case in order to overturn Obergefell.
“While replacing Scalia won’t harm the high court (as Scalia was about as far right as justices go), replacing even one left-leaning or centrist justice can and will tip the balance of the Supreme Court for literally decades.”
The strategy seems obvious: instead of trying to reverse SCOTUS, the Trump Administration clearly has its eyes set on enacting laws that a conservative Supreme Court will uphold, granting states the power to protect religious freedom and legally discriminate against the LGBTQ community and anyone else they find undesirable, like Muslims and People of Color.
So how do we respond? HBO’s John Oliver recommended on Last Week Tonight we support non-profit causes, like the Trevor Project, the NAACP and Planned Parenthood, and don’t move to Canada; stay, rebel, and fight.
“Keep reminding yourself: This is not normal. Write it on a Post-It note and stick it on your refrigerator. Hire a skywriter once a month. Tattoo it on your ass, because a Klan-backed misogynistinternettroll is going to be delivering the next State of the Union address, and that is not normal. It is FUCKED UP.”
And hold Trump accountable. Bookmark this page and every article you find about Trump’s inconsistent statements. We need to outthink his supporters who will throw photos of him holding an upside down Pride flag marked-up by someone “LGBTQs for Trump.” Um, just wondering, do you know anyone LGBTQ who would make a mistake like that?
I recall vividly how my hero Captain Kirk defeated a robot holding his crew and a con man prisoner, by screwing with his logic and presenting fantasy as reality. In the coup de grâce of this episode of Star Trek, Kirk told Norman, the robot leader, “Everything Harry Mudd tells you is a lie.” And Mudd then says, “I am lying.”
The reality is, America just elected our own Harcourt Fenton Mudd president, and we need to guard against his loyal Trumpbots who disregard his flipflops and try to reassure us, everything is going to be fine.
I for one do not welcome our new Orange Overlord, nor do I believe a word he says because it changes to suit his purposes.
Together, we need to be smarter than Little Red Riding Hood, more clever than the wolf and his robotic followers and boldly go forward toward 2020.
