When President Trump attended a manufacturing of “Les Misérables” in Washington final week, there have been four men dressed in women’s clothes seated within the viewers. Sure, they placed on a daring present of drag queen energy on the Kennedy Heart, figuring out that Trump was coming to the play.
The drama earlier than the play led to applause for the drag performers. Trump received not one of the conventional standing ovation for a president.
That “in-your-face” second for the homosexual rights motion comes after Trump fired the Kennedy Heart’s board earlier this yr, having condemned them for permitting drag performers on stage up to now. “No extra drag reveals or different anti-American propaganda” Trump wrote on social media in February.
And it comes because the Southern Baptist Conference voted last week to foyer for the return of legal guidelines banning homosexual marriage. Additionally, it comes after right-wing-inspired bans on library books coping with homosexuality. And there’s no forgetting Trump’s 2024 campaign advertising positioning former Vice President Kamala Harris as standing for transgender individuals: “Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you.”
Because the Kennedy Heart protest confirmed, public acts of resistance to Trump are rising, particularly calls to battle for and assert homosexual and transgender rights.
A new Gallup poll shows solely 38 p.c of Republicans now agree that “homosexual or lesbian relations” are morally acceptable. That may be a steep drop from 2022, when 56 p.c of Republicans stated homosexuality was acceptable.
Equally, Republican assist for same-sex marriage has dropped to 41 p.c, in response to Gallup, down sharply from a excessive of 55 p.c in 2021. In distinction, 88 p.c of Democrats and 76 p.c of independents proceed to assist marriage equality.
That 47-point hole in opinion between Democrats and Republicans is the widest Gallup has recorded because it started monitoring public opinion on this situation 29 years in the past.
And with Trump within the White Home, the poll finds solely 38 p.c of Republicans agree that homosexual conduct is ethical. That may be a totally different galaxy from the one the place 86 p.c of Democrats and 69 p.c of independents see no ethical sin in same-sex relations.
Open opposition to homosexual rights amongst Trump-friendly Republicans picked up in 2022 after Justice Clarence Thomas, writing in opposition to abortion rights, argued that the court should revisit the 2015 ruling that the Structure provides homosexual individuals the suitable to marry.
Nervous homosexual rights supporters responded by urgent Congress to cross, in 2022, the bipartisan Respect for Marriage Act. It requires each state, irrespective of its state legal guidelines on gays, to acknowledge same-sex marriages licensed in different states as authorized.
However the battle has since change into extra intense as activists face the truth that Trump’s assaults on range, fairness and inclusion applications embrace reversing acceptance of homosexual rights.
Senate Democrats final week pressed to complete work on a invoice to cease the Trump administration from kicking transgender individuals out of the army. That motion, primarily based on an government order signed by Trump on his first day in workplace, has already led to greater than 1,000 servicemembers selecting to go away the army earlier than they’re expelled. In Might, the Supreme Courtroom ruled that the ban might take impact whereas courts decide whether it is constitutional.
“In case you are keen to threat your life for our nation and you are able to do the job, it shouldn’t matter in case you are homosexual, straight, transgender, Black, White, or the rest,” said one of many invoice’s cosponsors, Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Unwell.).
However there’s a twist to this political story.
As resistance to Trump rises amongst Democrats on tariffs, mass deportations and belittling gays, splits stay amongst MAGA opponents. A number of old-school Black, white and Latino politicians in Washington are uneasy that the general public will settle for a motion that highlights homosexual rights to go together with Black, Latino and ladies’s rights.
“Being homosexual shouldn’t be the identical as being Black” is a chorus I heard many times whereas engaged on my new e-book on race relations. Their message is that older, socially conservative, church-going Democratic voters will be misplaced by aggressively backing homosexual rights.
Thirty years in the past, a conservative Republican pal advised me a joke: “What’s the distinction between being Black and being homosexual? When you’re Black, you don’t have to inform your mother.”
Democrats break up in 1994 when President Invoice Clinton signed “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” a coverage designed to permit homosexual Individuals to serve within the armed forces in the event that they stored their sexuality non-public.
These arguments from old-school Democrats pale in 2011 as gay Americans won the legal right to serve overtly within the army with out worry of discharge or discrimination. Simply 4 years later, the Supreme Courtroom upheld the suitable of homosexual {couples} to marry in a 5-to-4 resolution.
It’s curious that regardless of Trump’s distaste for homosexual rights, he appointed Scott Bessent, an overtly homosexual billionaire, to function Treasury secretary. President Biden appointed an overtly homosexual veteran, Pete Buttigieg, as Transportation secretary. Each males are married with youngsters. Their sexual orientation was neither a qualification nor a disqualifier. That, in itself, is a milestone.
Roughly 9 p.c of Individuals now determine as lesbian, homosexual, bisexual or transgender, according to polls. Wouldn’t or not it’s one thing if, in 2028, the presidential contest is between two homosexual males?
Juan Williams is senior political analyst for Fox Information Channel and a prize-winning civil rights historian. He’s the creator of the brand new e-book “New Prize for These Eyes: The Rise of America’s Second Civil Rights Movement.”