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President Donald Trump escaped on Tuesday a question about his government's proposed rule change, which aims to help companies further discriminate against LGBTQ employees. Instead, he claimed to have the support of the LGBTQ Americans.
"I think I did very well with this community," Trump said. "They like the work I do."
The question concerned a proposal unveiled last week by the Department of Labor, which would allow more companies that claim to be "religious" to ignore anti-discrimination laws in the area of employment.
Sending to reporters from the Oval Office, Chris Johnson of The Washington Blade asked the president: "Mr. Mr President, your administration has taken steps to facilitate discrimination against LGBT persons in the labor market. Do you agree with these actions? "
Trump took the opportunity to brag about his recent endorsement by the Republicans of Log Cabin, a gay conservative group, stating, "Some of my biggest supporters are from this community and I talk to them a lot."
He added that "Peter Thiel and so many others" accompanied him until the end. Thiel is the co-founder of gay billionaire PayPal, who endorsed Trump before the 2016 election and spoke at this year's Republican National Convention.
Trump did not answer when Johnson sued and asked, "But what about these actions?"
The Republicans of Log Cabin refused to support Trump in 2016. In an editorial released Thursday in the Washington Post, the group's chairman and vice president said Trump "was honoring its commitments to LGBTQ Americans." They cited his commitment to ending HIV / AIDS in 10 years and his work with Richard Grenell, the openly gay ambassador of the United States to Germany, to encourage other countries to end the criminalization of homosexuality. as examples of his dedication to the community.
While Republican approval of Log Cabin is a victory for Trump, LGBTQ voters are a reliable part of the Democratic base, according to polls at the polls. In the 2018 midterm elections, more than 80 percent of LGBTQ people said they voted for the Democrat in the local federal election, while only 17 percent voted for the Republican. And in 2016, 78 percent of LGBTQ voters voted for Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential candidate, while only 14 percent supported Trump.
Trump's record with the LGBTQ community is notable in large part for his hostile attitude towards transgender rights. Even though the Republican party's national platform does not approve of heterosexual marriage, Trump has largely abandoned the "marriage wars" of the past in favor of a more targeted attack against the rule changes of the country. Obama who have expanded the interpretation of civil rights law to protect the rights of transgender people.
In 2017, the administration decided to ban transgender people from the army, which even the Republicans of Log Cabin declared to oppose to "and continue to put pressure on the Administration to reconsider. " Last week, the Trump administration presented an amicus brief. at the Supreme Court who argued that transgender workers are not protected by federal civil rights laws.
The rule proposed by the Labor Department that Trump is faced with questions rests on a range of legal opinions in order to construct a new national legal test to determine whether a company is "religious". The company does not have to be mainly focused on religion. for example, religious "in response to inquiries from a member of the public or government entity".
According to the proposal, companies that refuse to hire LGBTQ people, women or any other protected class would be able to do so if they claimed that their religion forbade them from hiring people who disagree with their religion. . The proposal makes it clear that religious enterprises have the right not only to "prefer" to hire people who share their religious beliefs, but "to subordinate employment to the acceptance or respect of religious principles as understood by the employer subcontractor ". The construction company says it's only for Christians, so that rule would allow it to compete for a federal government renovation contract, for example.
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