WASHINGTON — Today, the Human Rights Campaign joined other LGBTQ organizations, civil rights leaders and hundreds of supporters in front of the White House to rally and speak out against Trump’s #LicenseToDiscriminate Executive Order that would put millions of LGBTQ Americans at risk. Yesterday, Politico first reported that Donald Trump is planning to sign his license-to-discriminate order targeting LGBTQ people and women tomorrow.
Already, more than 50 percent of Americans live in an area of the U.S. spanning 31 states where LGBTQ people are at risk of being fired, evicted or denied services because of who they are or whom they love — two-thirds of LGBTQ people report having faced such discrimination in their lives. Just yesterday, the Equality Act was introduced which would finally explicitly add LGBTQ people to our federal civil rights laws and expand protections against sex discrimination. Instead of ending the patchwork of laws that harm LGBTQ people and their families, Trump is preparing an executive order that threatens to exacerbate these hostile climates and lead to broad, devastating impacts for LGBTQ people.
“Today the Human Rights Campaign and our nearly 2 million members are calling on Donald Trump to drop this proposed license to discriminate and stop his attacks on all our communities.” said Chad Griffin, President of the Human Rights Campaign. “We have all come too far, fought too hard, and accomplished too much to allow anyone to drag us backwards. We stand unified today, we stand unified tomorrow, and when Donald Trump attacks any one of us, he is going to keep hearing from all of us.”
Donald Trump’s license-to-discriminate order has reportedly been circulating within the White House and transition team since January and has been a longtime political priority of anti-LGBTQ organizations including the SPLC-designated hate group Family Research Council.
A preliminary analysis of the order leaked in January indicates that LGBTQ people and women will be at risk in the following:
- An LBTQ woman suffering from intimate partner violence could be refused screening and
counseling for domestic violence if a provider holds religious objections to same-sex relationships; - Transgender people could be turned away when seeking preventative care — including cancer screenings, Pap smears, and mammograms;
- A Social Security Administration employee could refuse to accept or process spousal or survivor benefits paperwork for a surviving same-sex spouse;
- A federal contractor could launch a cyber-bullying campaign against an LGBTQ organization for advocating on behalf of transgender people without losing the contract;
- Agencies receiving federal funding, and even their individual staff members, could refuse to provide services to LGBTQ children in crisis, or to place adoptive or foster children with a same-sex couple simply because of their sexual orientation.
