Exclusive–Leader of Log Cabin Republicans: Trump is the 1st GOP president to support LGBT human rights unequivocally

Neil W. McCabe   |  

Oct 6, 2017

The leader of the national organization of LGBT Republicans told Big League Politics he is frustrated by the mainstream media’s distortion of President Donald J. Trump’s attitude and policies regarding the LGBT community.

“We have never had a Republican administration in the United States that has stated unequivocally and explicitly its commitment to the human rights of LGTB individuals globally,” said Gregory T. Angelo, the president of the Log Cabin Republicans.

“In the past, you had indications from the George W. Bush administration and the George H.W. Bush administration, but they never explicitly said it,” he said.

Angelo said the Bush I and Bush II White Houses would often leak its support on background or appoint gay ambassadors or other officials as a symbolic gesture.

The 2012 delegate for Newt Gingrich said he was frustrated by how the mainstream media continues to put out the narrative that the president and his administration are hostile to LGBT individuals and their human rights.

“It is a conflagration of confirmation bias that liberals have about the Trump administration working at all times and in all ways against LGBT individuals—and a media that is obsessed with clickbait headlines and getting clicks rather than getting the story right.”

The most recent example was the Sept. 29 vote at the United Nations Human Rights Council, when UN Ambassador Nikki Haley voted against a council resolution condemning the death penalty as punishment for homosexual acts, he said.

The vote was actually a political maneuver by opponents of the death penalty in general and the council vote was meant to embarrass the United States and supporters of the death penalty, he said. In 2014, under President Barack Obama, the U.S. abstained from a similar resolution.

“There were a number of articles about this resolution that I saw, written by the entertainment reporters, Tweeted out about by people with no experience writing in politics and certainly do not understand the nuances of international diplomacy,” he said.

Many of the stories actually had headlines claiming that the Trump administration voted in favor of the death penalty for LGBT individuals, he said.

When he heard about it, Angelo called his contacts at the American mission to the United States to verify what he had been reading and what people had been calling him and texting him about.

His contacts told him that this resolution has come up repeatedly and the United States has never voted for it, he said. “But, never in this fake news, social media 140-character, clickbait, news environment, which we live in right now.”

Angelo said he is 100 percent confident that Trump does not want to execute the gays. “Were there any doubt—and it is so absurd that we have gotten to the point—Nikki Haley Tweeted out, personally, that this resolution had nothing to do with LGBT individuals and that the United States.