The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) and other civil rights leaders gathered last week to speak out against the Trump administration in light of media reports about a leaked “License to Discriminate Executive Order”.
These reports allege that the Trump administration was preparing a new executive order which would allow U.S. citizens to openly discriminate against LGBTQ people on the basis of religion. This, less than 48 hours after claiming to be supportive of the LGBTQ community.
“The leaked draft of Donald Trump’s License to Discriminate order is sweeping and dangerous. It reads like a wish-list from some of the most radical anti-equality activists,” said HRC President Chad Griffin. “If true, it seems this White House is poised to wildly expand anti-LGBTQ discrimination across all facets of the government – even if he does maintain the Obama EO.”
The HRC stated on its website that the leaked order would allow an unprecedented expansion of taxpayer-funded discrimination that could have broad implications on LGBTQ people and would be a direct contradiction of claims that Donald Trump would be an ally to the LGBTQ community.
“If Donald Trump goes through with even a fraction of this order, he’ll reveal himself as a true enemy to LGBTQ people. We’ve already seen that the Trump administration is willing to go after women, immigrants, people of color, and most frighteningly, people who disagree with him,” Griffin said.
“If this version is true this could represent another chilling attempt to go after LGBTQ people, federal employees, employees of federal contractors, and people served by federal programs funded with taxpayer dollars. The impacts extend to anybody in the LGBTQ community, women, minority religious communities and others.”
