Trump's Crackdown on LGBTQ+ Rights Explained

Credit: Vox

“As your President, I will do everything in my power to protect our LGBTQ citizens from the violence and oppression of a hateful foreign ideology."

Introduction

The National Center for Transgender Equality terms Trump’s current presidency as the ‘discrimination administration’. Campaign-era Donald Trump promised that he would be an ally for the LGBTQ+ community. Yet new policies upheld by his current administration highlight that it hasn’t quite worked out that way. 

The Trump administration is quietly moving to undermine an Obama-era policy that protected LGBTQ+ patients from discrimination, alarming health experts who warn that the regulatory rollback could harm vulnerable people admist a global pandemic. Not only could this make it more difficult for transgender Americans to receive hormone therapy and gender affirming surgeries like hysterectomies, it also allows healthcare providers to extempt themselves from performing essential medical procedures that violate their “conscience” or religious beliefs. 

The History of Inequality

Time after time, the Trump-Pence administration has methodically worked to undermine the rights and welfare of LGBTQ+ people by rolling back existing, non-discriminatory protections. Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex, age or disability in certain health programs or activities. This landmark provision is the first of its kind to include protections from discrimination on the basis of sex in the context of health care.

Since taking office, the Trump administration has sought to dismantle healthcare protections for the Trans community, moved to ban Trans people from serving in the military, withdrawing rules that protect trans students, and pushing to allow businesses and workplaces to reject members of the LGBTQ+ community on the basis of religion.

The Opinions

Despite the international call for sexual and gender minorities’ rights, states like the US promote the Westphalian system, which is concerned with the sovereign state’s supremacy over its population and domestic affairs. 

In this perspective, human beings are reduced to mere state citizens. However, from a queer perspective, such a universalistic assumption – regarding moral state and cultural sovereignty - is contestable. A reductionist approach to generalising lived experiences of people, whether perceived as normative or deviant, actually undermines each member’s support in the state’s government.

For the rights of human race in the realm of international studies, ‘international norms’ needs to be deconstructed and reordered in a non-state centric and non-heteronormative manner. The relationship between a state and its people should not simply rely on the given traditions or the existence of the represented individuals (as positivists would assert), but adapt to the social reality where liberation is needed. 

The Conclusion

The “binary board: male and female”, the lack of reservations or other forms of affirmative action, and inadequate health support systems compound the problem of bias and ignorance not just in the United States, but on a global scale. Amidst a global pandemic that is disproportionately affecting vulnerable communities, conservative governments work to wind back transgender rights. The UK Minister for Women and Equalities suggested an amendment for the national Gender Recognition act, calling for an end to gender affirming care for transgender people under the age of 18. The Hungarian right-wing government pushes a legislation that will end the legal recognition of trans people by defining gender as “biological sex based on primary sex characteristics”.

Medicalizing gender without ensuring inclusivity in healthcare would only aggravate existing inequalities, ultimately challenging the global right to fair healthcare. By imposing policies against the Trans community, states are using these policies to target minority communities that were already facing oppression.

We must collectively realize is that gender liberation helps everyone, not just transgender people. Part of the global mission is to break down the myth that men and women must adhere to rigid, stereotypical, gendered roles. The movement is about allowing everyone to express their identity freely and safely, and ensuring they get the rights they deserve.