Embattled Trump plays homophobia card to strengthen his fascistic base
29 July 2017
The Trump administration’s attack on the democratic rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people is the implementation of a reactionary political strategy. It seeks to combine appeals to homophobic hysteria, religious bigotry, the glorification of police and xenophobic American nationalism to encourage the growth of a fascist movement.
Embroiled in perpetual crisis, the Trump administration is attempting to establish a base of political operations centered around the demagogic president and outside the existing structure of the two-party system. By firing former Republican Party Chairman Reince Priebus as chief of staff and replacing him with Department of Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly, Trump has taken another step toward his goal of establishing a personalist executive comprised of a close group of fascists, generals, family relations and billionaire oligarchs.
The pattern of Trump’s maneuvers this week proves the attack on LGBT rights is central to this strategy.
On Wednesday, the Department of Justice filed an advisory “friend of the court” brief in a private New York lawsuit arguing that corporations can fire LGBT people because of their sexual orientation on the pseudo-legal grounds that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 does not protect LGBT people. After half a century marked by growing social acceptance and advances in the legal rights of LGBT people, millions of LGBT workers are again at risk of immediate firing because of their second-class legal status.
Earlier on Wednesday, Donald Trump tweeted an announcement that his administration would bar transgender people from military service “in any capacity” on the reactionary grounds that…