President of Gay Republican Group Thinks Trump Is Better Than Obama on LGBTQ Rights

The Log Cabin Republicans are standing by their man.

Gregory T. Angelo, president of America’s largest gay GOP group, defended the organization’s continued support for Donald Trump in an interview with Michelangelo Signorile on his Sirius XM radio program. Although the LCR declined to endorse Trump in the 2016 election, he once claimed the sitting POTUS was the “most gay-friendly Republican nominee for president ever.”

Angelo did not back off that assertion in his conversation with Signorile, suggesting Trump has been better for the LGBTQ community than predecessor Barack Obama.

“This president is the first president to enter the White House who believes that marriage equality is settled law of the land,” he said. “Barack Obama didn’t believe that when he entered the White House. Hillary Clinton only came around to that position in 2013.”

Trump did, in fact, refer to the marriage equality issue as being “settled law” in a November 2016 interview with 60 Minutes, but Angelo’s claim leaves out an important point: The POTUS had previously vowed to overturn the Supreme Court’s historic ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges if elected. He promised to appoint judges “that maybe could change things.”

The president’s eventual choice to replace the late Antonin Scalia, Neil Gorsuch, opposed same-sex unions in his 2004 dissertation at Oxford University.

Although Trump vowed to be a “real friend” to queer and trans people during the 2016 presidential race, critics say his administration has persistently rolled back LGBTQ rights. Shortly after taking office, the Departments of Justice and Education rescinded guidance allowing transgender students to use restrooms which correspond with their gender identity in K-12 schools.

The Trump administration also filed an amicus brief in support of Jack Phillips, a Colorado baker who believes serving gay couples violates his Constitutional right to religious freedom, in a pivotal Supreme Court case.

Angelo claimed criticism of Trump’s record on issues should be tempered with “highlighting the pro-LGBTQ things he has done.” When asked for examples of ways in which the president has furthered rights and protections for queer and trans people, he offered few, as Signorile wrote in a subsequent op-ed for The Huffington Post.

He said Education Secretary Betsy Devos is “still pursuing other instances of discrimination against the transgender community,” even though the DOE recently announced it would no longer investigate discrimination claims in regards to restroom use.

“The facts speak for themselves,” Angelo asserted.

In a follow-up interview with Breitbart, the LCR president claimed the biggest threat to the LGBTQ community isn’t Trump’s policies but the “liberal agenda.”

“Log Cabin Republicans is the only LGBTQ organization in the United States that calls radical Islamic terror by its name,” he said in a conversation at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). “Log Cabin Republicans is the only LGBTQ organization in the United States that is standing up for our Second Amendment Constitutional rights to keep and bear arms.”