Trump has been trying to roll back our rights from the beginning of his presidency. He has attempted to meet the demands of his conservative constituants who want to stop protecting gay people from discrimination.
In one day this month, 3 separate actions showed us that the Trump administration will use the powers of the federal government to roll back civil rights for gay and transgender people.
Without being asked, the Justice Department intervened in a private employment lawsuit, arguing that the ban on sex discrimination in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 does not protect workers on the basis of their sexual orientation. The friend-of-the-court brief, filed at the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York, was a striking shift in tone from the Obama administration, which had shied away from that question.
At the beginning of this day there was a tweet from President Trump announcing a ban on transgender people serving in the military. This surprised Pentagon leaders and reversed a year-old Obama administration policy.
Also on the same day, Mr. Trump announced that he would nominate Sam Brownback, the governor of Kansas and a vocal opponent of gay rights, to be the nation's ambassador at large for international religious freedom.
The constellation of events raised alarm among gay rights advocacy groups, which portrayed the moves as a concerted effort to limit advancements in gay rights.
"Yesterday was this administration's anti-L.G.B.T. day," James D. Esseks, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's lesbian Gay Bixesual Transgender and HIV Project, said. "Whether coordinated or not, to have it all happen on the same day certainly brings into focus the profoundly anti-L.G.B.T. agenda of the administration.
Taken together, the administration's actions are a prize for religious conservatives who backed Mr. Trump during the 2016 campaign but were far more enamored of his vice-presential pick, Mike Pence.
Anthony D. Romero, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said the ban and other moves were "the most cynical of dog-whistle politics" and an effort to "rile up the president's base as this administration flounders on health care reform and the Russia investigation, and as its popularity ratings plummet."
"Yesterday, he (Trump) went after everyone with a direct assault. He truly declared war on our community," said Chad Griffin, the president of Human Rights Campaign. "I promise you, this is a battle we are going to win."
