Trump administration ‘doesn’t know’ if it will roll back LGBT protections
The press secretary for the Trump administration has said he “doesn’t know” whether the new President will repeal discrimination protections for LGBT people.
Sean Spicer on Monday responded to a question from the Washington Blade in a press briefing, saying: “I just don’t know the answer.”
The 2014 protections were introduced by President Obama in an order which banned federal contractors to discriminate based on sexual orientation or gender identity.
Also in 2014, Obama added protections for trans individuals to a nondiscrimination order which applied to employees of the federal government.
Despite years of campaigning there is currently no federal law banning discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
Efforts to pass the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) and the Equality Act with no success.
The Trump administration took control at the weekend, immediately deleting all mention of LGBT rights from the White House website.
As Donald Trump and Mike Pence were sworn in today, a mostly-seamless transition took place online, with the new administration taking control of the official Presidential media channels.
But amid the exchanges of Twitter account handles and Facebook profiles, the official White House website has also been relaunched reflecting the new administration’s agenda.
The new President has never released a policy plan on LGBT issues, and also has no policy plan on HIV/AIDS. He failed to detail policies on either issue during his election campaign.
One of the new President’s only direct policy pledges it to sign the Republican-backed First Amendment Defence Act, a law that would permit forms of anti-LGBT discrimination on the grounds of religion.
