Donald Trump to meet leader who doesn’t believe transgender people exist
(Getty)
Donald Trump will meet deeply homophobic and transphobic Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte.
The two leaders will meet next month, the White House said yesterday.
Earlier this year, Duterte, 71, denied the legitimacy of trans people, saying: “Wherever God has placed you, stay there.”
(Getty)
He added that no-one has the power to “erase the great divide between a woman and a man.”
And the Philippine President has said that when criminals are sent to prison, they become “beyond reform” because they “would have acquired latent homosexuality”.
He said convicts were “already monsters in the sense that they are incapable of establishing a relationship with a woman.
“They develop aberration of the mind. They do not want to get out of prison because they get free food there…and they have lovers, they want to return to prison [to be] with their lovers.”
He added: “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. That’s the basic law of the jungle.
“If you did kill someone, you pay for it with your life. It is retribution.”
(Getty)
His policies have already claimed thousands of lives.
Duterte’s war on drugs has killed at least 7,000 people in little over a year, though the Philippine Alliance of Human Rights Advocates has estimated the death toll could be as high as 12,000.
And when the chairman of the Commission on Human Rights, Chito Gascon, criticised the crusade for its sheer level of bloodshed, Duterte asked whether he was gay or a paedophile.
He reportedly said at a press conference: “Why is this guy so suffocated with the issue of young people, especially boys?
(Getty)
“Are you a paedophile? Why are you smitten with teenagers?
“Are you? I’m having my doubts. Are you gay or a paedophile?”
The Trump administration has rolled back civil rights protections for transgender employees and gone to court to defend its plans to ban transgender people from the military.
And earlier this week, Trump became the first president to address the conference of a recognised anti-LGBT hate group.
(Getty)
Trump spoke at the Family Research Council’s Values Voter Summit – classed as a “hate group” – and told attendees that their anti-LGBT views would no longer be silenced.
He referred to the audience at the hate group’s event as a “gathering of friends, so many friends”.
After seeing Duterte, Trump will meet South Korean President Moon Jae-in, who said earlier this year, during his presidential campaign, that he opposed homosexuality.
