Quietly, as the media and public were preoccupied with President Trump’s immigration order and awaiting his impending Supreme Court nomination, the Trump administration released a statement announcing that it will leave in effect a 2014 executive order signed by President Obama prohibiting discrimination against LGBT federal employees.
Back in 2014, news of the order prompted a lot of consternation among social conservatives. “Obama’s LGBT executive order endangers religious liberty,” one FOX News piece announced. A conservative leader even dubbed Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which Obama’s order essentially codified, the “Jerry Sandusky Pedophile Protection Act.”
This time? Social conservative groups mostly ignored the news.
Meanwhile, pro-life leaders were ecstatic when Trump introduced Neil Gorsuch as his selection to fill the Supreme Court seat left vacant by Antonin Scalia’s death last year. They called themselves “thrilled” and “heartened” that Trump had nominated a man of such “stellar quality.” That Gorsuch literally wrote the book against assisted suicide only further endears him to pro-lifers.
These two actions, and the reactions to them among social conservatives, prompt the question: Could Donald Trump be the most pro-life, pro-gay president America has seen?
For decades, the two pillars of social conservatism were the protection of human life and the preservation of the nuclear family. Specifically, the issues that resonated most with religious and other socially conservative voters were abortion and same-sex marriage. It was nearly impossible to find a politician who was pro-life and pro-same-sex marriage, or vice versa.
But, as he’s done on many issues, Donald Trump has altered the political calculus on social issues.
Trump is the only candidate to win the presidency as a supporter of gay marriage. On the campaign trail, he said he was “fine” with same-sex marriage, calling it “settled law.” Trump was the first Republican nominee to mention the LGBT community in his nomination acceptance speech.
As the Washington Examiner’s Eddie Scarry recently wrote, Trump made several pro-gay statements during the campaign. And in October he held up a rainbow flag at a campaign rally, which the media mostly ignored.
Though a recent convert to the cause, early indications suggest Trump might end up being America’s most pro-life president at least since Reagan. After less than two weeks in office, he has already reinstated the Mexico City policy, which bars international nongovernmental groups that perform or promote abortion from getting US taxpayer funding and nominated a very pro-life judge to the Supreme Court. He even deployed Vice President Mike Pence and advisor Kellyanne Conway to address pro-lifers at the March for Life in late January. He’s also signaled that he would sign a bill defunding Planned Parenthood, something that’s been on pro-lifers’ wish list for more than a decade.
Trump’s positions on these issues reflect popular opinion. Polls show that abortion remains contentious, with roughly half the nation identifying as pro-life and half as pro-choice. Meanwhile, the public has become much more accepting of LGBT rights, including same-sex marriage.
I have posited that proximity is an important reason why these two issues have taken divergent paths politically and in terms of public opinion.
A more tolerant society has made most gay Americans feel comfortable exiting the closet. This means almost everyone knows someone who is openly gay, and revealed to us that they are not so different from the rest of us.
On abortion, science and fetal ultrasound technology have placed us in closer proximity to the unborn child, revealing her as a living, feeling human being and making her much harder to dismiss as merely a “clump of cells,” as pro-choicers once did.
Thoughout the presidential campaign, Trump confounded the so-called experts by breaking political orthodoxies and embracing positions that aligned with voters’ wishes, even if they seemed to contradict one another ideologically. It was a recipe for success during his campaign, and may prove the same during his presidency.
Daniel Allott is deputy commentary editor for the Washington Examiner
