Mainstream Trump and the anxious media

Of course when the media put “controversial” and “religious freedom” together, the subtext is: The Westboro Baptist Church is crafting policy.

The Democratic National Committee sent out a prophetic news blast with warnings about the order “allowing state-sponsored discrimination of the LGBT community.”

The Human Rights Campaign shared Politico’s story on social media, calling the order a “license to discriminate.”

When the White House published the full order on Thursday, it said in effect that federal agencies should relax rules on leaders of tax-exempt religious institutions engaging in overtly political speech.

It said nothing about discrimination, gay or transgender issues.

But no matter. Mainstream Americans were properly shaken by the media into believing that Trump was on the verge of personally snatching up gay wedding cakes.

A similar episode played out in late January when the Washington Post’s Josh Rogin caused a stir and reported that he was “told reliably there is a draft executive order on LGBT issues including adoption” circulating and that it “could allow federal employees to refuse to serve LGBT based on belief marriage is between man and woman or gender is immutable from birth.”

For extra clarity, this was a draft.

There are likely lots of drafts that float around the Washington Post newsroom containing bad ideas, bad writing and that go unpublished, entirely ignored by the editor (most of them are Richard Cohen columns).

Orders signed by the president are no different. Many are drafted, very few make the cut.

The White House instead issued a statement saying that Trump “continues to be respectful and supportive of LGBTQ rights” and that a 2014 order by former President Obama “which protects employees from anti-LGBTQ workplace discrimination while working for federal contractors, will remain intact…”

That’s a nice statement but regular people were already pumped with adrenaline by Rogin and other reporters who wanted to conjure up images of Vice President Mike Pence praying the gays away.

The New York Times last month ran an editorial saying that Trump’s support for LGBT people has been “exposed” as a “fallacy,” in part because his justice and education departments “withdrew [Obama-era] guidance issued to schools on the treatment of transgender students, signaling that it would no longer consider their rights to be protected under a 1972 civil rights law.”

Average person: That sounds vague and scary!

And that was the Times’ intention.

The guidelines issued by the Obama administration asked that public schools allow transgender students to use restroom facilities of their choice, based on the sex they feel they identify with.

Trump’s administration nullified those guidelines on the grounds that the court system has not uniformly determined that a person’s “sex” is a biological matter (as opposed to a feeling) and so the issue is best worked out by individual states, rather than by federal agency “guidelines” that aren’t settled into law.

Average person: Oh, okay! Hold on while I cancel my subscription to the Times!

True, the Trump administration hasn’t done anything to advance gay and transgender rights. But he didn’t run on social issues and there’s no indication he plans to change his mind now.

All evidence suggests Trump is fully indifferent to any policy areas that exercise the queer studies wing of the Democratic Party.

Asked immediately after the election what he thought of same-sex marriage, he said it’s “fine.”

During the 2016 campaign, he was asked on NBC’s “Today” to comment on the dumb transgender bathroom controversy in North Carolina.

“Leave it the way it is right now,” Trump said. “There have been very few problems the way it is. People go, they use the bathroom that they feel is appropriate. There has been so little trouble.”

Anyone looking for a fight on LGBT issues won’t find it in this administration.

Eddie Scarry is a media reporter for the Washington Examiner.