from facebook: no thanks

January-February 2016: Donald Trump expresses support for the so-called First Amendment Defense Act, which in fact essentially would legalize some forms of anti-gay discrimination in public accommodations, employment, and housing.

February 18, 2016. Donald Trump: “I’ll overturn the shocking gay marriage decision – trust me”

May 18, 2016: Donald Trump works with the anti-gay Heritage Foundation to approve a list of 11 justices he would consider appointing to the U.S. Supreme Court.

June 14, 2016: Donald Trump: “Thank you to the LGBT community! I will fight for you while Hillary brings in more people that will threaten your freedoms and beliefs.”

I am a member of the LGBT community. I do not want or accept the thanks of a man who seems to think that “fighting” for me means working to take away my civil rights, to forcibly annul my marriage to my husband, or to make it easier for government officials and government-funded organizations to deny me the same services they provide to others.

I am a member of the LGBT community. Donald Trump does not speak for me. I neither want nor need my sexual orientation to be co-opted as a reason or an excuse for Trump’s actual fight to enshrine xenophobia, religious bigotry, racism, misogyny, ableism, mockery, nativism, authoritarianism, repression, and torture as American values.

I am a member of the LGBT community. I do not want or accept the thanks of a man whose second public statement in response to the killing of 49 of my LGBT brothers and sisters and straight allies in Orlando was to congratulate himself on “being right.”

I am a member of the LGBT community. Donald Trump stands in direct opposition to the values I treasure–values that include humanism, globalism, liberty, compassion, feminism, and equality–and for me many of those values are inextricably tied to my queer identity.

Mr. Trump, no thanks.

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