On June 15, 2020, the Supreme Court ruled that employers cannot fire someone for being gay, which was one of the biggest victories our community has seen since Stonewall, but a group of gay Trump supporters are not too pleased with the SCOTUS decision as they believe that it was an undermining of democracy.
According to Metro Weekly, the group named LGBTrump, previously known as Gays for Trump, and its founder, civil rights lawyer Joseph R. Murray, II, stated that if when former president Johnson was protecting the employment of the “LGBT community” when he signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Murray has “a bridge up in Brooklyn.” They are effectively saying that anyone who believes that LGBT people should be a protected class is gullible. Specifically, Murray had a problem with Title VII’s prohibition on sex discrimination applying to sexual orientation and gender identity.
Justice Neil Gorsuch, one of the six Justices who voted in favor of the protections, said in his written decision, “Those who adopted the Civil Rights Act might not have anticipated their work would lead to this particular result…. But the limits of the drafters’ imagination supply no reason to ignore the law’s demands,” implying that times do change and people should adapt to that. However, Murray used such limits to say that’s why Title VII shouldn’t have been expanded.
Murray said that while he is in favor of expanding protections for LGBT people, the expansion of Title VII let Democratic lawmakers “off the hook” and that like during the Obergefell v. Hodges hearing, “Congressional Democrats let the Supreme Court do all the heavy lifting.” He also said that people’s concerns about Trump’s presidency and its potential impact on LGBT rights were based solely on media bias and not based in reality. But actually Trump’s presidency has had a negative impact on LGBT rights, specifically with his favoring of the religious right, his transgender military ban, and his stripping of protections for transgender people seeking healthcare services during a literal pandemic. We shouldn’t flippantly classify those concerns as just media bias.
Putting aside thoughts on the name “LGBTrump,” the group seems misguided in its disappointment in the SCOTUS decision. Like Gorsuch implied, people should change with the changing times so it’s only natural that Title VII would be expanded to include LGBT people.
Source: Metro Weekly