Yesterday, the internet was abuzz with photos showing Gauthier Destenay, Luxembourg’s First Gentleman, standing among the other spouses of NATO leaders.
Destenay, who’s married to Luxembourg’s Prime Minister Xavier Bettel, stood along with France’s Brigitte Macron, Turkey’s Emine Erdogan, Queen Mathilde of Belgium and others.
But, the White House chose to release photos of this meeting with Destenay left out.
These changes did not go unnoticed as Gay Writes shared: “I took these screenshots myself at 6:02PM on May 27, 2017. The photo has been on Facebook for seven hours. Dozens of people have commented asking for a correction. It still has not been fixed.”
This event brings back memories of after Trump was elected. As the hands of power shifted, so did the White House’s handing of LGBT content.
Back in January, for example, whitehouse.gov erased its content concerning LGBT rights and civil rights.
And in March it was announced that LGBT people would be taken off the national census.
Then, just recently Trump signed an executive order that will allow faith-based organizations to play a bigger role in politics while saying that he wants to "vigorously promote religious liberty.”
While this doesn’t have to be a problem (all organizations and communities deserve a say in their home and country), it can swing open a great big door to the discrimination of LGBTQ people and close the gap between church and state.
Since November, LGBTQ people have had concerns about how Trump’s administration would treat the community. Would they protect and support us like he said when he was running for office, or would we become his next targets?
Between then and now, we’ve continually had incidents where the government is showing us that we are not of importance.
That’s a double-edged sword. We aren’t the main target (yet), but we have been attacked by other groups and not protected by Trump’s administration and we’re getting cut out of the picture all together.
In Trump’s America, LGBTQ people are an afterthought or just forgotten completely. But what we’ve learned from Chechnya is that what’s once forgotten or ignored can be easily turned on.
What we need to do is to speak louder and make sure that Trump’s administration can’t ignore us.
We must also look towards representative leaders like Xavier Bettel and his husband Gauthier Destenay, or allies in office, to keep LGBTQ people in the international gaze.
h/t: NewNowNext
