The highlight of the third day of the Republican National Convention was the keynote speech by Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio, former President Donald J. Trump’s new running mate. But before that, several other notable speakers took to the stage to discuss foreign policy under the evening’s theme of “Making America Strong Again.” And once again, the Republican National Convention ignored the real issues facing the LGBTQ community, and LGBTQ identity was only used to create misunderstandings, fears, or outright lies.
Vance was preceded by a host of other speakers, including Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, former Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway, Texas Governor Greg Abbott, Donald Trump Jr., former Deputy Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell, and North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum (a Republican presidential primary candidate who was reportedly being vetted by the Trump campaign as a potential vice presidential candidate), all of whom have anti-LGBTQ records. Their records, and many others, are available to view at the GLAAD Accountability Project.
Grenell’s speech included the unfounded claim that “Donald Trump doesn’t care if you’re gay or straight, black or white, or what gender you are.” Indeed, from the stage at the Republican National Convention, multiple other speakers, including Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, have hurled gender-based attacks. “The Washington establishment promised unity and brought division,” Greene said in her speech Monday night. “They promised peace and brought war. They promised normalcy and set Transgender Day of Visibility on Easter Sunday.” (This statement is false. Transgender Day of Visibility is always March 31, but the date of Easter changes every year.) On the second night of the Republican National Convention, DeSantis attacked “gender ideology,” a conservative expression used to denigrate transgender identity. In fact, transgender people are people, not an ideology.
Grenell also made a related claim in 2020: “President Trump is the most pro-gay president in American history. I can prove it.” Both his 2020 statements and those at the Republican National Convention are demonstrably false. The Trump Administration’s anti-LGBTQ record is extensive, with GLAAD tracking over 218 attacks on the LGBTQ community, including instances of harmful and discriminatory policies and degrading and inflammatory rhetoric. The Trump Administration (2017-2021) was marked by a series of anti-LGBTQ policies and actions that significantly undermined the health, well-being, and legal protections of LGBTQ people in the United States and around the world. Donald Trump enacted the most anti-gay and anti-transgender policies of any U.S. president.
Additionally, Donald Trump has a long record of racist statements, actions, and controversies dating back to the 1970s, as well as during and after his presidency.
Callista Gingrich, former ambassador to the Holy See and wife of former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, said in a speech that “the right to practice religion is under attack” under the Biden administration, and that “President Trump defended the right of doctors, nurses and teachers to act according to their conscience.” In fact, the Trump administration used the Departments of State, Justice, Health and Human Services, Labor and Housing and Urban Development to promote religious exemptions at the expense of LGBTQ rights. The Trump administration is responsible for numerous anti-LGBTQ actions in health care, including rolling back anti-discrimination laws against LGBTQ patients and allowing refusal of treatment based on religious or moral objections.
Gingrich also said that the FBI under Biden targeted Catholics simply because of their religion. This is not true. The memo Gingrich refers to was not written by FBI senior leadership or the Biden administration. The memo was prepared by the FBI’s Richmond, Virginia, office, did not target all devout Catholics (though it did target a fringe subset called “Radical Traditionalist Catholics”), and the investigation found no evidence that “anyone ordered or directed the investigation of Catholics on the basis of their religion.”
In his speech, Representative Michael Waltz of Florida said Biden is “focused on pronouns… he’s focused on DEI…” and that “the enemy’s bullets don’t care about gender.” In fact, the Trump administration, against the expert advice of military leaders, medical officials, and budget analysts, barred transgender service members from the military. The ban was based on their gender identity. Although the Republican National Committee platform includes a promise to “strengthen and modernize our military, making it unquestionably the strongest and most powerful military in the world,” Trump has already promised to reinstate the harmful transgender service member ban, which is cruel, unjust, expensive, unwanted by military leaders, and undermines military readiness.
J.D. Vance’s speech detailed his career and economic vision. There was no mention of the election denialism he shares with Trump. In fact, an exhaustive statistical analysis conducted in 2021 by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a peer-reviewed national journal, found that the “evidence” offered by Trump supporters and the administration to support so-called election fraud was misconstrued and “completely unconvincing.”
You can see JD Vance’s anti-LGBTQ record here.
The 2024 U.S. election will be the most consequential in modern history, affecting individual rights and freedoms and the future of democracy in the United States and around the world. Its impacts will be far-reaching and long-lasting, and will be felt keenly by LGBTQ people, queer people of color, women, reproductive people, and transgender adults and young people. The rights, safety, and well-being of many communities will be shaped by the election’s outcome. Click here for GLAAD’s 2024 Issues Coverage Guide.
GLAAD has documented Donald Trump’s anti-LGBTQ history, including his policies and statements on a range of issues, including abortion, education, and climate change. For a fact sheet on all of his actions on these and other issues, click here.
