Trump Ignores LGBT Pride Month; Sioux Falls Neighbors Do Not

Hey, didn’t some conservatives tell us that Donald Trump was all about waving the flag for LGBT equality? He must have heard that was an Obama thing:

After years of precedent set by Barack Obama, President Donald Trump is breaking from tradition by failing to recognize June as LGBT Pride Month.

On the final day of May, the president issued five separate proclamations, choosing June to honor Caribbean-American heritage, African-American music, homeownership, the outdoors and the ocean. (Reporters and comedians alike noted the irony of the last two, in light of Trump pulling the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement last week.) An acknowledgement of June as a historic month for LGBT people was nowhere to be found [Claire Shaffer, “Trump’s White House Won’t Acknowledge June as LGBT Pride Month, Even as Everyone Else Does,” Newsweek, 2017.06.05].

Oh well. At least Rex Tillerson and Ivanka Trump have said something nice about our homosexual fellow humans this month.

If Il Duce would like to make amends and march with “the gays” for whom he said he’d be a better President than Hillary Clinton, he could come to Sioux Falls Sunday for the Equality March for Unity and Pride. The demonstration, starting at 1 p.m. at Carnegie Hall, 235 W. 10th St., is a sister march to a rally being held in Washington, D.C., Sunday (but after Comey’s testimony today, Donald will surely want to get away from the Beltway—come to Sioux Falls!).

Sioux Falls Pride borrows this platform for the march from the Twin Cities rally:

1. We demand equal rights and protection from discrimination for all LGBTQ+ people, without an exemption for any religious based organizations, businesses or personal religious beliefs.
2. We demand the end to violence against our LGBTQ+ community, especially the continual violence toward transgender women of color, and demand effective prosecution of these hate crimes.
3. We demand protections for our transgender youth so they are not bullied and have the right to use the bathrooms and locker rooms that correspond with their identified gender.
4. We demand more access to shelters, emergency housing, and affordable housing for all LGBTQ+ homeless youth.
5. We demand a culture shift that acknowledges, respects, and celebrates the existence of bisexual and bi+ people and works to end biphobia and bi erasure.
6. We demand affordable healthcare for all people in our country and demand increased resources to address the large health disparities present in the bisexual and transgender communities and among all LGBTQ+ youth.
7. We demand support, respect, and community inclusion for people with disabilities, both seen and unseen, to have the resources and support they need to live full and satisfying lives.
8. We demand that more resources are put towards changing the rape culture in this country and ending sexual and domestic violence.
9. We demand accountability and an end to police violence against marginalized members of our community, including people of color and transgender people.
10. We demand resources to create equity for all people of color, low-income people, and other disenfranchised communities.
11. We demand that all immigrants in our country are treated with compassion, dignity, and respect, whether documented or undocumented, as they search for a better life for themselves and their families.
12. We demand an end to islamophobia and antisemitism and call on our communities to unite to protect both Muslim people and Jewish people from violence and discrimination.
13. We demand the global condemnation of the concentration camps in Chechnya and the persecution of the LGBTQ+ community throughout the world [Sioux Falls Pride, Equality March Platform, Facebook event, retrieved 2017.06.08].

What? Concentration camps in Chechnya? And Trump isn’t saying anything about the Chechen gay purge to his good friend Vladimir Putin?

By the way, Governor Dennis Daugaard has issued proclamations this year for beef, dairy, Poppy Days, archaeology, National American University, Striders, pollinators, and noxious weed control but not LGBT Pride Month.

March Sunday, Sioux Falls and elsewhere, to note that LGBT rights are human rights.