The U.S. Senate on Monday confirmed Scott Bessent, President Trump’s pick for Treasury Secretary, in a rare bipartisan vote of 68-29.
Bessent, a billionaire hedge fund manager, becomes the first openly gay, Senate-confirmed Republican Cabinet member. He’s also the highest-ranking out gay government official ever, as Treasury Secretary is fifth in the line of presidential succession.
It’s hard to make sense of the disconnect here: On one hand Trump makes history with a senior gay appointment; on the other, he launches cruel attacks on the transgender community on day one.
The Republican-led House last week passed a bill that would prohibit schools that receive federal education funding from allowing trans students to play girls’ and womens’ sports. Trump, meanwhile, has already banned Pride flags at U.S. embassies and eliminated the X gender marker on passports and other government documents. Trump’s executive order titled “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government,” would prohibit the federal government from recognizing people and populations whose birth sex does not match their gender identity. Additionally, the order directs the attorney general to allow “people to refuse to use a transgender or nonbinary person’s correct pronouns, and to claim a right to use single-sex bathrooms and other spaces based on sex assigned at birth at any workplace covered by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and federally funded spaces.”
Then on Monday, he issued an executive order banning transgender service members, a move that would impact more than 15,000 brave trans people serving in the military.
So far, Bessent is silent on those attacks. Trump likes his queer people gay, white, cis, rich, and obedient. Bessent has defended Trump’s self-serving tax cut plan for the wealthiest Americans as well as his misguided and destructive tariff obsession.
Kelley J. Robinson, president of the Human Rights Campaign, released a statement about Bessent’s nomination.
“We need pro-equality LGBTQ+ nominees and LGBTQ+ people at all levels of government. The LGBTQ+ community is counting on openly LGBTQ+ nominees like Scott Bessent to step up for the community,” Robinson wrote. “HRC has a long history of working across the aisle to advance equality and this appointment may be an opportunity to continue.”
We have entered a dangerous time that will require many of us to make decisions about how to respond to these attacks, not just on trans people, but immigrants who are already being arrested and deported in cities across the country. Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott is making plans for how the city will operate in the event he is arrested and jailed for refusing to cooperate with these immigrant raids. That’s what courage looks like.
Will Bessent find his backbone and work to convince his boss that the anti-trans hysteria must end? Does he have a trans person in his life who might inform his views? Trans people are human beings, fellow Americans, and family and friends and they deserve respect from their government. They deserve an advocate in the White House who sees their humanity and can articulate it while standing up to the powerful bigots in Trump’s orbit. I hope HRC’s Robinson is right and Bessent will find the courage to stand up for the full spectrum of the LGBTQ community but we haven’t seen any evidence of that yet.
It’s not just senior gay officials who need to stand up; many of us will likely face a decision to resist or comply with the unconstitutional actions of this administration. Too many former progressive allies have already folded like cheap tents — including MSNBC hosts Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough. We must look to the example of Mayor Scott and others who are refusing to capitulate to this madness. I hope Scott Bessent finds his voice and advocates for a more compassionate approach to trans humanity.
By: KEVIN NAFF, editor of the Washington Blade.
Original link to story: https://is.gd/YfZCfM
