NEW YORK – A prominent group representing LGBT conservatives says a video shared by Ron DeSantis’ presidential campaign criticizing his rival Donald Trump for his past support of gay and transgender people “was venturing into homophobic territory.”
The “DeSantis War Room” Twitter account shared the video on Friday, the last day of LGBTQ+ Pride Month in June, which features footage of Trump at the Republican National Convention in 2016 saying that “I would do everything in my power to protect our LGBTQ citizens. Trump had been pledging protection from terrorist attacks weeks after the shooting at Pulse Nightclub, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, which was the deadliest mass shooting in US history at the time.
The video also highlights “LGBTQ for Trump” T-shirts sold by the former president’s campaign and his previous comments saying he would be comfortable with Caitlyn Jenner, the former Olympian who came out as transgender in 2015, using any Trump bathroom. Tower and OK with transgender women competing one day in the Miss Universe pageant, owned by Trump at the time of those comments.
Then the video suddenly turns in a different direction, accompanied by dark, blaring music and images of DeSantis, the Florida governor trailing Trump by wide margins in polls for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.
It promotes headlines that DeSantis signed “the most extreme list of anti-trans laws in modern history” and a “draconian anti-trans bathroom bill.” The images are joined by images of shirtless muscular men and various Hollywood actors, including Brad Pitt, wearing a leather mask from the movie “Troy.”
“To wrap up ‘Pride Month,’ let’s hear from the politician who did more than any other Republican to celebrate it,” DeSantis’ campaign tweeted.
The video drew immediate criticism from prominent LGBTQ+ Republicans, including Log Cabin Republicans, which bills itself as the “largest Republican organization in the country dedicated to representing LGBT conservatives.”
“Today’s message from the DeSantis campaign’s War Room is divisive and desperate. Republicans and other common sense conservatives know that Ron Desantis has alienated younger and swing state voters,” the group said in a tweet, adding that DeSantis’ “extreme rhetoric has just ventured into homophobic territory.”
The group said their “rhetoric will lose hard-won gains in critical races across the country. This old playbook has been tried in the past and failed, repeatedly.” The post said that DeSantis’ “naive political positions are dangerous and politically stupid.”
Jenner accused the DeSantis campaign of using “terribly divisive tactics.”
“DeSantis has hit a new low,” Jenner wrote on Twitter.
Representatives for the DeSantis campaign did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Saturday.
But Christina Pushaw, the campaign’s rapid response director, said in a tweet late Friday that “opposing federal recognition of ‘Pride Month’ is not ‘homophobic.’ We also wouldn’t support a month to celebrate straight people because of their sexual orientation… It’s unnecessary, divisive, complacent.”
The video comes as Republicans have wandered into increasingly hostile anti-LGBTQ+ territory, attacking Pride month celebrations, trying to ban rainbow Pride flags and passing laws to limit drag performances, along with widespread attacks on the rights of transgender people.
That rhetoric has seeped into the Republican Party’s presidential campaign, taking on a prominent role that had been absent during recent competitive primaries, including in 2016, when Trump, a New York reality star, typically portrayed himself as a supporter of LGBT rights.
DeSantis leaned on anti-LGBTQ+ legislation as he prepared to jump into the 2024 White House race. He signed legislation banning classroom instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in all grades, banned gender-affirming care for minors, drag shows restricted the discussion of personal pronouns in schools and forced people to use bathrooms that align with the sex assigned at birth. DeSantis also went after President Joe Biden for prominently displaying the Pride flag at the White House last month.
Trump himself promised in a speech on Friday that, if elected, he would sign executive orders on his first day in office to cut federal funding for any schools that promote the “transgender craze” and to instruct federal agencies “to cease promoting sex or gender transition to any age”. Hospitals and health care providers that offer gender-affirming care for minors should be found to be in violation of federal health and safety standards and lose federal funding, he said.
Both Trump and DeSantis have also criticized transgender women who participate in women’s sports, referring to gender-affirming care for minors as “mutilation.”
At Trump’s rally in Pickens, South Carolina, on Saturday, the crowd booed when Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia Republican, made reference to Pride month.
“The rainbow belongs to God,” he said.
While such rhetoric appeals to the party’s conservative base, it risks alienating the more moderate and volatile voters who typically decide general election outcomes.
The video, originally posted by the pro-DeSantis account “@ProudElephantUS,” was shared hours after the Supreme Court’s conservative majority ruled that a Christian graphic artist who wants to design wedding websites can refuse to work with same-sex couples. sex.
The decision marked a major defeat for gay rights, with one of the court’s liberal justices writing in dissent that the effect of the decision would be to “mark gays and lesbians for second-class status.”
