Making GOP history, Trump vows to protect ‘LGBTQ citizens’

CLEVELAND — With five letters, Donald Trump brushed off decades of Republican reluctance to voice full-throated support for gay rights — at least for a night.

Trump’s call in his speech to the Republican National Convention for protecting the “LGBTQ community” was a watershed moment for the Republican Party — the first time the issue has been elevated in a GOP nomination address. Four years ago, Mitt Romney never uttered the word “gay,” much less the full acronym — standing for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer or questioning.

But Trump said it not once, but twice.

“I will do everything in my power to protect our LGBTQ citizens from the violence and oppression of a hateful foreign ideology,” Trump said, adding for emphasis: “Believe me.”

Republican delegates cheered him loudly.

“I have to say, as a Republican it is so nice to hear you cheering for what I just said,” Trump ad-libbed. “Thank you.”

The unequivocal appeal for a more inclusive tone is likely to give Trump’s fellow Republicans permission to embrace an issue resonating deeply with a younger generation of voters. It also puts Trump squarely at odds with the party platform adopted just days earlier at his own nominating convention.

In fact, the GOP platform moves farther away from gay rights than in past years, with a new admonition of gay parenting that says kids raised by a mother and father tend to be “physically and emotionally healthier.” Preserved in the platform are opposition to gay marriage and to bathroom choice for transgender people.