A WhiteHouse.gov page previously about lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights is non-existent after U.S. President Donald Trump was sworn in. The whitehouse.gov/lgbt page reportedly was gone within an hour of Trump taking office. It was replaced by a Trump "transitionsplash" page. Other previously available White House webpages about climate change, civil rights and health care, also were taken down.
An online search of the current White House website at the time this article was published still resulted in the "no results found" for LGBTQ-related terms. No updates have been offered by White House staffers about whether the pages in question were archived or set in some holding pattern.
Activist Jay Franzone also reports the Department of Labor's report, "Advancing LGBT Workplace Rights," also was removed. He is the director of Communications of National Gay Blood Drive in Washington, D.C.
One social media user posted the following question on Friday: "Where are all the gay trump supporters that were just telling us here for the last several days how gay friendly trump is and we have nothing to worry about?"
Obama administrators introduced the White House LGBT page to highlight major legislative achievements, historic court victories and important policy changes for gay and transgender people. The page also shared campaigns for gay rights, such as the "It Gets Better" campaign, to help people in the LGBT community struggling with suicidal thoughts, reports TechCrunch.
Trump was praised by the Republican group who call themselves the Log Cabin Republicans as the "most pro-LGBT nominee in the history of the Republican party." Though those same Log Cabin Republicans also refused to endorse him as a candidate.
LGBT community residents have expressed major concerns about a Trump presidency, especially given Vice President Mike Pence, in his role as Indiana governor, opposed laws protecting the LGBT community.
The White House's Climate change page also was deleted, yielding the result of "The requested page '/energy/climate-change' could not be found." NewNowNext reports the page on climate change was replaced with a page entitled "An America First Energy Plan," which "ignores" climate change entirely and declares President Trump "is committed to eliminating harmful and unnecessary policies, such as the Climate Action Plan."
The civil rights section of the White House website now carries information on "Standing Up For Our Law Enforcement Community," calling for increased police, with words "black" and "African-American" no longer appear on any policy page on WhiteHouse.gov, states NewNowNext. As Daily Beast reports, "[It] paints predominantly black inner cities as shooting galleries."
Some information still exists on certain government sites, including details for LGBT travelers on the State Department website, and a resources page for trans- and gender-nonconforming students on the Department of Education website.
