By its own admission, the gay community is supposed to be an open and inclusive group that welcomes people who feel they have been discriminated against.
Unless they are Republican. Those people get death threats.
That’s the lesson Dewey Lainhart and Cody Moore are learning the hard way. The couple recently spoke to the Wall Street Journal during a Donald Trump rally in Ohio, where they mainly spoke about their support for Trump along with the fact that they are gay.
“I’m tired of the bulls*** government,” Lainhart said in the interview, adding he works 40 to 80 hours a week in the steel industry and simply feels that “it’s time for a change, and Trump’s the man for it.”
Moore also chimed in that he felt Trump would “bring more jobs to the country and he would- like, the system and everything would be a hell of a lot better with Trump.”
The short interview was posted on journalist Jason Bellini’s Facebook profile. The interview didn’t list Lainhart and Moore by name, but a gay activist blog publically identified them as well as linked their Facebook profiles and encouraged people to “reach out to them.” Negative, insulting, and threatening comments quickly flooded in.
Commenters called Lainhart and Moore everything from “rednecks” to “uneducated” and “traitors to the gay community,” with others saying that they had a “mental illness.” One comment simply read “two bricks directly into their faces.” There are plenty of others that, just giving a quick glance at the comments, aren’t fit for republication. And yes, there were death threats.
The insulting and threatening comments weren’t directed at the two men because commenters disagreed on the couple’s assessment of Trump, but instead solely based on the fact that they were gay and supporting Trump.
Discriminated against only because of their sexuality and beliefs. Sound familiar?
The backlash is surprising, considering Trump himself has been rather open in pledging to protect the LBGT community. The Log Cabin Republicans, the largest LBGT Republican group, recently called Trump the “most pro-LGBT presidential nominee in the history of the Republican Party” (the group did withhold an endorsement of Trump in a narrow vote as they are “not a single-issue organization”).
The Republican Convention prominently featured Silicon Valley mogul Peter Thiel, who said that he was a “proud gay American” and earned a standing ovation. Trump himself even stated that he wanted to “do everything in my power to protect our LGBTQ citizens from the violence and oppression.”
Lainhart and Moore are taking it all in stride, however, and said that they don’t regret giving the interview at all.
“It doesn’t concern me,” Lainhart said in a follow-up interview with Bellini. “I look over my back and I do carry [a gun] … because I love the Second Amendment.”
You can watch the original video from the Wall Street Journal below:
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