If you’re like me, you’ve been perplexed by the onslaught of hate-speech and half-truths hurled by the progressive gay left and their amplifiers in the mainstream media making allegations that President Trump has somehow “rolled-back” LGBTQ protections under Obamacare.
Let be crystal clear: nothing could be farther from the truth.
In the final days of the Obama Administration, the departing team pushed through a series of Executive Orders that would have redefined the definition of the word “sex.”
When Congress passed the Affordable Care Act, the definition of “sex” meant to include the gender you were born as. Six years later, Obama’s Rule 2016 reclassified that definition in Section 1557 as “one’s internal sense of gender, which may be male, female, neither, or a combination of male and female.”
Not surprisingly, several states took Obama’s Executive Order to federal court and it was blocked – having never even been implemented. One of the prevailing arguments was that the Executive Branch doesn’t have the ability to reinterpret the statue after Congress – who makes the laws – passed it with the original definition of sex.
Which brings us to the events of Friday – the Office of Civil Rights at the Department of Health & Human Services finalized the rule – making it compliant with the law and court decisions – that the term “sex” would be the original definition as passed by Congress.
Left-wing organizations and their mainstream media flame-fanners immediately hailed this as “Trump’s assault on LGBTQ rights,” a “roll-back of LGBTQ health protections” and the “licensing of healthcare discrimination towards LGBTQ persons.”
This is an outright lie.
How do you even ‘roll-back’ something that never went in to effect in the first place?!
- Congress never voted on transgender discrimination in the Affordable Care Act.
- The Obama Administration hoped to redefine “sex” retroactively, attempting as usual to weaponize civil rights law in the name of unilateral overreach.
- If the president can simply redefine the meaning of words, he can effectively make any law he wants—this would be autocratic and un-American.
- It is ironic that Trump’s detractors, who often accuse him of tyranny, seem so eager for him to follow in his predecessor’s footsteps by aggregating to himself the wrongful power of reinventing laws on which Congress has already voted.
- The Left can flip-flop on this all it wants. As conservatives, we are consistent: it is the Executive branch’s job to enforce laws, not make them.
- That is why we were glad when Obama’s ill-conceived executive order was struck down in the courts, and it is why we are glad now that Trump has restored the ACA to the meaning originally intended and voted upon by the legislative branch.
The following is Log Cabin Republicans’ official statement in response to the finalization Section 1557:
“President Obama illegally bypassed Congress and altered the Affordable Care Act and the courts invalidated that overreach time and time again. The Trump Administration’s action brings HHS policy in line with existing law and does not change how healthcare is currently practiced or implemented. We call on Congress to pass legislation that explicitly includes fair and equitable rules providing healthcare protections without discrimination, disadvantage or disparate care for the civil rights of all LGBTQ persons.”
If you’d like to more about the history and implications of this particular issue, click here to download a handy PDF we created going into this case in greater detail.
Part of our mission is to prepare our members to understand the truth and to push back against the lies being promulgated by the mob left. They will stop at nothing to trash our President’s LGBTQ accomplishments, including the straight-up lying we’ve seen since Friday.
Log Cabin Republicans stands with our trans members, and will continue to work to end the healthcare disparities for the LGBTQ community, but we will stand up against executive overreach and be true to our principles of small government, individual responsibility and personal freedom. The future of America depends on it.