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In a pretty clear message to liberal LGBT activists who seem to think Donald Trump will revoke gay Americans’ rights and start stoning queer people to death in the streets, the White House on Tuesday released a statement Tuesday saying the 45th president will uphold an Obama-era executive order that protects LGBTQ individuals who work for federal contractors from workplace discrimination. Here’s the brief statement in full, as posted on whitehouse.gov:

President Obama has commuted the 35-year sentence of former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning for leaking classified information in 2010 to WikiLeaks.

ANALYSIS/OPINION: When Sen. Kamala Harris grilled President Elect Donald Trump’s pick for CIA Director Mike Pompeo last week, she demanded to know his personal views on the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender movement. Never mind, the growing jihadist threat, how the agency missed Russia’s invasion of Crimea, the potential of a nuclear-enabled North Korea, and the growing expansion of China in the South China Sea. Altogether, it was a bizarre exchange. But apparently, she was onto something. In a wide-ranging interview with the Wall Street Journal, departing CIA Director John Brennan said he wants his legacy to be the work...

It was a new look for the White House, bathed in rainbow colors to celebrate the Supreme Court decision allowing same-sex marriage nationwide. President Barack Obama, who was inside, felt the glow on that June night in 2015. “To see people gathered in the evening outside on a beautiful summer night, and to feel whole and to feel accepted, and to feel that they had a right to love — that was pretty cool,” he said a few days later. “Pretty cool.” That might be a fair description of how Obama himself is viewed by legions of lesbian, gay, bisexual...

The Environmental Protection Agency is asking all its employees whether they are straight, gay, or “something else” in an effort to create a more “inclusive” workplace. The Washington Free Beacon obtained a copy of the agency’s Sexual Orientation Gender Identity (SOGI) survey, which is part of a pilot program to voluntarily collect information on its employees. The survey first asks the employee’s pay grade, supervisory status, education, age, marital status, and race, before inquiring, “What sex were you assigned at birth?” The EPA wants to know how many of its employees are “Straight, that is, not Lesbian or Gay,” lesbian...

"... U.S. District Court Judge Reed O’Connor issued a preliminary injunction on New Year’s Eve stopping the Obama administration from denying the right of Catholic institutions to live by their religious tenets. Texas, and other states, along with the Franciscan Alliance, and other religious entities, sued the federal government for violating basic religious rights. Judge O’Connor ruled that the Obama administration’s regulation barring discrimination on the basis of “gender identity” could not be enforced. The defendants also sought to force Catholic institutions to perform, and pay for, abortions. Joining the Franciscan Alliance as a plaintiff was the Christian Medical &...

(CNSNews.com) - The White House has published a series of brief reports outlining what the administration considers President Barack Obama’s record of achievements in various areas of public policy. The report on Obama’s record on “Social Progress and Equality” begins by listing the Supreme Court’s declaration that same-sex marriage is a right and the administration’s swift enforcement of that decision as among Obama’s top achievements

The Environmental Protection Agency is entering its second phase of a data project to collect information on the sexual orientation of its employees. The Sexual Orientation Gender Identity (SOGI) pilot program allows EPA employees to voluntarily disclose their gender identity and sexual orientation, information that the agency says is “crucial” to an “inclusive” workplace. . . . The agency directed its employees to definitions of gender identity and expression from the Human Rights Campaign.

The White House has certainly been a gayer place these last few years, not just because President Obama and his administration stopped fighting the Defense of Marriage Act, repealed Don't Ask, Don't Tell, and supported federal marriage equality—but also because that administration has a strong LGBTQ presence which informs its commitment to equality. On Thursday, The White House hosted the Transgender Community Briefing, whose mission, according to the Washington Blade, was to "unite transgender leaders and other community members to discuss policy issues affecting the transgender community and to celebrate the cultural accomplishments of the community." Local D.C. drag queen...

Comedian Ellen DeGeneres was praised by the US president for her influence on the gay rights movement as she received the country's highest civilian honour. Celebrities including Tom Hanks, Robert De Niro and Michael Jordan were also among the 21 recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Barack Obama said it was easy to forget the risk Ellen De Generes took to come out as gay in 1997. He said her bravery helped "push our country in the direction of justice". "It's easy to forget now, when we've come so far... just how much courage was required for Ellen to...

Secretary of State John Kerry marked Sunday as the “Transgender Day of Remembrance” and warned the world that violence against transgender persons “fueled by hatred and bigotry” is “a global challenge.” “Transgender persons around the world are targeted by rising levels of violence fueled by hatred and bigotry,” said Kerry. “This is a global challenge and we all must do more to protect transgender persons on the basis of equality and dignity.” …

A key congressional supporter of Donald Trump says the president-elect’s defense secretary should move quickly to reverse a number of social engineering policies adopted in the Obama years that “have cut down on the warrior mentality.”Rep. Duncan Hunter, California Republican, told The Washington Times that the armed forces need a counterrevolution. It should reverse at least three policies: women in the infantry, open transgender troops and the near-banishment of the word “man” from Navy and Marine Corps titles.

[snip] The case involves 17-year-old Gavin Grimm, who was born a female but identifies as a male. Grimm filed suit to be allowed to use the boys' bathroom at his high school in Gloucester County, Virginia.[snip]The Obama administration has said public schools should grant access to toilets and locker rooms based on the gender with which a student identifies, not the birth gender. Federal authorities, seeking to fight discrimination, have threatened school systems with a loss of federal funds if they fail to comply.

While the world was watching America's gay rights transformation, the Obama administration was pursuing a quieter mission to try to export the same freedoms overseas to places like sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and eastern Europe. The U.S. has deployed its diplomats and spent tens of millions of dollars to try to block anti-gay laws, punish countries that enacted them, and tie financial assistance to respect for LGBT rights. It was a mission animated in part by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's declaration that "gay rights are human rights." Yet the U.S. encountered occasional backlash, including from some rights groups...

The U.S. government will, beginning this week, pay for soldiers to undergo treatment and surgery for gender reassignment. The policy, which was first announced in June, applies to active duty soldiers who have received approval for gender reassignment from a military physician and from their commanding officers, according to the Department of Defense. The military health program will cover therapy and hormone treatments along with surgery for approved service members diagnosed with gender dysphoria. The policy does not yet extend to military dependents.

n recent years, a common refrain accompanying nearly every demand for newly invented “rights” has been: “It doesn’t affect you, so you can’t be against it.” This claim—whether false or true, subjective or objective—has been played as the ultimate trump card. If you could not point to a direct, immediate, and significant intrusion on your life, then your concerns—no matter how thoughtful and legitimate—were sacrificed at the altar of the New Regime. Times change. On Wednesday, Alliance Defending Freedom filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of high school students and parents, asking the court to strike down a Minnesota school...

President Barack Obama’s deputies will insert a rule in federal regulations on Friday to prevent federal facilities from operating single-sex bathrooms. The rule in the "Federal Register" of regulations will open up thousands of bathrooms in federally operated buildings to employees and visitors who claim on any given day to be “transgender” members of the opposite sex.

The Obama administration will announce this week a new directive granting access to intimate federal facilities on the basis of gender identity. BuzzFeed News reported Monday that the regulation will be posted in the Federal Register at some point this week, opening up thousands of federally operated restrooms to transgender people who wish to use the facilities corresponding with their gender identity rather than biological sex. The rule will apply to roughly 9,200 properties operated by the General Services Administration and will not be limited to employees. GSA spokesperson Ashley Nash-Hahn said anyone visiting a federally operated property, including courthouses...

Attention on the poop deck. It seems our “first gay president” intends to “milk,” with pride, his fetish for all things “LGBT” in the closing months (mercifully) of his catastrophic presidency. USNI News (U.S. Naval Institute) reports that the Obama Navy presumes to ram, without consent, the most reprehensible aspects of the extremist homosexual political agenda down the throats of a divided American public. “The Navy is set to name a ship after the gay rights icon and San Francisco politician Harvey Milk, according to a congressional notification obtained by USNI News. “The July 14, 2016 notification, signed by Secretary...

The Navy is set to name a ship after the gay rights icon and San Francisco politician Harvey Milk, according to a Congressional notification obtained by USNI News. The July 14, 2016 notification, signed by Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus, indicated he intended to name a planned Military Sealift Command fleet oiler USNS Harvey Milk (T-AO-206). The ship would be the second of the John Lewis-class oilers being built by General Dynamics NASSCO in San Diego, Calif.