https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/08/10/how-donald-trump-is-slowly-teaching-republicans-to-embrace-gay-rights/8/10/16
How Donald Trump is teaching Republicans a way to embrace gay rightsIn the course of his campaign so far, Donald Trump has had harsh words for Mexicans and Muslims, the people of Iowa, African Americans, refugees, the parents of a dead Army captain, women, a disabled reporter and the pope. He has fashioned his political incorrectness into a personal virtue, portraying himself as a straight-talker incapable of pretense. Supporters praise this “brute honesty,” while critics accuse Trump of amplifying and taking advantage of intolerant tendencies within the GOP base.
Throughout all of this, though, Trump has refrained from launching barbs at one particular group: gay Americans.
It would be a stretch to call Trump a gay-friendly candidate — he still opposes same-sex marriage —
but he supports other LGBT rights and has publicly declared himself a “real friend” to the community. In April, he broke with his GOP rivals by speaking out against North Carolina’s anti-transgender bathroom law. (He later backed off.) And last month in Cleveland, Trump brought in Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel, who became the first openly gay speaker to affirm his sexual orientation onstage at a Republican National Convention.
“I am proud to be gay,” Thiel said that night, to cheers. “I am proud to be a Republican.”
Thiel, a staunch Libertarian, went on to admonish the GOP for wasting time debating “who gets to use which bathroom.”
These “fake culture wars,” he said, “only distract us from our economic decline, and nobody in this race is being honest about it except Donald Trump.”Many have commented on Trump’s reluctance to engage with the concerns of social conservatives. He'd rather talk about immigrants or terrorism than Planned Parenthood or gay marriage, in part because he has a record of permissive views on abortion and gay rights. Though he has tried to walk back some of his statements recently, his liberal reputation on social issues endures. Many thought it would prove a fatal weakness with the evangelical wing of the GOP. Yet, when his rivals tried to attack this flank during primary season, none of their arguments seemed to stick.
Some interpret Trump’s success as a sign that the traditional culture wars have reached their conclusion. On LGBT issues, at least, it seems the end may really be in sight. In recent months, Trump has essentially been offering a blueprint for how the GOP could eventually woo gay Americans — which is useful, because a startling new poll shows that Republicans may have to adapt much faster than they thought.
We have long known that gay rights are more of a generational issue than a partisan one. A 2014 poll showed that majority — 61 percent — of Republican millennials support same-sex marriage.
But last week, a report from the Black Youth Project and the AP-NORC Center turned up a surprising finding. Not only do millennials overwhelmingly favor LGBT rights, but they have dramatically increased their support just in the past two years.
In a 2014 poll, 69 percent of whites aged 18-30 agreed that gays and lesbians should be allowed to adopt children. In the most recent poll, 84 percent of them favored gay adoption — a bump of 15 points. Likewise, just in the past two years, the fraction of white millennials who support equal LGBT employment rights increased from 84 percent to 92 percent.
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