How Trump and the Christian Right Saved LGBTI Human Rights

A Religious Freedom Mystery

Cynthia Burack author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:State University of New York Press

Published:1st Aug '22

Should be back in stock very soon

This hardback is available in another edition too:

How Trump and the Christian Right Saved LGBTI Human Rights cover

Traces the Trump administration's surprising support for LGBTI human rights abroad to Trump's indifference and the cynicism and political interests of Christian conservative elites.

During the Obama administration, Christian conservatives insisted that securing human rights for LGBTI people abroad diminished human rights protections for people of faith. During the 2016 presidential election, the Christian right backed Donald Trump and demanded an end to sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) foreign policy. Did the Trump administration move to terminate US advocacy for SOGI human rights? Did Christian conservative US officials and elites do everything in their power to publicize, curb, defund, and undermine US support for SOGI? If not-spoiler alert: they did not-why not? Analyzing SOGI human rights and religious freedom foreign policy, How Trump and the Christian Right Saved LGBTI Human Rights reveals the indifference, mendacity, and political interests at play in Trump's alliance with Christian right elites.

"Burack has provided scholars of religion and government with another valuable case study demonstrating the pitfalls of the religious right's alliance with the Republican Party." — Journal of Church and State

"Burack's insight into the Christian conservative takeover of the Republican party, in state legislatures and presidencies, is profoundly disturbing. Trump made this takeover easier yet since one thing and one thing only defined who he considered qualified for top-level policy and cabinet positions: loyalty. Christian conservatives played that card easily and 'for the higher purposes' of carrying out God's plan on earth. More frightening is the belief that transforming our democracy into a theocracy is not enough. The 'end time' when believers will meet their savior must be global. The infiltration of international human rights policy by Christian conservative moral entrepreneurs is an essential, perhaps final, move—yet one that never materialized. This book methodically investigates the mystery of how and why US SOGI rights support survived under the Trump administration." — Franke Wilmer, author of Breaking Cycles of Violence in Israel and Palestine: Empathy and Peacemaking in the Middle East

ISBN: 9781438488837

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: 445g

258 pages