When the teacher of the year for the state of Rhode Island, Nikos Giannopoulos, posed for a photo with President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump, Giannopoulos struck a pose that he intended to be portrayed as “gay.”
When the photo was released, it was treated like an act of defiance — a “gay” stance next to the “homophobic” president.
Some act of defiance. Trump has never opposed equal rights for gays in any way:
No one seemed to notice as he passed through security, he recalled. But Trump spotted the fan shortly after the teachers were led into the Oval Office.
“He said I had good style.”
Giannopoulos grew more confident then — enough that when an aide asked him to put the fan away for his private photo, he raised a small protest.
“I said, ‘I was hoping to pose with this,’” he said. “They said, ‘No — just put it away.’ ”
He did, for a minute. But before the shutter snapped, Giannopoulos asked the president if he minded.
“He said, sure.” So the fan came out, the ensemble was complete, “and the rest is history,” Giannopoulos said.
In other words, this “fierce” act of defiance was conducted with Trump’s blessing.
Ever since his campaign, Trump has been labeled with every moniker the left could come up with. Racist. Sexist. Homophobic. If you challenge them to substantiate those charges? They come up blank. They simply trust what media and the Democratic Party said about him.
This photo, this act of rebellion in the face of a tyrant, happened with the express permission of the very man people act assume it to be insulting.
Trump has never uttered a single homophobic thing. Giannopoulos does mention Trump’s stand on the transgender bathroom issue — well, that’s about as close to a homophobic stance as you’re going to find from Trump, but the issue there is obviously more complex than “Trump hates gays.” The climate of rhetoric we’re seeing from the Left today doesn’t exactly lend itself to having an honest discussion.
Guess what: Look around the world at how gays are persecuted and even killed, and you might realize that Trump has been an enormously powerfully ally of gay rights worldwide.
While the Left applauds this teacher for “speaking truth to power,” they should instead be applauding Trump for having sided with the gay community.
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