Ivanka Trump Cozies Up to Virulent Homophobes at White House Dinner

Donald Trump, his wife, daughter, and key members of his administration rubbed elbows with several anti-LGBTQ evangelicals.

Tracy E. Gilchrist

Tracy E. Gilchrist is the VP of Editorial and Special Projects at equalpride. A media veteran, she writes about the intersections of LGBTQ+ equality and pop culture. Previously, she was the editor-in-chief of The Advocate and the first feminism editor for the 55-year-old brand. In 2017, she launched the company's first podcast, The Advocates. She is an experienced broadcast interviewer, panel moderator, and public speaker who has delivered her talk, "Pandora's Box to Pose: Game-changing Visibility in Film and TV," at universities throughout the country.

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Tracy E. Gilchrist

August 28 2018 3:02 PM EST

May 31 2023 8:16 PM EST

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At a White House dinner for about 100 evangelicals on Monday, key members of the Trump administration, including self-proclaimed LGBTQ ally Ivanka Trump, posed smiling with a pastor and virulent homophobe who's called marriage equality "demonic," according to The Daily Beast.

The senior pastor of the Skyline Wesleyan Church in San Diego, Calif., Jim Garlow, once made the outrageous assertion, based on the narrow version of how genitals work in his world, that people who support marriage equality should be forced to live in houses without electricity and plumbing.

"All the people who advocate for so-called same-sex marriage ought to have to live in homes in which the plumbers who built them, or the electricians who built them, didn't understand the difference between the male and female end of piping or plumbing or of electrical as well, and see how that works for them," Garlow said in 2014.

On Monday, Donald Trump, who supports businesses that discriminate against LGBTQ people and Mike Pence, a proud proponent of homophobic legislation and alleged endorser of conversion therapy, cozied up to Garlow. Melania Trump, Jared Kushner, and Kellyanne Conway also participated in brushing up against homophobes.

But it was Trump's daughter Ivanka's photo with Garlow, who said of marriage equality supporters, "They want to destroy the very image of God upon the planet. This is a demonic happening in our midst," that caught the attention of Twitter.

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\u201c\u201cLGBTQ allies\u201d Ivanka and Jared are tonight dining with Tony Perkins, Franklin Graham, Ralph Reed, Jim Garlow, and [insert name of any prominent anti-LGBTQ evangelical in American politics. Shame on them. Deep, lasting shame.\u201d
— Jeremy Hooper (@Jeremy Hooper) 1535415097

A self-avowed supporter of LGBTQ people and a White House adviser, Ivanka Trump tweeted in support of Pride Month in 2017, despite already having remained mum as Donald Trump and his allies extirpated LGBTQ pages from the White House website and stripped away protections for trans people.

At the time, Ivanka Trump wrote, "I am proud to support my LGBTQ friends and the LGBTQ Americans who have made immense contributions to our society and economy."

About six weeks later, she remained completely silent as her father sought to ban trans people from the military.