What happened when Donald Trump tried to #AskTheGays
- Published
Donald Trump tried to rally gay voters to his cause in an attack on Hillary Clinton and her financial backers.
The online gay community were having none of it.
During a speech in Atlanta this week, Trump used the term "ask the gays" as he discussed Clinton allegedly receiving donations from supporters in Saudi Arabia.
"Who's your friend - Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton?" he asked attendees.
His statement was met with cheers in Atlanta, but on Twitter the response was quite different.
#askthegays began trending on Twitter and memes of the likes of Patsy Stone from Absolutely Fabulous, Mariah Carey and Lucille Bluth from Arrested Development (and many more) suggested "the gays" weren't quite as friendly with Trump as he'd hoped.
"If there's one thing we're good at, it's deriving humour from a situation," Ryan Butcher, deputy editor of Gay Times, tells Newsbeat.
"If you looked on Twitter last night, it seemed like a lot of gay men had similar messages for Donald.
"Namely, 'we don't know her' and 'she can't sit with us.'"
"You can't sit with us Donald Trump", external
"I don't understand the question and I won't respond to it", external
Behind the memes, however, lies confusion regarding Donald Trump's appeal to LGBTQ+ voters, following controversial remarks made after the worst mass shooting in recent US history where dozens of people were killed at a gay nightclub.
"Any time Donald Trump tries to align himself with the LGBTQ+ community, people are going to take offence," says Ryan.
"This is a man who used the slaughter of 49 people in a gay club in Orlando for his own political gain."
Ryan is referring to a tweet from Trump stating he doesn't want "congrats for being right on radical Islamic terrorism".
"Now he wants to be our friend? I can see why people would be offended."
Read Donald Trump's tweet here, external
Ryan says that he knows many gay men who use the term "the gays" when referencing their own community but takes issue with Trump's use and timing of the expression.
"Different minorities have been known to use words to take power away from them," he tells us.
"The way Donald used it - just days after the worst homophobic attack and mass shooting in US history - was crass, rude, insensitive and classless."
He also says the phrase fails to consider the expanded LGBTQ+ world.
"Someone claiming to be an ally for the LGBTQ+ community might want to acknowledge the lesbian community, the bisexual community, the transgender community, the queer community, and the other communities that make up our wider family."
Thousands of LGBTQ+ people came together in London to remember Orlando victims
Donald Trump may have learned a lesson by underestimating the power of the LGBTQ+ community.
In recent years, with widespread closures of iconic gay venues across the UK, it may have seemed this community was struggling to find a voice.
But Ryan believes it remains strong, both online and off, especially after recent vigils across the UK (and beyond) in support of the victims of the Orlando attack.
"Maybe people think there's not been a sense of community because it hasn't been quite so vocal," Ryan says.
"But now, I think it's louder than ever."
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