New York values: Trump bragged that he came up with homosexual “civil rights” idea before Democratic presidential candidate Bill Bradley

Donald Trump’s interview with The Advocate magazine in 2000. Trump boasted that he was ahead of Democratic presidential candidate Bill Bradly in crusading for adding homosexuality to the 1964 Civil Rights

Dear AFTAH Readers,

This is our first foray into the positions past and present of the leading presidential candidates in the 2016 race. AFTAH is non-partisan–we expose all politicians by the same principled standard without deference to party–so these articles will be factual. We begin with the current GOP front-runner, Donald Trump, who back in 2000 sat down with the editors of the nation’s leading homosexual magazine, The Advocate.

Interestingly, as you can read below, Trump bragged about being ahead of Democratic presidential candidate (former U.S. Senator)Bill Bradley on “gay rights”–by calling for the addition of “sexual orientation” to the landmark 1986 Civil Rights Act. That proposal is embodied today in the so-called LGBT “Equality Act” (HR 3185), which was backed exclusively by Democrats until it received its first two Republican co-sponsors this week: Sen. Mark Kirk and Rep. Bob Dold, both from Illinois. AFTAH has renamed the HR 3185 the “Criminalizing Christianity Act,” since it would negate religious freedom protections in the name of LGBT “equality.”

Of course, many candidates have changed their position on issues, but Trump among all the GOP contenders holds several past positions that are more in line with “progressive” Democrats than Republicans–on key issues like abortion, homosexuality, and national health insurance. In a much talked about 1999 interview with the late Tim Russert [partial YouTube video HERE], he chalked that up to living in liberal-dominated New York City.

Trump says he is now conservative but does not appear to be so on the homosexual issue–see the LGBTQ lobby group Human Rights Campaign’s analysis of his record HERE. Unlike several other Republican 2016 contenders, he has not committed to signing the “First Amendment Defense Act” in his first 100 days as President—-but did say he would support it. And the real estate magnate-turned politician–though a longtime opponent of homosexual “marriage”–now opines that due to the Supreme Court’s Obergefell ruling, the issue is over; he told the Hollywood Reporter that “anybody that’s making that an issue is doing it for political reasons. The Supreme Court ruled on it.” We will have more on Trump and other presidential candidates in future posts.–Peter LaBarbera, AFTAH; @PeterLaBarbera