Donald Trump

Let's Use Trump's Own Words to Figure Out What His Gay-Rights and Gender-Equality Test for Immigrants Might Look Like

Take the Trump-American-Values Immigration Quiz!

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Large image on homepages | Monica Jorge/Sipa USA/Newscom
(Monica Jorge/Sipa USA/Newscom)
Monica Jorge/Sipa USA/Newscom

On Monday, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is expected to deliver a speech endorsing the idea of a values test for potential American immigrants. Walking back his call for a blanket ban on Muslim immigration, Trump called earlier this summer for suspending U.S. immigration from certain geographic regions known for terrorism. His latest proposal, according to the Associated Press, will float the idea of an ideological admissions test for would-be immigrants, covering areas such as gay rights, gender equality, and religious freedom. "Through questionnaires, searching social media, interviewing friends and family or other means, applicants would be vetted to see whether they support American values like tolerance and pluralism," AP reports.

How serious is Trump about this latest attention-grabbing policy idea? While he hits the same motifs over and over, many specific Trump proposals have proven more bluster (and news-cycle savvy) than polished policy plans or deep-seated conviction. Regardless, it's a rhetorical step forward, of sorts, for the Republican Party to lump LGBT and gender equality in with established conservative principles like religious freedom. But as with Trump's previous nods toward the "wonderful Americans" of the LGBT community, his embrace of "tolerance" here is employed in service of exclusion and exceptionalism.

Still, just for kicks, let's look at what a Donald Trump-endorsed test on gay rights and gender equality might look like. I've put together a 10-point quiz based on statements Trump has made about both, with the Trump-approved answers underneath.

Trump American-Values Immigration Quiz

  1. Do you think gays should be thrown off tall buildings?
  2. Do you think same-sex couples should be allowed to marry?
  3. Should transgender people be forced to use the bathroom that matches their biological sex?
  4. Should women be enslaved?
  5. Should women who have abortions be punished?
  6. Should pornography be legal and women who pose nude be celebrated?
  7. Should presidents have sexual relations with their interns?
  8. Should women be able to assume combat roles in the military?
  9. Should men in the military be expected not to rape their female colleagues?
  10. Should people be encouraged to seek romantic partners young enough to be their own offspring?

CORRECT ANSWERS:

  1. No, Donald Trump does not think gays should be thrown off tall buildings, although he has suggested repeatedly that Hillary Clinton might. In June, Trump told Fox News that Clinton takes money from countries that "actually throws gays off buildings." Countries run by radical Islamic terrorists have "bought her off," Trump continued. "I'm much better for women than she is. I'm much better for gays than she is."
  2. No, Trump told Meet the Press last August that while he thinks "it's great" that his hometown, New York City, is filled with gays, he is "not in favor of gay marriage."
  3. Trick question—the answer is "state's rights." In April, Trump said transgender men and women should "use the bathroom they feel is appropriate," but later qualified this by saying it should be left up to individual states.
  4. No, Trump does not endorse enslaving women.
  5. Maybe. Trump initially said yes, but later suggested that any punishment for abortion should accrue to the doctor who performs it, not the woman having the abortion.
  6. Yes, Trump endorses pornography, having posed on a Playboy cover himself in 1991 and, more recently, having his campaign defend Melania Trump's past as a nude pinup model by describing the photos "a celebration of the human body as art" and "nothing to be embarrassed about."
  7. Yes, but only if the interns are sophisticated and glamorous. Of Bill Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky, Trump objected not to the affair but to Clinton's choice in women, suggesting that "people would have been more forgiving if he'd had an affair with a really beautiful woman of sophistication."
  8. Maybe, but that doesn't meant Trump has to like it.
  9. Nope, impossible.

10. Yes, Trump has opined that dating women his daughter's age is not perversion but "talent."

Stay tuned next week for our Hillary Clinton-approved test on protecting gun rights, the importance of free speech, and successful strategies for building democracy in the Middle East!