"Trump/Pence seem to want to roll back a lot of hard fought rights won by the homosexual community"

I don't think there is much evidence for that. President Obama publicly stated his opposition to same sex marriage when he was running for president in 2008. The only reason it ended up being legalized nationwide was because of a supreme court case brought by a bunch of LGBT Republicans.

On that issue Trump has said, "The Supreme Court has issued an opinion on this. Same-sex marriage is an issue that should have been decided by the states." In other words he probably thinks same sex marriage is fine but didn't want to say so because he knows it's a polarizing issue. That's a more progressive position than _Obama_ took in 08.

Because rich people live a life so different than the average person you cannot possibly guess his motivations.

I won't claim to know why, but when we discriminate in this country, you probably put race at the top. But we discriminate in this order:

  1. Wealth (that is, lack of)
  2. Education
  3. Race
  4. Gender
  5. Other stuff (appearance, sexual identity, etc)

I doubt a successful homosexual like Thiel feels terribly discriminated against. I'm guessing this because I work with a bunch of black physicians; they say they're all doing just fine.

[Disclaimer: I didn't vote]

Why do you think Trump's particularly anti-gay? Here he is waiving around a rainbow flag (in a positive sense) at a rally just a couple of weeks ago: http://www.advocate.com/2016/10/31/donald-trump-waves-lgbt-r...

A lot of the problems that an ordinary person would suffer cease to be an issue when you're worth $2.7B. I suspect that for Thiel, the loss of hard fought rights will not impact him very much personally. Marriage for example is not just symbolic, it also confers rights to a partner's pension contributions, their assets if they happen to die intestate etc. Thiel may be able to fill many of these gaps with expensive legal arrangements that others can't afford.

Just like Trump, he's too rich to care for or being able to understand any average person's concerns and worries about life, and this includes issues that have to do with sexual orientation like anything else.

It doesn't even have to be lack of empathy, it's just an complete lack of the experiences that people have in life who have to worry about paychecks, monthly bills, mortgage, insurance and education for the family, healthcare expenditures, etc. And no, no theoretical knowledge or education can replace actual experience, knowing the physics of how bikes work is not the same as knowing how to ride a bike.

People like Trump and Thiel are ignorants not in the pejorative but in the literal sense of the word.

People vote on more than one issue. No candidate is perfect, and it just so happens we ended up with two this time that were both pretty bad. An NPR podcast noted that some polls have found that ~40% of registered democrats polled voted for Trump. For those people at least, renegotiating NAFTA or blocking the TPP was more important than Trumps vulgarities or letting states decide on other social issues.

At this point, I would rather to not see anything else about Trump on HN until something actually happens. But here I am, sucked in to comment...

Peter already explained himself.

Try listening to what he said at the convention. He has weighted America's future far more heavily than which bathroom people can use. At the same time, he was the first openly gay person to speak at the RNC. He's helping to roll the Republican party forward socially.

trump didn't exactly campaign on rolling back gay rights, most americans are pretty solidly in favor of it at this point. as for why -- too early to say, probably.

It's easy to want society to collapse when you're not a part of it.

Thiel can go get married in New Zealand if it gets bad enough in America. He simply does not care about the rest of us.