LGBT ISSUES: MAXIMUM PANIC, MINIMUM UPHEAVAL.

• Author: Olson, Walter

SOMETIMES THE BIG stories are the ones that don't happen.

Days after his election, Donald Trump went on 60 Minutes and said of the gay marriage legal cases: "They've been settled, and I'm fine with that." I predicted at Overlawyered that of the many reasons to worry about his incoming administration, "so far as I can see, anti-gay policies aren't in the top 25."

How'd that stand up? By and large, the "assault on LGBTQ equality" predicted by the Huffington Post and many others hasn't happened. True, Trump appointees pulled back from several controversial Obama positions. They withdrew an ill-considered plan to impose a nationwide school bathroom code. They refused to back the Democrats' Equality Act, which would nationalize public-accommodations law and minimize exemptions. They dis-endorsed an ambitious theory that Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act already bans sexual orientation discrimination in the private workplace, and that courts simply didn't notice that fact until recently.

In Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, they weighed in on the Christian baker's side--but not on religious liberty grounds, let alone with any urging of the Court to reconsider the Obergefell decision that legalized same-sex marriage nationwide. Instead, they offered careful and narrow First Amendment arguments based on the need to protect against forced expression.

Remember the...