The Gays for Trump campaign has defended the Republican’s announcement that he supports anti-trans laws in North Carolina.

North Carolina’s Republican-backed HB 2 rolled back anti-discrimination protections for LGBT people earlier this year, also introducing regulations to ban transgender women from using the female bathroom on purported ‘safety’ grounds.

Republican Presidential nominee Donald Trump had initially broken with his party’s official stance, claiming earlier this year that trans people should be allowed to use the bathroom that they want.

But in an interview this week he reversed his stance, telling a North Carolina newspaper: “I’m going with the state. They know what’s going on, they’ve seen what’s happening. I’ve spoken to your Governor, I’ve spoken to a number of different people, and I’m going with the state.”

In response, the ‘Gays for Trump’ campaign set up by LGB supporters of the Republican has taken exactly the same stance.

In a post for Breitbart, the group’s administrator Joseph Murray claimed that Trump’s stance wasn’t at odds with his group because the “sex vs. gender fight is not the same fight of gays and lesbians for equal legal status of their same-sex relations”.

He wrote: “What Trump said does not disqualify him from being the best candidate on gay rights that the Republican Party has ever nominated — because gay rights and trans rights are not synonymous.

Murray continued: “Though LGBT activists are loathe to admit it, the plight of transgender Americans are starkly different from lesbian and gay Americans.

“The HB2 law, also known as the privacy and security act, says everyone’s sexual privacy should be protected by requiring men and women to use the public bathrooms designated for their sex.

“The law also accommodates transgender people because state law allows people to change their legal sex once they take medical procedures that clearly show which side of the sex and gender fence they’d rather stand. That state solution — although imperfect — is a better and fairer fix than a one-size-fits-all policy set by lobbyists and party hacks in Washington D.C.

“The LGBT left wants to keep all of us sexual minorities away from the center of American life — because that’s how they get to keep control — or at least influence — over us and our voting cards. That’s why the LGBT left is quick to condemn Trump and eager to intimidate gay Trump supporters.”

“[Trump’s] comments on the live-and-let-live HB2 in no way undercuts the commitment he has made to gay people.”