GOP Looks to Fire Up Base With Attacks on Transgender Rights
(Bloomberg) -- Republican candidates across the US are engaging in a legislative and messaging barrage against transgender people that they hope will win over voters in November’s midterm elections.
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In September alone, a Michigan gubernatorial candidate proposed a bill barring transgender female students from playing on women’s sports teams, a South Carolina US representative put out attack ads accusing her opponent of supporting “child abuse,” and an Arizona US Senate candidate retweeted an ad slamming his rival for supporting gender-affirming health care for transgender youth.
The strategy comes as the GOP finds itself on unfavorable political ground when it comes to certain social issues. On abortion rights, which have emerged as a top voter concern since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, a majority of US adults align more closely with Democrats.
Meanwhile, same-sex marriage can no longer can be counted on to energize the GOP base as it has gained widespread acceptance among voters, even Republicans. A bill protecting these marriages passed in the House earlier this year with the support of 47 Republicans, and will likely get a vote in the Senate after the elections.
“You can be a Republican who supports marriage equality and equality issues, but not buy into the radical gender theory debates that are going on right now,” said Charles Moran, president of the Log Cabin Republicans, the country’s largest group of LGBT conservatives. The organization has supported bills targeting trans athletes.
Democrat Malcolm Kenyatta, the co-creator of a political action committee that aims to drive anti-LGBTQ lawmakers out of office, said the fresh crop of GOP policies and messages amounted to “an anti-freedom movement” — a view shared by many in his party.
Political Cudgel
Still, Republicans see opportunity, both to motivate their base and persuade other voters, on an issue where public sentiment is not as clear or settled as it is on same-sex marriage.
In a Pew Research Center survey of 10,000 US adults conducted in May, 64% of respondents said they favored protecting transgender people from discrimination in jobs, housing and other settings. At the same time, though, some 58% said they favor laws that require trans people to play on sports teams that match the gender they were assigned at birth. Nearly a quarter of respondents said they neither favored nor opposed such a policy for trans athletes.
That’s a contrast to same-sex marriage, which some 71% of US adults said in a May Gallup poll should be legally recognized. Only 1% of respondents had no opinion on the topic.
Against that backdrop, the GOP has wielded anti-trans policies as a political cudgel.
“Republicans are the party of protecting children,” said Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene at a Sept. 20 press conference discussing a House bill she introduced that would make it a felony to provide gender-affirming care to a minor. “Not only are we the party of protecting life in the womb, we want to protect kids’ lives and their innocence.”
Leading medical and mental-health associations support gender-affirming care as an established practice for improving the physical and mental health of trans people.
At the state level, more than 345 anti-LGBTQ bills have been proposed this year, with over 29 passing — the highest tally for both figures since at least 2012, according to the Human Rights Campaign, an LGBTQ advocacy group. Over 40% of those proposed have focused on the transgender community, HRC says.
Tudor Dixon, the Republican running for governor in Michigan, recently unveiled a legislative proposal in this vein, which would prohibit trans women and girls from playing on school sports teams that match their gender identity.
GOP candidates are also turning to these issues to try to tarnish Democratic rivals: Representative Nancy Mace of South Carolina cut an ad blasting her Democratic opponent, Annie Andrews, for supporting transgender rights.
Blake Masters, who is challenging incumbent Democratic Senator Mark Kelly in Arizona, shared on social media a commercial imploring voters to reject Kelly over his stance on health care for trans children.
The Republican Governors Association also put out half a dozen ads attacking Kansas’s governor, a Democrat, for vetoing bills to ban trans athletes from girls’ and women’s sports.
LGBTQ advocates argue that anti-trans legislation has gained traction in part because of the public lacks information on the topic. Just 8% of Americans say they’re following news about bills related to trans people extremely or very closely, according to the Pew survey.
“Most people don’t understand even what it means to be trans or what kinds of issues trans people face in their day to day lives,” said Johnathan Gooch, communications director at Equality Texas, an LGBTQ-rights organization.
‘Don’t Say Gay’
In one of the most prominent examples of the GOP’s effort to open new fronts in the discussion of LGBTQ rights, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed a bill earlier this year that bans instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through third grade, dubbed by opponents the “Don’t Say Gay” law.
The law influenced online conversation: Tweets misleadingly citing “grooming” by LGBTQ people surged 406% in the month after Florida’s law was passed, according to research from the Center for Countering Digital Hate. It also helped DeSantis burnish his credentials as a right-wing conservative and establish himself as an heir apparent to Donald Trump.
In recent weeks, more politicians have seemed emboldened to adopt DeSantis’s posture, especially in close contests. While Republicans are still favored to win control of the House in the midterms, their margin is likely to be far narrower than was forecast six months ago. Control of the Senate is considered by independent analysts to be a toss-up.
Read more: Transgender Health Care Becomes Target for Wide GOP-Led Rollback
In addition to the Taylor Greene bill, federal GOP lawmakers have turned their attention to transgender health-care issues with a proposal that would allow adults to sue medical practitioners that provided gender-transition procedures to them when they were minors.
Representative Gregory Steube, a Florida Republican, put forward a bill last year that would require recipients of federal funds for athletic programs to recognize sex based solely on a person’s reproductive biology and genetics at birth.
Steube said GOP leadership has committed to prioritizing his measure for a floor vote within the first 100 days of the new Congress if Republicans take control of the House. Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
Still, these bills face a difficult path to becoming law, as Democrats will likely have enough votes to block their passage in the Senate.
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