Republicans are assaulting LGBTQ+ rights. It’s costing them at the polls. | Opinion

Super Tuesday and the State of the Union are in the rearview mirror, the presidential candidates are all but selected, and it’s safe to say that election season is upon us.

With it comes a spring and summer of polarizing primary elections, particularly for Republicans, who will be racing to the extreme right of the ideological spectrum to win over the party’s new base — a mixture of people steeped in belief that the U.S. should be a Christian nationalist state, and another bloc that just seems to be entertained by hating, scapegoating and punching down at marginalized groups of people.

But there’s one issue in particular both groups have favored in recent elections. Can you guess? I’ll give you three tries. Is it the economy? Minimum wage? Anything that will help working class Americans? Of course not. It’s transgender people, and our very right to exist.

There is scarce data to support the notion that anti-LGBTQ+ and specifically anti-trans messaging is politically effective for Republicans. In fact, new analyses of voter information suggest it’s a losing issue.

And it all begs the question: Should Democrats play more electoral and legislative offense on LGBTQ+ civil rights?

Regardless of the politics, there’s no doubt that a more outspoken approach in support of the community would be a welcome relief to transgender people and their families. It’s our community, after all, that bears the brunt of this Republican rhetoric and policy agenda.

GOP's all-out assault on LGBTQ+ rights

To call the GOP strategy an "assault" on LGBTQ+ rights might be an understatement. In 2023, advocacy organizations tracked over 500 anti-LGBTQ+ bills introduced in state legislatures across the country. A record 84 of them passed. More than 475 anti-LGBTQ+ bills have already been introduced this year.

In the last 12 months, our Midwestern neighbors Indiana and Ohio joined 20 other states in signing bills into law that prohibit access to medically necessary gender-affirming health care for young transgender people. Such laws not only refute the findings of every major medical association in the world, they deliberately make government the sole authority in decisions about people’s health care.

It’s complicated: Is TikTok’s parent company an agent of the Chinese state? | Opinion

The campaign rhetoric of Republicans very much reflects the party’s policy ambitions. It was just a year-and-a-half ago that the GOP gubernatorial primary winner in Michigan made one of her very first post-victory tweets a tongue-in-cheek jab at Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s support of her transgender constituents.

In Kentucky’s 2023 gubernatorial campaign, ads ran statewide criticizing incumbent Democratic Gov. Andy Bashear for his veto of a ban on transgender health care. Earlier that year, a speaker at the Conservative Political Action Conference all but called for the eradication of trans people entirely.

Now, if you are a Democrat running for office, it would make perfect sense to try to back into the rationale that is driving this strategy from your political opponents.

You might conclude that if the objective is to win elections, you need a platform and a message that is popular with the electorate. Thus, it would be reasonable to assume your opponent has calculated that this is a winning issue.

That might be the case in a Republican primary. But in a general election, plenty of new evidence suggests it’s the opposite.

Trans rights are a winning issue

New polling released by GLAAD on March 7 helps underscore how the anti-LGBTQ+ platform Republicans have adopted is ineffective at best, and daunting for their 2024 aspirations at worst.

Polling points to a majority of swing voters, 52%, who say they're more motivated to oppose candidates who want to restrict access to health care and sports for transgender youth, than to support such candidates. Just 22% of swing voters reported the inverse, a 30-point margin in favor of trans rights.

Critics are passing anti-DEI laws. We have to fight back. | Opinion

According to the poll, 82% of swing voters also agreed that “Republicans should stop focusing on restricting women’s rights and banning medical care for transgender youth and instead focus on addressing inflation, job creation and health care costs.”

This is hardly shocking to anyone who watched the campaign to pass the Reproductive Freedom for All in Michigan in 2022, as voters overwhelmingly decided that individuals have a constitutional right to make their own decisions about pregnancy and abortion. Trans people’s access to health care freedom is not a vastly different issue.

Gen Z is more likely to be LGBTQ+ than Republican

It's also hard to overemphasize the significance of another element the polling captures — the increasing impact LGBTQ+ voters themselves have on elections.

An estimated 94% of LGBTQ+ registered voters indicated they intend to vote this November. This group prefers Biden by a 57-point margin. Research conducted by the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) and Bowling Green State University estimates that LGBTQ+ people made up 9.2% of Michigan’s voting-eligible population in 2020, with that number slated to rise to 15% in the next 15 years. The Public Religion Research Institute found that Gen Z adults are more likely to identity as LGBTQ+ (28%) than as Republican (21%).

Can you see the red lights flashing yet? Could you see them when the Republican candidate for Michigan’s third congressional district lost by more than 12 points in 2022, including areas of the district that leaned in the party’s favor? How about when the aforementioned efforts to dethrone the Democratic governor of Kentucky failed, just last fall?

Republicans’ widespread attempts to put a marginalized community at the center of all levels of our politics may yield inadvertent electoral benefits for Democrats. But it is not without severe consequences for the community itself.

It's not just politics. Anti-LGBTQ+ laws are linked to real-world harm.

GLAAD’s poll showed 49% of LGBTQ+ voters reported the current state of political discourse was one cause of regular real-world harassment. This on the heels of a 2022 Trevor Project survey in which 89% of LGBTQ+ youth reported that anti-trans politics negatively impacted their well-being. The FBI recorded crimes motivated by anti-transgender bias rising by more than 35% between 2021 and 2022.

Family and friends are still waiting for answers about the death of 16-year-old nonbinary student Nex Benedict in Oklahoma, just a day after they reportedly sustained injuries in an incident at school. A medical examiner's report released late last week concluded that Benedict’s death was a suicide. The student's family has challenged that finding, and Benedict's death has prompted a federal investigation.

I’ll answer your next question: Yes, Oklahoma has passed a slew of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation in the last two years, weakening civil rights protections and prohibiting access to health care and public facilities. Beyond that, in Oklahoma, administrators with with well-detailed histories of anti-LGBTQ+ beliefs occupy key state-level school leadership roles.

Message for Democrats: unapologetic LGBTQ+ advocacy

It's hard to say how all of this finally comes to an end. Is it an electoral strategy that rapidly devolved into a political ideology? We really won’t know until we know.

For now, the best thing Democrats can do for themselves, and for the trans community, is stay on the offense. That means continuing to pass legislation that advances equality, and almost as important, being unapologetic about it.

In his March 7 State of the Union speech, President Joe Biden offered this message to transgender Americans: “I have your back.”

It's a reminder that this is not the year to sit back and hope the folks in the middle forget about the votes legislators cast in support of their LGBTQ+ constituents. It’s the year to get out there and brag about it. It’s the year to double down on telling transgender Michiganders and their families that you, too, have their backs.

Emme Zanotti is a writer in southeast Michigan. Submit a letter to the editor at freep.com/letters.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: The GOP is voting against trans, gay, LGBTQ+ rights. It's costing them