Baited by Trump, primary candidates rally to vilify trans adults | Opinion

Inflation is finally slowing down. An anticipated economic doom has yet to materialize. The job market remains strong despite a recent cooling. Crossings at the Southern border have dropped after reaching record numbers in the past two years.

Pocketbook issues still persist. Inflation in South Florida remains stubbornly high, the worst among the country’s large urban areas. Climate change is on our doorstep as heat waves sweep several states.

Things aren’t perfect but, to hear Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis and other Republican presidential candidates, the country is on the verge of a moral collapse — thanks, in part, to transgender Americans. As the Herald reported this week, the topic is a hot one in the Republican presidential primaries.

Republicans banned gender-affirming care for trans youth in many states, including Florida, where the state has appealed a federal judge’s ruling blocking a law passed this year. Now the GOP has moved to openly target taxpayer-funded care for trans adults, as the Herald reported.

Republicans are experts at playing the long game to eradicate hard-fought civil-rights victories. It took them 50 years to reverse Roe v. Wade. When they did, they realized draconian abortion bans, like the one Florida passed at six weeks, are toxic on the campaign trail. They ignored that most Americans support reproductive rights.

Itching for a fight

Likewise, conservatives fought, and lost, the battle against same-sex marriage when the U.S. Supreme Court granted that fundamental right in 2015. Today, 71% of Americans, and about half of Republicans, support gay marriage, according to a Gallup poll released in June. Many Americans know someone who’s gay. It’s much easier to hate the unknown than it is to deny rights to people we love.

Looking for a new enemy to eradicate, the conservative movement has turned to transgender rights. This group is easy prey, still dogged by bigoted misconceptions perpetuated by politicians who brand trans women as men trying to sneak into female bathrooms. Most Americans don’t know a trans person, though the number of those who do has increased, Pew Research Center found in 2021.

Attacks against the trans community might seem irrelevant to those not directly targeted, but history shows that it could be someone else’s rights that are on the chopping block next.

The GOP’s culture war has hit a nerve. Support for bans on gender-affirming care for minors has grown, though most people still oppose them, a March PBS NewsHour/NPR/Marist poll found. Republicans say those bans protect children from so-called “gender ideology” and mutilation, even though gender-affirming surgery is very rare for minors, and treatments like puberty blockers require medical supervision.

If their true intentions were to “save the children,” Republicans would’ve stopped there. They haven’t.

Trans Americans vilified

The Republican-controlled U.S. House voted to block funding for gender-affirming surgery under the military’s health coverage. Trump vowed to reinstate a ban on transgender people serving in the military and “ban all taxpayer funding for sex or gender transitions at any age.”

Other Republican primary candidates, including DeSantis, said they agree with Trump’s proposed ban.

No surprises here. Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley has publicly mused about trans athletes being connected to suicidal deviation in teen girls, ignoring the alarmingly high rates of suicide attempts and depression among trans youth.

DeSantis’ campaign has gone to great lengths to paint him as the primary’s most anti-LGBTQ candidate. His team shared a homophobic video on Twitter that attacked Trump for being too friendly to the LGBTQ community and hailed the Florida governor for “threatening trans existence.”

Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who few people might know is running for president, said taxpayer-funded gender-affirming care is “objectionable to many taxpayers,” the Herald reported. Under that logic, the federal government should base all healthcare coverage decisions on public opinion. No one asked us if vasectomies should be covered by the military.

Paying the price for such political calculations are transgender Americans, whose dignity and own existence have been put out for public debate, exposed to vitriol and ridicule in the name of a fight against “woke.” That term, so overused and misused, has driven the narrative on cultural issues, allowing Republican lawmakers to take rights away in the name of fighting this faceless, undefined enemy.

It’s time to reclaim “woke” and call the GOP’s new attack against transgender rights for what it is: an attack on Americans’ freedom to be who they are.

This story was originally published July 18, 2023 at 3:08 PM.