Standing up for transgender rights is the right thing to do. But it’s not the easy thing to do. Especially for some Democratic candidates vying for your vote. But if you’re running for office, voters have every right to expect you to do the right thing. Especially when it’s hard. If a candidate won’t stand up for trans people, what makes you think they will stand up for you? Especially if standing up for you becomes politically unpopular? Make no mistake, LGBTQ+ people as a whole are in danger of losing hard-won rights. The Supreme Court could take marriage equality away. They could recriminalize LGBTQ+ sexual activity. They could strip all protections from discrimination.
Should that happen, can you really trust someone whose campaign spent thousands of dollars to produce ads echoing Republican anti-trans talking points?
I sure as hell don’t.
The issue that keeps coming up again and again is transgender girls and women playing sports. Republicans have made this one of their main platform issues and they like to frame it around “protecting girls” and “saving women’s sports.” Even though they don’t give a shit about either.
But in case you don’t want to take my word for it, when three political scientists from the University of Massachusetts Amherst recently conducted a survey of 1,000 adults regarding bans on trans athletes, they found the same thing.
“Admiration and support for women do not translate into greater support for excluding transgender people,” wrote the researchers. “In fact, individuals with the most negative views of women and gender equality are the most likely to support these bans.”
That said, there is widespread support for these bans. And no doubt a lot of that support is by people who have no idea what they’re talking about, do not understand civil rights history, are not experts in gender identity and believe that no one they know or care about will ever be negatively impacted by a ban on trans athletes.
And no doubt plenty of the above people are members of the “vote blue no matter who” camp.
Democrats could and should have gotten out in front of the issue of trans rights, denouncing bigotry and expressing support. But they let Republicans take the lead and shape the messaging on this issue. Instead of pushing back with a unified front, we’ve got Democrats trumpeting anti-trans talking points because they think that’s what voters want to hear.
Now, the number of Democratic candidates who have made “protect girls sports” videos is small. But so is the number of Democrats who are supporting trans rights with their whole hearts. The majority of Democrats — candidates and elected officials — apparently want to appear to be neutral on the issue. But this is not an issue where neutrality is appropriate or even possible.
You either want transgender people to live as full members of society or you don’t. You don’t get to pick and choose which rights or areas of life it is OK to exclude transgender people from. Because the goal of those who hate trans people is to strip them of all rights and exclude them from all places. It is to treat trans people as dangerous and in need of eradication.
These are notreasonablepeople we’re dealing with. To give them any ground is essentially to give them all of the ground. Because they are not planning on stopping their attack on transgender people at sports bans.
I am disgusted by the Democratic candidates who have gone out of their way to say things that are hurtful and harmful to trans people because they believe it is politically expedient.
But it’s not like I don’t understand the larger picture. How trans people will be further harmed, their rights further eroded, if Republicans retain control of the U.S. House or Senate. But if that doesn’t happen — if a Democrat who has embraced anti-trans arguments loses their race — it’s not the fault of the voters. It’s the fault of the candidate who adopted a position so odious, so hateful that they lost support from people who would have otherwise voted for them.
Erin Reed, a journalist who covers trans issues and someone I have great respect for, has requested that people “leave a very small number of races blank in which a Democrat has embraced extreme anti-trans hate.”
These candidates are Josh Turek, running for U.S. Senate in Iowa, Marcy Kaptur, running for reelection in Ohio’s 9th Congressional District, Kathy Castor, running for reelection in Florida’s 14th Congressional District, and U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, who is running for reelection in Texas.
If these candidates are on your ballot, you have a choice to make. If you decide that you must vote for them, I urge you to contact their campaign or their office if they are an incumbent and read them for filth for their anti-trans bullshit. They need to hear from voters that kicking trans people when they’re down is not a winning strategy.
