How a Campaign Against Transgender Rights Mobilized Conservatives
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
When the Supreme Court declared a constitutional right to same-sex marriage nearly eight years ago, social conservatives were set adrift.
The ruling stripped them of an issue they had used to galvanize rank-and-file supporters and big donors. And it left them searching for a cause that — like opposing gay marriage — would rally the base and raise the movement’s profile on the national stage.
“We knew we needed to find an issue that the candidates were comfortable talking about,” said Terry Schilling, the president of American Principles Project, a social conservative advocacy group. “And we threw everything at the wall.”
What has stuck, somewhat unexpectedly, is the issue of transgender identity, particularly among young people. Today, the effort to restrict transgender rights has supplanted same-sex marriage as an animating issue for social conservatives at a pace that has stunned political leaders across the spectrum. It has reinvigorated a network of conservative groups, increased fund-raising and set the agenda in school boards and state legislatures.
The campaign has been both organic and deliberate, and has even gained speed since Donald J. Trump, an ideological ally, left the White House. Since then, at least 20 states, all controlled by Republicans, have enacted laws that reach well beyond the initial debates over access to bathrooms and into medical treatments, participation in sports and policies on discussing gender in schools.
About 1.3 million adults and 300,000 children in the United States identify as transgender. These efforts have thrust them, at a moment of increased visibility and vulnerability, into the center of the nation’s latest battle over cultural issues.
“It’s a strange world to live in,” said Ari Drennen, the L.G.B.T.Q. program director for Media Matters, a liberal media monitoring group that tracks the legislation. As a transgender woman, she said, she feels unwelcome in whole swaths of the country where states have attacked her right “just to exist in public.”
The effort started with a smattering of Republican lawmakers advancing legislation focused on transgender girls’ participation in school sports. And it was accelerated by a few influential Republican governors who seized on the issue early.
“It’s a sense of urgency,” said Matt Sharp, the senior counsel with the Alliance Defending Freedom, an organization that has provided strategic and legal counsel to state lawmakers as they push through legislation on transgender rights. The issue, he argued, is “what can we do to protect the children?”
Mr. Schilling said the issue had driven in thousands of new donors to the American Principles Project, most of them making small contributions.
The appeal played on the same resentments and cultural schisms that have animated Mr. Trump’s political movement: invocations against so-called “wokeness,” skepticism about science, parental discontent with public schools after the Covid-19 pandemic shutdowns and anti-elitism.
Nadine Smith, the executive director of Equality Florida, a group that fights discrimination against L.G.B.T.Q. people, said there was a direct line from the right’s focus on transgender children to other issues it has seized on in the name of “parents’ rights” — such as banning books and curriculums that teach about racism.
For now, the legislation has advanced almost exclusively in Republican-controlled states: Those same policies have drawn strong opposition from Democrats who have applauded the increased visibility of transgender people — in government, corporations and Hollywood — and policies protecting transgender youths.
The 2024 presidential election appears poised to provide a national test of the reach of this issue. The two leading Republican presidential contenders, Mr. Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who has not officially declared a bid, have aggressively supported measures curtailing transgender rights.
It may prove easier for Republicans like Mr. Trump and Mr. DeSantis to talk about transgender issues than about abortion, an issue that has been a mainstay of the conservative movement. The Supreme Court decision overturning the constitutional right to abortion created a backlash among Democrats and independents that has left many Republicans unsure of how — or whether — to address the issue.
Polling suggests that the public is less likely to support transgender rights than same-sex marriage and abortion rights. In a poll conducted in 2022, the Public Policy Research Institute, a nonpartisan research group, found that 68 percent of respondents favored allowing same-sex couples to marry, including 49 percent of Republicans.
By contrast, a poll by the Pew Research Center found that 58 percent of Americans supported requiring that transgender athletes compete on teams that match the sex they were assigned at birth; 85 percent of Republicans held that view.
“For many religious and political conservatives, the same-sex marriage issue has been largely decided — and for the American public, absolutely,” said Kelsy Burke, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Nebraska—Lincoln. “That’s not true when it comes to these transgender issues. Americans are much more divided, and this is an issue that can gain a lot more traction.”
The focus on perceived threats to impressionable children has a long history in American sexual politics. It has its roots in the “Save Our Children” campaign championed in 1977 by Anita Bryant, the singer known for her orange juice commercials, to repeal a local ordinance in Dade-Miami County that prohibited discrimination based on sexual orientation, a historic setback for the modern gay rights movements.
As a result, conservatives went looking for a new approach to the issue. Mr. Schilling’s organization, for instance, conducted polling to determine whether curbing transgender rights had resonance with voters — and, if they did, the best way for candidates to talk about it. In 2019, the group’s research found that voters were significantly more likely to support a Republican candidate who favored a ban on transgender girls participating in school sports — particularly when framed as a question of whether “to allow men and boys to compete against women and girls” — than a candidate pushing for a ban on transgender people using a bathroom of their choosing.
With that evidence in hand, and transgender athletes gaining attention, particularly in right-wing media, conservatives decided to focus on two main fronts: legislation that addressed participation in sports and laws curtailing the access of minors to medical transition treatments.
In March 2020, Idaho became the first state to bar transgender girls from participating in girls’ and women’s sports, with a bill supporters in the Republican-controlled legislature called the “Fairness in Women’s Sports Act.”
A burst of state legislation began the next year after Democrats took control of Congress and the White House, ending four years in which social conservatives successfully pushed the Trump administration to enact restrictions through executive orders.
In the spring of 2021, the Republican-controlled legislature in Arkansas overrode a veto by Gov. Asa Hutchinson, a Republican, to enact legislation that made it illegal for minors to receive transition medication or surgery.
It was the first such ban in the country — and it was quickly embraced by national groups and circulated to lawmakers in other statehouses as a road map for their own legislation. The effort capitalized on an existing disagreement in the medical profession over when to offer medical transition care to minors. Despite that debate, leading medical groups in the United States, including the American Academy of Pediatrics , say the care should be available to minors and oppose legislative bans.
Later that spring, Mr. DeSantis, the Florida governor, traveled to a private Christian school in Jacksonville to sign a bill barring transgender girls from playing K-12 sports. With his approval, Florida became the largest state to date to enact such restrictions, and Mr. DeSantis signaled how important this issue was to his political aspirations.
“In Florida, girls are going to play girls’ sports and boys are going to play boys’ sports,” he said , winning applause from conservatives he would need to defeat Mr. Trump.
To some extent, this surge of legislation was spontaneous. Ms. Drennen, of Media Matters, said state lawmakers appeared to be acting out of a “general animus” toward transgender people, as well as a fear of political reprisals. “They are worried about this coming up in a primary,” she said.
In 2018, Kristen Waggoner, then the general counsel of the Alliance Defending Freedom, was the lead counsel in the Supreme Court defending a Colorado baker who, citing religious beliefs, refused to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple. The court ruled narrowly in favor of the baker.
The next year, the Alliance took on a case involving a group of high school girls in Connecticut who challenged the state and five school boards for permitting transgender students to participate in women’s sports. Their lawsuit was rejected by a federal appeals court.
Mathew D. Staver, the founder and chairman of the Liberty Counsel, which was a major force behind a 2008 voter initiative in California that banned same-sex marriage, said the group is now fighting gender policies in the courts. It has challenged laws, often enacted in states controlled by Democrats, that restrict counseling services designed to change a person’s gender identity or sexual orientation, often referred to as conversion therapy.
Though some on the left are still uncertain about how to best navigate the fraught politics of transgender issues, there’s an emerging consensus on the right. The case of what happened to Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota, a rising star in the Republican Party, is instructive.
In March 2021, Ms. Noem declined to sign a bill passed by her state’s Republican-controlled legislature that would have banned transgender girls from sports teams from kindergarten through college. Conservative groups accused her of bowing to “socially left-wing factions.” Tucker Carlson of Fox News, in a tense interview with Ms. Noem, implied she was bowing to “big business” in refusing to sign the bill.
“There’s a real political effort now that will extract a punishment from you if you betray the social conservatives,” said Frank Cannon, a founder of the American Principles Project. He said the episode with Ms. Noem “sent a signal to every other governor in the country.”
Ah culture wars where the winners are the losers and the losers are the winners ... ain't Pandora great?
This particular "culture war" will end up being a losing issue for the left. Mainly because it devalues biological women and attempts to usurp parental power
Says who?
How old are you that you still make predictions? Predictions are one of Pandora's many gnats.
wrong, again...
Y'all spout that nonsense about how this 'devalues or demeans' women and not a one of you can come up with how so?
Ignorance, intolerance, and exclusion are today's gop/gqp/repubublicans/CONservatives.
Isn't it up to the parents and the person in question transitioning and no one else? If the parents have disowned them doesn't the person in question transitioning have a right to make their own decisions and a guardian that allows them to make those decisions?!
When a trans woman competes is a competitive women’s weight lifting contest or swim meet, I would agree. But many of the other situations conservatives complain about are genuinely harmless.
Trans women are NOT women.
I'd agree with that, provided we add pretty much every other sport.
They should be. But when we start interfering with parents and compelling speech, that's not harmless. It's also not generally trans people themselves doing that.
Is there a point you’re making? [Deleted]
What about like bass fishing? Or darts? Pool? Auto racing? Not every competitive sport offers a natural advantage to one sex or the other.
OK. Shouldn’t that also apply to laws interfering with parents and doctors trying to deal with the problem? We’re now passing laws saying that parents who assist their kids with transition are guilty of child abuse, and doctors are not allowed to discuss options.
These might not be choices I would make, but if we say we care about freedom and parental rights, that should go both ways.
Bingo!
Thank you.
Adapting polices of referring to those who are transitioning, or have already transitioned, by their new name and pronoun is not about compelling speech. I don't see a lot of policies where places are interfering with parents - other than schools not telling parents about requests by students that want to be referred to as another gender. Those young people are not transitioning. They are not getting counseling nor treatments, thus not trans (yet). What I am seeing a lot is red states creating laws and policies that DO interfere with parents getting their transitioning children the counseling and health care they need.
Hence the phrase "pretty much".
Depends on how you define "dealing with the problem".
If we're talking about counseling, then yes, parents should be able to get counseling
If we're talking about permanently altering the body of a child who almost surely does not understand the full ramifications of that decision, then I think we need to step in a protect that child.
That depends very much on the policy.
How is that not interfering with parents?
If a kid has poor eyesight or hearing, we notify the parents. If they cut themselves, break an arm, run a fever or throw up, we notify the parents.
If they're diagnosed with dyslexia, a learning disability, or emotional disability, we notify the parents.
The only time we seem to think the parents should not be notified is when the kids want to do a liberal approved thing like get an abortion or change gender. Then suddenly those parents can't be trusted to behave is a liberal-approved manner, so we'll cut them out of the picture.
Why is bowling still gender specific? My daughter is a killer bowler and regularly beats her own father. And he's a good bowler
We? Who is “we?” Are “we” going to acquaint ourselves with the medical and psychological history of every child interested in this? Are “we” even qualified to do that? If the decisions “we” impose on a child or family result in some unfavorable outcome - e.g. runaway, self harm, suicide, maybe a violent anger at “we” etc. - will “we” be held accountable?
It’s a lot of responsibility to take on - raising someone else’s kid. It’s also a strange approach for people who are supposed to believe in limited government, individual freedom, and so on. It might seem like a good idea until government decides they want to tell conservatives how to raise their kids. Conservatives didn’t want government telling them they had to vaccinate their kids, but they want to tell other parents what choices they should make? At least being trans isn’t contagious. Makes no sense.
It helps with Title IX compliance.
One of my kids had scoliosis. The “cure” for this is spinal fusion. It’s a complicated and dangerous procedure that permanently alters the body. They don’t generally like to do it until well into puberty when the pelvis has fused. We (i.e. child, parents, and doctors) opted to do it before that because the spinal curvature was worsening and could potentially cause greater problems. I’m glad I didn’t need government permission to get that taken care of.
They don't want the girls kicking the boys' asses
there was a girl in my high school 50+ years ago that took the school district to court because she wanted to be the field goal kicker for the football team. I think she played like 2 games, then ended up getting pregnant and quit the team.
Society as a whole.
Do we do that in any other area? No. We decide as a society that there are reasonable ages for children to be able to make certain levels of decisions. That's why they can't sign contracts. That's why they can't vote. That's why 12-year-olds can't drive cars or buy whisky. That's why we don't let 14-year-old girls have sex with 35-year-old men, no matter how much they think they love them.
Are "we" held accountable when non-trans kids do those things? No? Will we be held accountable when that 12-year-old child turns 24 and realizes that their emotional problems were not gender related and then proceeds to engage in self-harm or suicide anyway? No?
Doesn't seem to bother anyone when we're letting 14-year-olds get abortions without their parents knowing. But yeah, it is a lot of responsibility to protect our kids from permanent harm, be that from drug dealers and human traffickers or opportunistic doctors looking to capitalize on the latest profitable trend.
I'm not sure how we should still need to have the discussion that insanity at one extreme of the political spectrum does not somehow validate insanity on the other.
I had girls play on a couple of my teams back when I coached 7th and 8th grade. One was a running back and the other a WR.
The only modification we had to make was issuing them lineman's shoulder pads, because they come down far enough to cover their breasts.
But both of those girls would hit you as hard as they could. No fear, no holding back. They got knocked around a lot because they weren't as strong, but they definitely earned some respect.
Again, BINGO.
Thats simply awesome
she was a hot looking little blonde that transferred in from cali, and I think the story made the national news, but I can't remember many of the details from that long ago. I vaguely remember that there was some padding and groping issues early on, but she didn't really have a leg and in retrospect I think the school district was more fearful of being sued, so she suited up. it was a short lived bruhaha.
Our running back ended up winning the 100m girls championship. The boys were still not huge yet (age 12), so she scored a couple of touchdowns on the B-team.
The other girl looked sort of like a young Avril Lavigne. She was tough as nails, though.
I haven’t suggested doing anything without the parents, nor would I. We’re also not talking about behaviors that could affect other people or are seen as taking advantage of a minor. We’re talking about a very personal, intimate medical and psychological situation.
In that context, there is a young patient in crisis. They, their family, and their doctor agree on a course of action that is the best solution for that individual, and you would say the state should just make a blanket decision forbidding it? Is that what you really think is best?
In some states, it is against the law for school personnel to inform parents of a student's struggles with gender identity. It's astonishing, really, considering the school is required to notify parents about virtually any other health issue.... except abortions, of course. Do you not see a pattern here?
I just think that's a really naive view. Look at the amount of healthcare fraud we catch, then imagine the amount we don't catch. And we think these kids are somehow safe from doctors trying to make a buck?
Maybe. Or maybe there is a kid who's just a bit confused. Or maybe there is a parent who wants the Instagram attention.
I think in this particular time in American society, gender dysphoria has become a fad. It rivals the ADHD fad of the 1990's, but the long term consequences are far more dangerous.
Nearly 1 in 5 Gen Z kids identify as non-heterosexual. Gen Z kids are 4 times as likely to identify as transgender as any previous generation. News flash... they're not. Statistics don't work that way. We didn't put something in the water supply that suddenly made everybody under 25 transgender but left all the 40-year-olds alone.
Rather, in the current environment, non-hetero and transgender are two things that make you popular in that age group. Everyone tells you how "brave" you are and how "proud" they are of you, and you have an army of angry short haired white girls who will rush to your defense. Compared to what the average straight 15 yr old boy or overweight 15 year old girl goes through, it looks pretty good. It's especially attractive to kids who are emotionally fragile already (higher rates of self harm, suicide, etc).
As a parent of a trans kid, you get similar positive reinforcement.
We've made it an attractive proposition socially to declare yourself transgender or to declare your child transgender. So, unsurprisingly, people are doing it. In some of those cases, the child is actually trans. In some of those cases, they're not.
We saw this in the 1990s when parents would proudly declare that they had to take their kid to several doctors before they could get one who agreed with their preferred diagnosis and prescribed their child the treatment that parent wanted. A staggering number of kids who didn't need ADHD meds got them anyway because Mommy refused to accept the fact that their kid may be undisciplined or just not that intelligent and just kept doctor shopping until they found a quack.
The difference is that you can go off your ADHD meds without permanent consequences.
And I oppose that. I have said it here and on other seeds already. Why continue to argue a point we agree on?
That’s not a reason for legislation on this one issue. I assume my dentist is just trying to make a buck when she asks me if I want fluoride, but I don’t run to the legislature to shut her down. I use my own judgment.
Yeah, maybe. Again, we don’t disagree. But that’s not the state’s problem to solve.
And yet we don’t have sweeping legislation outlawing ADHD treatment. We let families work it out for themselves.
That’s your opinion, and with all due respect, it’s one formed in ignorance. You don’t know these people. But you want to make medical decisions for them all the same.
You don’t think giving a kid (or not giving a kid) medication that alters their brain chemistry could have permanent consequences? Because I do, and that fear has inhibited me from throwing drugs at my own kids. If I have a kid with autism or ADHD, should the state force me to drug them? Or not drug them?
One of the things that some people on the Right and Left have in common is their willingness to use government power to force their philosophy on people.
I never said you were in favor of it. I said it was happening and that it's not harmless.
And again, a Ritalin prescription is not a permanent alteration to a vulnerable child.
Hmm. So what's your scientific explanation for a fourfold rise in gender dysphoria cases?
Do you have data that demonstrates this happening anywhere close to the rate at which gender reassignment permanently alters a child? That's 100%, if you were wondering.
Well, my philosophy involves a nefarious and evil plot to protect kids from having their lives completely fucked up before they're even able to understand what's happening to them.
If you need me I'll be in my lair with a white cat on my lap executing henchmen after telling them how I don't tolerate failure.
You are not a doctor and you are pulling that out of your ass.
Ritalin :
Some severe side effects of Ritalin include:
I’d say “sudden death” is a fairly permanent alteration. The rest aren’t great, either.
In your opinion. But you haven’t put any effort into learning about their lives.
No.
Or... I have a degree in mathematics... which isn't even necessary to spot the glaringly obvious issues with the numbers here.
Do you understand the difference between "possible side effects" that happen extremely rarely and "intended effects" that happen every single time?
Math. Basic math. Seriously.
What a fool I’ve been! Instead of going to my doctor for medical issues, or a psychologist for mental health, I should have just called up one of my old math teachers!
You’ve actually done no math here. You’d think a mathematician would appreciate the need to “show your work.” Not that it would be relevant to our discussion.
I didn't want to say anything.
Maybe they'll be more successful the 2nd time around.
I didn't do any math to calculate the idea that you can't throw a baseball to the moon, either, but I'm really confident the math works out that way.
If you or a corporation is a big donor to the Republicans they make an exemption by backing off criticizing you or the corporation.
Case in point:
GOP Quietly Backs Off Attacking Bud Light—Its Own Major Donor
whenever they refer to following the founding fathers, they're really talking about doing whatever the guy wants that's handing them the most dead president portraits printed on green and white paper...
bribery is totally acceptable in 3rd world mentalities ...
Good informative article.
In general, the political right thinks transgender people are freaks whose existence offends propriety. All this business about "devaluing biological women" is just the cherry on top of what is bone marrow bigotry against an "other'.
Or perhaps devaluing marriage as in the case of the Defense of marriage act.
I sense a repeating theme
Those who accuse transgender women of devaluing women are themselves guilty of devaluing women. Look at who is making the most noise about transgenders...it isn't liberals
I keep forgetting the PD&D defense
he religious right went searching for an issue that would re-energize supporters and donors
Right. Because men have always participated in women's sports and everyone has always been fine with kids getting sterilized with or without parental consent.
It's those damn conservatives who made it an issue, not the people trying to force the change of cultural norms.
Sports is a very narrow sub-issue where I think more people will agree than disagree. Unfortunately, it often gets utilized as a red herring in the larger discussion. Most trans people aren’t directly impacting someone else in a negative way by just being trans.
I have a hard time believing this is happening much, if at all. What doctor is going to work on a kid without parental consent? How is this child going to pay for procedures and drugs?
Try this on for size.
just let me know when you're ready to go to meade street station on a wednesday night, climb up on the bar, and profess your thoughts on the LGBTQ community. I'd really like to see that.
Doesn’t really address the details of what I wrote, now does it?
Don't know, don't care.
Clearly. Whatever hate is on the agenda, who wants to bother with the details?
It's gone from the nutty and idiotic, to the absurd and comical.
So it appears the left has it in for lesbians.
Marjorie Taylor Greene posted this on her twitter. Well, she posted the photo on the right on her twitter anyway. I guess she's implying through a fake photo that Lindsey Graham is trans-friendly.
A U.S representative attacks a US senator of her own party by smearing him with a fake photograph. What a screwed up country.
What a screwed up US Representative.