People Are Behind Us

People are starting to realize that the Republicans are on a vendetta against us and against lesbians and gays and the polls are beginning to show.

In every state, majorities oppose Trump’s proposed ban on transgender military service
Washington Post
By Andrew R. Flores, Daniel C. Lewis, Patrick R. Miller, Donald P. Haider-Markel, Barry L. Tadlock and Jami K. Taylor
August 4, 2017

After President Trump recently proposed to ban transgender people from military service, pollsters quickly noted that a majority of Americans seemed to disagree with him.

Our own research has found the same. Since 2015, we’ve published several studies on public attitudes about transgender people and rights, and in an October 2015 survey, 42 percent opposed a policy not allowing transgender people to serve openly, while only 22 percent supported it. The remainder were neutral.

When we removed the neutral option in a June 2016 national survey that we fielded, the results were even less favorable to Trump: 33 percent of the public thinks that transgender people should not be allowed to serve openly and 67 percent think they should.

The question is why is the Trump administration still pushing his anti-LGBT agenda?

But would a ban on transgender military service play well in key areas of the country? That’s what at least one Trump administration official thinks:

This forces Democrats in the Rust Belt states like Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin, to take complete ownership of this issue. How will the blue collar voters in these states respond when senators up for re-election in 2018 like Debbie Stabenow are forced to make their opposition to this key plank of their campaigns.

But this is not what the pollsters have found,

The state with the most support for Trump’s proposal was Wyoming, where we estimate that 45 percent agreed with Trump. In the Rust Belt states such as Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin cited by the Trump official, less than 33 percent thought that transgender people should not be allowed to openly serve in the military.

Even in states that are more socially conservative, support for transgender military service exceeded opposition. For example, in Mississippi, 64 percent supported transgender military service and 36 percent opposed it.

It all boils down to the Republicans think they can get votes and campaign donations from persecuting us and our gay and lesbians brothers and sisters.

The Texas Caller-Times reported that,

Recent polling suggests the current bathroom bill debate carries little of the passion generated by the 2005 same-sex marriage issue. After the regular legislative session ended May 29, a poll by the University of Texas at Austin and the Texas Tribune found that only 44 percent of respondents thought the measure was important; 47 percent said it was not.
[…]
Miller, who has advised politicians on both sides of the partisan divide during his three-decade career in Austin, said supporters of the bathroom bill have not been able to demonstrate the same sense of urgency – that a major pillar of society would crumble – without the legislation targeting transgender people’s restroom preferences.

Just maybe, the people are starting to wake-up to the Republicans trying divert attention from the legislative agenda to us.