Well they are doing it again.
Transgender scare tactics are back on the Republican agenda. Here's why they won't work.
Making a 2020 wedge issue out of transgender lives ignores the real lesson of 2004: Republicans can’t stop human empathy, no matter how hard they try.
USA Today
By Leigh Finke Opinion contributor
September 14, 2020
At this very moment, there is a man sitting in a room deploying a strategy to re-elect the current president based on the belief that it is unacceptable for me, a transgender woman in middle America, to exist. According to this man, the extension of basic human rights to transgender people — specifically transgender children and youth — is so self-evidently repugnant, that posing the question of our humanity will swing voters away from Joe Biden and towards Donald Trump.
This isn’t hyperbole or conjecture. This man’s name is Terry Schilling. He runs the American Principles Project in Virginia. He’s already been profiled in a Politico feature that centers on this very strategy. Schilling, the piece reports, is in the process of rolling out a campaign, starting in Michigan, targeting Biden and Democrats for supporting transgender youth.
Schilling and his supporters want to make transgender rights a “kitchen table issue” in this election. He believes that opposition to transgender rights for young people “should define the Republican Party going forward.”
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Schilling and his supporters want to make transgender rights a “kitchen table issue” in this election. He believes that opposition to transgender rights for young people “should define the Republican Party going forward.”
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This is very scary, I’ll admit. As Schilling moves forward with his national strategy, voters are going to hear a lot of anti-transgender messages that are harmful, cruel, and just factually inaccurate.
The author believes that this will backfire but I don’t, I think that this year is different from when voters defeated Question 3 in Massachusetts in 2018.
In 2004, President George W. Bush narrowly defeated Sen. John Kerry in part by embracing a strategy of fear-mongering about the dire consequences of marriage equality. Bush called for a constitutional amendment to ban same sex marriage, and conservatives in 13 states put such bans on their November ballots.
The idea was to help boost turnout by so-called family values voters. And it worked. Sort of.
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Making a wedge issue out of our lives ignores the real lesson of 2004, which is that the Republican Party can’t stop human empathy, no matter how hard they try. In 2004, 31% of Americans supported marriage equality, and their culture war campaign worked. Today, only 31% of Americans oppose marriage equality. It is the majority opinion in the United States that the Republican Party was wrong in 2004. Transgender rights are following in the wake of the marriage equality fight. No matter how hard you wedge us into your campaign, you’re wrong, and whether it’s this year, or next, Americans will realize it.
Okay here is my reason that I worry about the hate ads.
This is a very tight race and they will not need many votes to sway the election toward Trump. Biden is ahead in the polls but… the margin for error in the polls put them almost neck-to-neck. Even if only one percent of the people believe the ads that one percent might be enough to make Trump the winner.
The other thing, it plays to Trump evangelical Christian base and it might energize them to go out and vote while the opposite is not true for Biden.
Lastly there are many avenues of attack… student athletes, bathrooms, and public accommodations. You remember Masterpiece Cakeshop Supreme Court case? I think that is going to be a rallying cry for the haters. Yes, Question 3 in Massachusetts was defeated by a wide margin but that was a liberal state, how do you think it will play out in Tennessee or North Dakota or Kentucky or in another of the swing states?
Fear is a very hard thing to overcome and this is a wedge issue that divides “Them vs. Us.”
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