Red And Blue States

The gap between them are so large and when you look at LGBTQ+ issues it is a crevasse of glacier proportion.

The red states are passing anti-trans legislation so fast it is hard to keep up with the bills.

Anti-transgender bills are latest version of conservatives’ longtime strategy to rally their base
The Conversation
By Alison Gash
May 6, 2021


[…]
These anti-transgender health care bills are part of a record number of anti-transgender policy reforms that conservative legislators have introduced this year in state legislatures across the country.

These include bills that will bar transgender athletes from participating in student sports and mandate parental notification for a school curriculum that is inclusive of LGBTQIA – lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning and/or queer, intersex and asexual – issues. One additional variety – just signed into law by Republican Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte – requires gender reassignment surgery before any individual can change the sex marker on their birth certificate.

This is reminiscent of the Anita Bryant attacks on gays…

Anti-gay activist and Florida orange juice queen Anita Bryant first perfected the strategy in the 1970s to oppose ordinances prohibiting sexuality-based discrimination. Bryant’s “Save our Children” campaign demonized gays and lesbians as “recruiting children.” Bryant successfully encouraged voters to oppose legislative attempts to protect gays and lesbians from discrimination and prompted Florida legislators to bar same-sex couples from adopting children, a law that was later overturned in 2010.

Back in the 70s it was the gays that were being attacked by the conservatives and many anti-gay laws were passed and a new Lavender scare was introduced by the Republicans… it was mainly focused on gay teachers and bathroom (Doesn’t every discrimination story involves bathrooms.), a PBS article said…

By focussing on the idea that gays and lesbians were somehow threatening to children, Bryant had created an incredibly powerful rhetorical focus for social conservatives. In 1981, Jerry Falwell echoed her language in a fundraising letter that reminded his followers, "Please remember, homosexuals don't reproduce! They recruit! And they are out after my children and your children." By the beginning of the 1980s, the Religious Right had made the fight against gay and lesbian liberation one of its primary issues, and found it a particularly effective focus for fundraising appeals. The efforts of conservatives slowed the advance of gay-rights and established an organized anti-gay opposition. That opposition is still a force in US politics today. Gay rights and anti-gay conservatives have squared off in a number of recent battles, including the fight over gays in the military and efforts to legislate against civil rights protections for lesbian and gay men.

And now we are the target!

Why are we being attacked now?

Conservatives may be using these bills – which some describe as “erasing transgender youth” – to catalyze Republican voters to participate in upcoming midterm elections. And the strategy could work.
[…]
Conservatives are also using anti-trans-athlete talking points to oppose the Equality Act, a bill now circulating in the Senate that would add prohibitions against sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination to existing federal civil rights bills. The House passed a similar measure last year, but it failed to pass the Senate.

I didn’t think of the Equality Act but I know that the Republicans are trying to drop us again like it was done for ENDA (Employment Non-Discrimination Act) by Barney Franks, one of the first “Out” Congressmen did back in 2007.

Now take a look at Connecticut, the House just passed HB 5592 "AN ACT REDEFINING "VETERAN" AND ESTABLISHING A QUALIFIED CONDITION REVIEW BOARD." the vote was unanimous! A 141 to 0! What the bill does is,

"(d) (1) Any veteran who receives an other than honorable discharge and who believes such discharge characterization was based on such veteran's sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression, may file an application for state-based veterans benefits. Such veteran may include evidence supporting his or her claim that such discharge characterization was based on such veteran's sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression."

What the bill does is allow LGBTQ+ veterans to collect state benefits if they were drummed out of the military because they are LGBTQ+. The bill had strong bipartisan support!

Compare Connecticut Republicans to southern Republicans.

But Connecticut Republicans do not have halos over their heads, they also introduced three anti-trans athletes bills, which died in committee and never were heard.

The article goes on to say…

In the meantime, transgender young people across the country are contemplating a more uncertain and dangerous future. Some are working with their parents to find out-of-state sources for puberty blockers. Others are contemplating moves to less hostile states. All of this because conservatives have channeled trumped-up claims into harmful legislation that outlaws transgender youths to further divide American voters.

The Republicans like to use social wedge issues to divide the nation. They don't who they hurt in the process. When you stop and think… what are the new Republicans for? We know what they are against but what are they for? It is no longer smaller government and lower taxes.

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Meanwhile in Congress they Republicans are pushing to swamp the Equality Act bill they want their “God Given Right” to discriminate against people; they believe that they have a right to not serve a person because of the color of their skin, because of where they were born, because of their gender identity and expression, and because of their sexual orientation.

Prospects dim for passage of LGBTQ rights bill in Senate

AP

By Mary Clare Jalonick and David Crary

May 8, 2021

WASHINGTON (AP) — Controlling Congress and the White House for the first time in a decade, Democrats were hopeful that this would be the year they finally secured civil rights protections for LGBTQ Americans.

Then came a new debate over women’s and girls sports.

Legislation that would add sexual orientation and gender identity to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is running aground in the Senate, partly knocked off course by the nationwide conservative push against transgender participation in girls and women’s athletics that has swept state legislatures and now spilled into the halls of Congress.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said the House-passed legislation would “in effect repeal Title IX” by making it easier for transgender women to play on girls teams. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, R-Miss., said that allowing “male-bodied athletes” to compete against females would “totally undermine” girls basketball. Rep. Vicky Hartzler, R-Mo., said the bill would “decimate” female athletic competition.

Democrats are frustrated by the shift in the debate, saying there’s ample evidence that the Republican claims are false and overblown.

This is a coordinated attack that has been in the planning for years…

Sports are just the latest front in the decadeslong GOP culture war over LGBTQ rights that has focused increasingly on transgender Americans since 2015, when the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage. Conservative groups including The Heritage Foundation, Family Policy Alliance and the Christian legal network Alliance Defending Freedom have been engaged for much of the past two decades in advocacy against the LGBTQ rights movement. An earlier push by those groups to enact laws requiring transgender people to use public bathrooms corresponding to the sex on their birth certificate sputtered amid backlash.

And now you know why the Republicans have introduced all of these state bills and lawsuits against trans people it is to fuel the fires of hate to divide the nation for votes. They do not care who get hurts in their pogroms, they don’t care how many children die, all they about is power.