This Is What I Have Been Saying.

All the pain and suffering, all the fears, and all of the thoughts of self-harm are just for votes and campaign donations.

They don’t care the harm they do as long as it gets them votes!

How did trans people become a GOP target? Experts say it’s all about keeping evangelicals voting
The recent blitz of anti-trans bills may not align with what many Republicans believe, but party lawmakers pursue them on behalf of their most important interest group.
The 19^th News
By Kate Sosin
May 17, 2022


When it came down to it, Rick Colby called on his spirituality in deciding how to support his transgender child, Ashton. 

It wasn’t a guarantee. Colby had dedicated his life to Republican politics, starting in 1984 on the field campaign to reelect Ronald Reagan. Reagan and the Republican Party with him and in the decades following would push anti-LGBTQ+ policies. But Colby’s Methodist church by comparison preached inclusivity and empathy, a message that conflicted with what he was hearing from Republicans. 

Colby went with Ashton to his first endocrinologist appointment. He held Ashton’s hand the following year as Ashton awoke from gender-affirming top surgery.

 “You know, as a parent, you want to protect your child from the nastiness of the world,” Colby said. “I was so relieved as a parent that he was being accepted. And it was just wonderful.” 

If you are a Republican you will have to decide if you like the hate that is causing much harm to the children, your vote is giving support to the increase in hate crimes that have been directly linked to the political rhetoric now being pushed by the right.

Survey after survey show that Americans support LGBTQ+ equality, and Republicans are no exception. Still, Republican-dominated states have seen a blitz of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation since 2020, particularly anti-transgender bills. That dissonance — between the reality of the electorate and the priorities of Republican lawmakers — may seem counterintuitive to many. 

The love affair with evangelicals goes way back to the Lavender Scare of the 1950s and early 60s, then in the 70s and 80s we have the “Save the Children” campaign where states changed their constitutions to ban marriage equality and with the 2003 Supreme Court’s Lawrence v. Texas ruling which invalidated sodomy law across the United States, making same-sex sexual activity legal in every State and United States territory.

The Republicans saw an angry voting block that they made Faustian bargain with.

Any Republican who wanted to cross the finish line would have to kneel at the feet of the evangelical base, Balmer says. Decades later, Donald Trump would initially campaign on welcoming LGBTQ+ people into his Republican platform, only to later adopt the ideology of the far-right evangelical base he needed to win.

[…]

The religious right’s fixation on “social issues” — abortion, religious-based education, LGBTQ+ rights — served two purposes. In addition to keeping evangelicals a cohesive voting unit, they also formed an ideological bedrock for the religious right. Before Weyrich died, he argued that conservatives should be fighting to return to family structures of the 1950s, a goal that has been picked up by leaders after him. 

The Republicans sold their soul to the devil, they were no longer the party of small government and low taxes but a poster child of hate. They were now anti-immigrants, anti-Black, and anti-LGBTQ+. 

The evangelicals are willing to give up a democracy for an authoritarian dictatorship as long as your enemies are my enemies.

They were against any change in the status quo, they harken back to the 1950s where Blacks knew their place, gays were in the closet, and we didn’t exist. They dreamed of the days when women were barefoot, pregnant, and it the kitchen and the “man” of the family was the sole breadwinner and lord of the house whose every word was obeyed.

In a time where political wins were just by a percentage or two, every vote counted and having a voting block that you can count on no matter what you did as long as you hated what they hated gave them an edge in the elections that they could count upon.