So You Want To Vote Red?

The Republicans are gearing up for the anti-LGBTQ+ and especially against us in their pogrom for the 2024 elections.

On the national level,

Transphobic Republican Debate Condemned as 'Failure of Leadership and of Journalism' by GLAAD

The LGBTQ+ group is denouncing the misinformation spread by most of the candidates and one moderator.

The Advocate

By Trudy Ring

December 9, 2023

Wednesday night’s Republican presidential debate was bad politics and bad journalism, says GLAAD.

“The debate did not include any substantive questions that address the safety and freedom of LGBTQ Americans and instead devolved into a competition between candidates — and between candidates and one moderator — as to who could prove the most transphobic,” says a GLAAD analysis.

The debate, held at the University of Alabama and televised by NewsNation, featured Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy. It was moderated by Megyn Kelly and Elizabeth Vargas of NewsNation and Eliana Johnson, editor in chief of The Washington Free Beacon.

[…]

The transphobia began with the candidates’ opening remarks, GLAAD notes, with DeSantis asserting that he stopped the “gender mutilation of minors” with a bill he signed banning gender-affirming care for trans youth. His language is “an inflammatory and false characterization of health care backed by every major medical association,” GLAAD points out. Doctors do not generally recommend genital surgery for minors, and DeSantis also claimed that the effects of puberty blockers are irreversible, which is not true, and called gender-affirming care “child abuse.”

Just like in Russia we are target of their trans rhetoric, they go after the minority of minorities. The Republicans see us as the weak link in the LGBTQ+ community.

In Congress,

GOP Senator Introduces Bill That Throws LGBTQ+ Foster Children Under the Bus

The new bill takes aim at recent changes to HHS policy on adoption, ensuring LGBTQ+ foster children are placed in supportive homes.

The Advocate

By Donald Padgett

December 10 2023 

U.S. Sen. Jim Banks introduced a bill on Thursday that would force adoption and foster placement services that receive federal funding to place LGBTQ+ children in homes with non-affirming guardians.

The Iowa Republican’s bill takes direct aim at recent proposed reforms to federal guidelines that require LGBTQ+ children to be placed in foster homes with a supportive environment for the child’s sexual and gender identity.

Banks’s H.R. 6658, tentatively entitled the Sensible Adoption for Every (SAFE) Home Act, targets the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and its proposed reforms to the Safe and Appropriate Foster Care Placement Requirements for Titles IV-E and IV-B.

“The proposed rule would protect LGBTQI+ youth by placing them in environments free of hostility, mistreatment, or abuse based on the child’s LGBTQI+ status,” HHS said in a statement announcing the proposed reforms in September. “And the proposed rule would require that caregivers for LGBTQI+ children are properly and fully trained to provide for the needs of the child related to the child’s self-identified sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression.”

Banks’s bill takes direct aim at the reforms in H.R. 6658, which would “prohibit entities receiving Federal assistance that are involved in adoption or foster care placements from delaying or denying placements under certain conditions.”

The limit of the Republican animus toward us knows no bounds. They will stop at nothing if it gets them votes.

Then down in Florida…

Ron DeSantis Ramps Up the Transphobia While Trying to Boost His Campaign Ahead of Iowa

The focus on transgender rights seems to come from DeSantis's drop in the polls.

CNN WIRE via The Advocate

By Steve Contorno

December 10, 2023

A week before announcing his campaign for president in May, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law a slate of bills that altered the lives of transgender people in his state.

Now, with just over five weeks before Republicans begin to weigh in on the presidential nominating fight, DeSantis has wielded those new laws to draw sharp contrasts with his GOP rivals and to appeal to social conservatives who could be key to sparking a strong finish for him in the Iowa caucuses.

The intense effort to push these issues to the forefront was laid bare minutes into Wednesday’s Republican presidential debate when DeSantis, in response to a question about his slipping poll numbers, accused former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley of opposing one of those laws: blocking transgender children from certain medical procedures that he likened to mutilation. Haley denied the charge.

Throw us under the bus for votes. They don’t care what happens to us, it is all about the almighty vote.

We can stop this… Vote Blue!