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While much of the country spent the week fixated on a former president and his indictment related to alleged mishandling of classified documents, parts of the American right were more consumed by fear of transgender rights.
The latest example stems from the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention. Southern Baptists, some of whom apparently fear a slide toward acceptance of LGBTQ rights – would rather expel one of their largest and most successful congregations, Saddleback Church in Southern California, than accept women as pastors.
If it seems like a stretch to tie the Southern Baptist effort to eliminate women pastors with LGBTQ rights, look at this video prepared in favor of an amendment to more broadly prohibit churches from having women hold any pastoral title. It was recorded by Mike Law, pastor at Arlington Baptist Church in Arlington, Virginia.
He refers to a “a culture that is seeking to undermine the good and God-given distinctions between men and women” and argues it will be a slippery slope from allowing women to allowing gay and lesbian pastors.
“Here’s the trajectory of doing nothing,” Law says in the video. “Soon, Southern Baptist churches will start supporting homosexual clergy, same-sex marriage and eventually, transgenderism.”
Anyone who has been paying attention to Fox News or the Republican political conversation already knows that backlash to transgender rights, at the state and corporate level, is a key platform to appeal to the party’s grassroots.
But the discomfort and disdain exhibited by some Americans toward transgender rights is infecting much of American society in ways that should have nothing to do with gender identity.
Vivek Ramaswamy, the millennial businessman running a longshot campaign for the GOP presidential nomination, built his reputation in part with his book, “Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam.”
Whether he is inspiring it or feeding off of it, the same sentiment is fueling conservative ire toward brands that some view as using “woke” marketing. Target, for example, removed some Pride merchandise after threats against staff, although it later faced backlash for not standing by the merchandise.
And there was news this week that Americans bought more Modelo than Bud Light last month, a long-running trend toward Mexican beers and spirits that coincided with a boycott campaign by conservative activists to punish Bud Light for associating itself with a transgender influencer.
It’s a trend even affecting brands long associated with conservatives.
Chick-fil-A, for example, long criticized by liberal activists for its conservative views, is now facing talk of a boycott by conservatives for its employment of an executive overseeing its diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.
While the recent drop in Bud Light sales is notable (although it remains the top-selling beer on a year-to-date basis), it is not clear how much of a groundswell some of these anti-corporate efforts will cause.
“The fact that Chick-fil-A has been trending online and the subject of conservative media news segments shows the power that a few people with large social media followings can have,” CNN’s Jordan Valinsky wrote last week, noting that tweets from right-wing personalities with large followings may have started the trend.
Regardless of the effect of any possible boycotts, anti-DEI efforts in the states – often to limit the rights of LGTBQ people – are very real.
Anti-LGBTQ bills introduced at the state level have already more than doubled in 2023 compared to last year, according to data from the American Civil Liberties Union that CNN visualized back in April.
“It’s wrong that extreme officials are pushing hateful bills targeting transgender children, terrifying families and criminalizing doctors,” President Joe Biden said at the White House last week. “These are our kids. These are our neighbors. It’s cruel. It’s callous. Not somebody else’s kids. They’re all our kids.”
Gender-affirming care has become a frequent target of the right.
At a CNN town hall last week, former Vice President Mike Pence, like most Republican candidates, pledge to protect “parents rights” in schools. But he saw no discord between that and restricting the right of parents to help affirm their kids’ gender identity.
“However adults want to live, they can live,” Pence said. “But for children, we’re going to protect kids from the radical gender ideology and say no chemical or surgical transition before you’re 18.”
Gender-affirming care is medically necessary, evidence-based care that uses a multidisciplinary approach to help a person transition from their assigned gender – the one the person was designated at birth – to their affirmed gender, or the gender by which one wants to be known.
Major medical associations – including the American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry – have long agreed that gender-affirming care is clinically appropriate for children and adults. The American Medical Association House of Delegates this week reaffirmed its promise to protect access to gender-affirming care for people who identify as transgender or gender-diverse.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is unapologetic about his efforts to dismantle the state’s diversity programs and is proud of the law he signed that limits teaching about sexual orientation and gender identity. Critics call it the “don’t say gay” law.
“It is wrong for a teacher to be telling a young student that they may have been born in the wrong body, or that their gender is a choice,” DeSantis said at an event in Clive, Iowa, kicking off his presidential campaign.
“In Florida we banned teachers from forcing students to choose pronouns,” he said. It’s a line he repeats in his stump speech to applause.
He also brags about his escalating standoff with Disney after its opposition to the law, and he now baselessly accuses the media empire of inappropriate treatment of children.
Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley told CNN’s Jake Tapper at another recent CNN town hall that Florida’s law to ban discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity in most schools doesn’t go far enough.
When Tapper asked Haley to define the word “woke,” which is often hurled as a pejorative on the GOP campaign trail, she returned to trans issues.
“The fact that we have gender pronoun classes in the military now, I mean, all of these things that are pushing what a small minority want on the majority of Americans, it’s too much. It’s too much.”
“Biological boys playing in girls’ sports,” Haley said, “is the women’s issue of our time.” (The many women politically energized by the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade last year may disagree with her.)
A lightning rod for such Republican criticism is the swimmer Lia Thomas, who switched from the men’s to the women’s swimming team at the University of Pennsylvania after undergoing hormone therapy. In March of last year, she became the first transgender athlete to win an NCAA title after winning the women’s 500-yard freestyle.
But Americans have become less supportive of allowing transgender athletes to play on teams that match their gender identity in recent years. Nearly 70% of Americans believe transgender athletes should only be allowed on teams that match the sex assigned to them at birth, according to a Gallup survey released this week. In 2021, only 62% of Americans felt that way.
The Biden administration in April proposed new rules under Title IX that would oppose policies that “categorically” ban students from participating on sports teams consistent with their gender, but allow schools to enforce some restrictions on their participation in higher-level sports.
Haley, at CNN’s town hall, suggested that confusion over gender identity could contribute to suicidal thoughts among teenage girls and complained that American kids are “walking on eggshells” to avoid being cancelled.
CNN’s Eric Bradner dug up the statistic Haley mentioned and added this context: The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in February released an alarming report that found nearly 1 in 3 teen girls seriously considered attempting suicide in 2021, and that 3 in 5 teen girls “felt persistently sad or hopeless” – double the rate found among boys. However, that study made no connection between suicidal ideation and the existence of transgender youths or their participation on sports teams.
A CDC report published in April found that LGBTQ students were more likely to have seriously considered, planned and attempted suicide than heterosexual students.
He also noted that Haley has, on the campaign trail “previously misgendered Dylan Mulvaney, the transgender influencer whose promotional partnership with Bud Light ignited conservative boycotts, describing her as ‘a guy, dressed up like a girl, making fun of women.’”
