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Politics|How a Campaign Against Transgender Rights Mobilized Conservatives

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/16/us/politics/transgender-conservative-campaign.html
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HOW A CAMPAIGN AGAINST TRANSGENDER RIGHTS MOBILIZED CONSERVATIVES

Defeated on same-sex marriage, the religious right went searching for an issue
that would re-energize supporters and donors. The campaign that followed has
stunned political leaders across the spectrum.

Credit...Christopher Lee for The New York Times

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By Adam Nagourney and Jeremy W. Peters

 * April 16, 2023Updated 2:40 p.m. ET

When the Supreme Court declared a constitutional right to same-sex marriage
nearly eight years ago, social conservatives were set adrift.

The ruling stripped them of an issue they had used to galvanize rank-and-file
supporters and big donors. And it left them searching for a cause that — like
opposing gay marriage — would rally the base and raise the movement’s profile on
the national stage.

“We knew we needed to find an issue that the candidates were comfortable talking
about,” said Terry Schilling, the president of American Principles Project, a
social conservative advocacy group. “And we threw everything at the wall.”

What has stuck, somewhat unexpectedly, is the issue of transgender identity,
particularly among young people. Today, the effort to restrict transgender
rights has supplanted same-sex marriage as an animating issue for social
conservatives at a pace that has stunned political leaders across the spectrum.
It has reinvigorated a network of conservative groups, increased fund-raising
and set the agenda in school boards and state legislatures.



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The campaign has been both organic and deliberate, and has even gained speed
since Donald J. Trump, an ideological ally, left the White House. Since then, at
least 20 states, all controlled by Republicans, have enacted laws that reach
well beyond the initial debates over access to bathrooms and into medical
treatments, participation in sports and policies on discussing gender in
schools.


Image
“We knew we needed to find an issue that the candidates were comfortable talking
about,” said Terry Schilling, the president of American Principles Project, a
social conservative advocacy group. “And we threw everything at the
wall.”Credit...Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times


About 1.3 million adults and 300,000 children in the United States identify as
transgender. These efforts have thrust them, at a moment of increased visibility
and vulnerability, into the center of the nation’s latest battle over cultural
issues.

“It’s a strange world to live in,” said Ari Drennen, the L.G.B.T.Q. program
director for Media Matters, a liberal media monitoring group that tracks the
legislation. As a transgender woman, she said, she feels unwelcome in whole
swaths of the country where states have attacked her right “just to exist in
public.”

The effort started with a smattering of Republican lawmakers advancing
legislation focused on transgender girls’ participation in school sports. And it
was accelerated by a few influential Republican governors who seized on the
issue early.



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But it was also the result of careful planning by national conservative
organizations to harness the emotion around gender politics. With gender norms
shifting and a sharp rise in the number of young people identifying as
transgender, conservative groups spotted an opening in a debate that was gaining
attention.


ON BEING TRANSGENDER IN AMERICA

 * Title IX: The Biden administration proposed a rule change that would allow
   schools to block some transgender athletes from competing on sports teams
   that match their gender identities.
 * School Sports: The Supreme Court issued a temporary order allowing a
   transgender girl to compete on the girls’ track team at a West Virginia
   middle school.
 * G.O.P.’s Anti-Transgender Push: Republican state lawmakers are pushing more
   sweeping anti-transgender bills than ever before, including bans on
   transition care for young adults up to 26.
 * In Kentucky: The G.O.P.-dominated state legislature voted to override the
   governor’s veto of a bill that will create a host of new regulations and
   restrictions on transgender youth.

“It’s a sense of urgency,” said Matt Sharp, the senior counsel with the Alliance
Defending Freedom, an organization that has provided strategic and legal counsel
to state lawmakers as they push through legislation on transgender rights. The
issue, he argued, is “what can we do to protect the children?”

Mr. Schilling said the issue had driven in thousands of new donors to the
American Principles Project, most of them making small contributions.

The appeal played on the same resentments and cultural schisms that have
animated Mr. Trump’s political movement: invocations against so-called
“wokeness,” skepticism about science, parental discontent with public schools
after the Covid-19 pandemic shutdowns and anti-elitism.

Nadine Smith, the executive director of Equality Florida, a group that fights
discrimination against L.G.B.T.Q. people, said there was a direct line from the
right’s focus on transgender children to other issues it has seized on in the
name of “parents’ rights” — such as banning books and curriculums that teach
about racism.



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“In many ways, the trans sports ban was the test balloon in terms of how they
can frame these things,” she said. “Once they opened that parents’ rights frame,
they began to use it everywhere.”

For now, the legislation has advanced almost exclusively in
Republican-controlled states: Those same policies have drawn strong opposition
from Democrats who have applauded the increased visibility of transgender people
— in government, corporations and Hollywood — and policies protecting
transgender youths.

The 2024 presidential election appears poised to provide a national test of the
reach of this issue. The two leading Republican presidential contenders, Mr.
Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who has not officially declared a bid,
have aggressively supported measures curtailing transgender rights.


Image

“The trans sports ban was the test balloon in terms of how they can frame these
things,” Nadine Smith, the executive director of Equality Florida, said. “Once
they opened that parents’ rights frame, they began to use it everywhere.”
Credit...Octavio Jones for The New York Times


It may prove easier for Republicans like Mr. Trump and Mr. DeSantis to talk
about transgender issues than about abortion, an issue that has been a mainstay
of the conservative movement. The Supreme Court decision overturning the
constitutional right to abortion created a backlash among Democrats and
independents that has left many Republicans unsure of how — or whether — to
address the issue.



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Polling suggests that the public is less likely to support transgender rights
than same-sex marriage and abortion rights. In a poll conducted in 2022, the
Public Policy Research Institute, a nonpartisan research group, found that 68
percent of respondents favored allowing same-sex couples to marry, including 49
percent of Republicans.

By contrast, a poll by the Pew Research Center found that 58 percent of
Americans supported requiring that transgender athletes compete on teams that
match the sex they were assigned at birth; 85 percent of Republicans held that
view.

“For many religious and political conservatives, the same-sex marriage issue has
been largely decided — and for the American public, absolutely,” said Kelsy
Burke, an associate professor of sociology at the University of
Nebraska—Lincoln. “That’s not true when it comes to these transgender issues.
Americans are much more divided, and this is an issue that can gain a lot more
traction.”


Image

The singer Anita Bryant championed the “Save Our Children” campaign in 1977 to
repeal a local ordinance in Dade-Miami County that prohibited discrimination
based on sexual orientation, a historic setback for the modern gay rights
movements.Credit...Bettmann/Getty Images


The focus on perceived threats to impressionable children has a long history in
American sexual politics. It has its roots in the “Save Our Children” campaign
championed in 1977 by Anita Bryant, the singer known for her orange juice
commercials, to repeal a local ordinance in Dade-Miami County that prohibited
discrimination based on sexual orientation, a historic setback for the modern
gay rights movements.



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The initial efforts by the conservative movement to deploy transgender issues
did not go well. In 2016, North Carolina legislators voted to bar transgender
people from using the bathroom of their preference. It created a backlash so
harsh — from corporations, sports teams and even Bruce Springsteen — that
lawmakers eventually rescinded the bill.

As a result, conservatives went looking for a new approach to the issue. Mr.
Schilling’s organization, for instance, conducted polling to determine whether
curbing transgender rights had resonance with voters — and, if they did, the
best way for candidates to talk about it. In 2019, the group’s research found
that voters were significantly more likely to support a Republican candidate who
favored a ban on transgender girls participating in school sports — particularly
when framed as a question of whether “to allow men and boys to compete against
women and girls” — than a candidate pushing for a ban on transgender people
using a bathroom of their choosing.

With that evidence in hand, and transgender athletes gaining attention,
particularly in right-wing media, conservatives decided to focus on two main
fronts: legislation that addressed participation in sports and laws curtailing
the access of minors to medical transition treatments.

In March 2020, Idaho became the first state to bar transgender girls from
participating in girls’ and women’s sports, with a bill supporters in the
Republican-controlled legislature called the “Fairness in Women’s Sports Act.”

A burst of state legislation began the next year after Democrats took control of
Congress and the White House, ending four years in which social conservatives
successfully pushed the Trump administration to enact restrictions through
executive orders.



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In the spring of 2021, the Republican-controlled legislature in Arkansas
overrode a veto by Gov. Asa Hutchinson, a Republican, to enact legislation that
made it illegal for minors to receive transition medication or surgery.

It was the first such ban in the country — and it was quickly embraced by
national groups and circulated to lawmakers in other statehouses as a road map
for their own legislation. The effort capitalized on an existing disagreement in
the medical profession over when to offer medical transition care to minors.
Despite that debate, leading medical groups in the United States, including the
American Academy of Pediatrics, say the care should be available to minors and
oppose legislative bans.

Later that spring, Mr. DeSantis, the Florida governor, traveled to a private
Christian school in Jacksonville to sign a bill barring transgender girls from
playing K-12 sports. With his approval, Florida became the largest state to date
to enact such restrictions, and Mr. DeSantis signaled how important this issue
was to his political aspirations.

“In Florida, girls are going to play girls’ sports and boys are going to play
boys’ sports,” he said, winning applause from conservatives he would need to
defeat Mr. Trump.

To some extent, this surge of legislation was spontaneous. Ms. Drennen, of Media
Matters, said state lawmakers appeared to be acting out of a “general animus”
toward transgender people, as well as a fear of political reprisals. “They are
worried about this coming up in a primary,” she said.



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But for several years, conservative Christian legal groups like the Alliance
Defending Freedom and the Liberty Counsel have been shifting their resources.


Image

For now, the legislation has advanced almost exclusively in
Republican-controlled states: Those same policies have drawn strong opposition
from Democrats.Credit...Joseph Prezioso/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Image

The 2024 presidential election appears poised to provide a national test of
Americans’ support for transgender rights.Credit...Andrew
Caballero-Reynolds/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images


In 2018, Kristen Waggoner, then the general counsel of the Alliance Defending
Freedom, was the lead counsel in the Supreme Court defending a Colorado baker
who, citing religious beliefs, refused to make a wedding cake for a same-sex
couple. The court ruled narrowly in favor of the baker.

The next year, the Alliance took on a case involving a group of high school
girls in Connecticut who challenged the state and five school boards for
permitting transgender students to participate in women’s sports. Their lawsuit
was rejected by a federal appeals court, but in February the court said it would
reinstate the challenge and rehear the case.

Mathew D. Staver, the founder and chairman of the Liberty Counsel, which was a
major force behind a 2008 voter initiative in California that banned same-sex
marriage, said the group is now fighting gender policies in the courts. It has
challenged laws, often enacted in states controlled by Democrats, that restrict
counseling services designed to change a person’s gender identity or sexual
orientation, often referred to as conversion therapy.



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“Those counseling bans violate first-amendment speech, because they only allow
one point of view on the subject of sexuality,” he said.


Image

In March 2021, Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota declined to sign a bill that
would have banned transgender girls from sports teams. She later reversed
course. Credit...Cooper Neill for The New York Times


Though some on the left are still uncertain about how to best navigate the
fraught politics of transgender issues, there’s an emerging consensus on the
right. The case of what happened to Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota, a rising
star in the Republican Party, is instructive.

In March 2021, Ms. Noem declined to sign a bill passed by her state’s
Republican-controlled legislature that would have banned transgender girls from
sports teams from kindergarten through college. Conservative groups accused her
of bowing to “socially left-wing factions.” Tucker Carlson of Fox News, in a
tense interview with Ms. Noem, implied she was bowing to “big business” in
refusing to sign the bill.

“There’s a real political effort now that will extract a punishment from you if
you betray the social conservatives,” said Frank Cannon, a founder of the
American Principles Project. He said the episode with Ms. Noem “sent a signal to
every other governor in the country.”



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Eleven months later, the governor appeared to have received the message, signing
a similar version of the bill in the interest, she said that day, of “fairness.”








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