Days after the Supreme Court struck down abortion rights, Michigan’s Republican gubernatorial candidates were asked if it was time to also roll back constitutional protections for gay rights.
None of the five candidates came out in support of same-sex marriage.
“They need to rethink all of this,” one candidate, Garrett Soldano, said during the debate in Warren, Michigan.
“The Michigan Constitution,” said another candidate, Ralph Reband, “says that for the betterment of society, marriage is between a man and a woman.”
Since the Supreme Court’s decision last month overturning Roe v. Wade, anti-gay rhetoric and calls to roll back established LGBTQ protections have grown bolder. And while congressional Republicans appear deeply divided on same-sex marriage — nearly 50 House Republicans on Tuesday joined Democrats in supporting a bill that would recognize same-sex marriage at the federal level — many Republican officials and candidates across the country have gay bashing and transgender rights are the norm for parties this midseason.
In Texas, Attorney General Ken Paxton said after Roe was overturned that he would be “willing and able” to defend in the Supreme Court any law criminalizing sodomy passed by the Legislature. The Texas Republican Party previously adopted a platform that called homosexuality an “abnormal lifestyle choice.”
Protesters at the Texas Capitol in Austin rallied in March against the governor’s executive order targeting medical treatment provided to transgender adolescents. Credit… Christopher Lee for The New York Times
In Utah, Republican state Senate President Stuart Adams said he would support his state joining others to pressure the Supreme Court to overturn the right of same-sex couples to marry. In Arizona, Carrie Lake, a gubernatorial candidate backed by Donald J. Trump, in a June 29 debate, reaffirmed his support for a bill banning children from drag shows, the latest target of hyperbolic rhetoric on the right.
And in the Michigan governor’s race, Mr. Soldano ran an ad disparaging the use of specific pronouns by those who don’t fit traditional gender roles (“My pronouns: conservative/patriot”) and accusing the “woke barbershop mob” of wanting to indoctrinate children.
Some Democrats and LGBTQ advocates say the Republican attacks have deepened their concern that overturning Roe could undermine other cases built on the same legal foundation — the right to privacy enshrined in the Fourteenth Amendment — and lead to an increase in hate crimes such as the suicides of LGBTQ youth.
“The dominoes have started to fall, and they’re not going to stop at one,” said Attorney General Dana Nessel of Michigan, a Democrat who was the first openly gay person elected to statewide office there. “People need to see the connection between reproductive rights, LGBTQ rights, women’s rights, interracial marriage — all of these things are connected legally.”
Already this year, Republican-led states have passed numerous restrictions on transgender youth and on school discussions of sexual orientation and gender.
In June, Louisiana became the 18th state, all with GOP-led legislatures, to ban transgender students from playing on sports teams that match their gender identity. Four states have passed laws banning the transition to medical treatments for people under 18, such as puberty blockers, hormones and surgeries — which advocates call gender-affirming care. And after Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida signed a law in March banning classroom discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity in the early grades, more than a dozen other states tried to follow suit.
In total, more than 300 bills to limit LGBTQ rights have been introduced this year in 23 states, according to the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBTQ advocacy organization.
The bills under consideration focus not on same-sex marriage but on transgender youth, on restricting school programs and on allowing groups to deny services to LGBTQ people based on religious belief. Most of the measures have no chance of passage due to opposition from Democrats and moderate Republicans.
Still, the Human Rights Campaign characterized 2021 as the worst year on record for anti-LGBTQ laws after states passed seven measures barring transgender athletes from participating in sports teams that match their gender identity. So far in 2022, those numbers are already higher.
Officials and right-wing television commentators have accused opponents of some of these new restrictions of seeking to “sexualize” or “groom” children. Grooming refers to the tactic used by sexual predators to manipulate their victims, but it has spread widely from the right to brand gay and transgender people as child prodigals, harkening back to an earlier era of homophobia.
Some conservative advocacy groups that have focused resources on transgender restrictions insist they are not focused on challenging the Supreme Court’s 2015 ruling on same-sex marriage. But many LGBTQ advocates say they believe their hard-won rights are under attack.
“The far right is emboldened in a way it hasn’t been in five decades,” said state Rep. Daniel Hernandez Jr. of Arizona, a Democrat and co-founder of the Legislature’s LGBTQ caucus. “In addition to trying to create even more restrictions on abortion, they are going after the LGBTQ community even more.”
Republicans say the laws targeting transgender youth are not transphobic — as the left sees them — but protect girls’ sports and stop irreversible medical treatment.
In Utah in March, state lawmakers in Salt Lake City listened to a protest against transgender athletes. Credit… Samuel Metz/Associated Press
They said the issues have the power to alienate centrist voters, who polls show are less committed to transgender rights than to same-sex marriage. A Washington Post poll from the University of Maryland in May found that 55 percent of Americans oppose allowing transgender girls to compete on girls’ high school teams. In a Gallup poll last year, 51 percent of Americans said gender reassignment was “morally wrong.”
“I believe these are huge issues for voters and moderate voters,” said Terry Schilling, president of the American Principles Project, a group that opposes civil rights protections for LGBTQ people and plans to spend up to $12 million on ads before November .
One of the group’s ads follows Rep. Peter Meyer, Republican of Michigan, facing a primary challenge next month to co-sponsor a House bill that combines anti-discrimination protections for LGBTQ people with exemptions for religious groups. Saying the bill “will put men in girls’ dressing rooms,” the ad asks, “Would you trust Meijer with your daughter?”
In contrast, Gov. Tom Wolf of Pennsylvania, a Democrat, said “hate has no place” in the state after vetoing a bill against transgender sports. Had it become law, he said, the ban would have had a “devastating impact on a vulnerable population already at greater risk of bullying and depression.”
A 2022 study by the Trevor Project, a suicide prevention group, found that nearly one in five transgender or gender nonconforming young people had attempted suicide in the past year. LGBTQ youth who feel accepted in their schools and communities report lower rates of suicide attempts.
The rise in transgender restrictions reflects a reversal of fortunes for social conservatives from just a few years ago, when a focus on “bathroom bills” caused a backlash. A North Carolina law passed in 2016 requiring people to use public restrooms corresponding to their birth gender contributed to the defeat of the Republican governor who signed it.
“It’s made a lot of people worried about pursuing transgender rights,” said Jillian Branstetter, communications strategist for the ACLU, who is transgender.
But that changed with the focus on sports teams and transitional medicine for minors, she said.
On the right, transgender restrictions have been pushed by advocacy groups that have long opposed LGBTQ rights and in some cases were consulted in the drafting of legislation. And on the left, the flurry of legislation was used by liberal organizations to mobilize their base, raise funds and help turn out voters in midterm primaries in a hostile national political climate for Democrats.
In Arizona, where Republicans control the legislature and the governor’s office, a law passed this year bars trans girls from competing on gender-identified sports teams and from undergoing transition surgery for under-18s.
“My colleagues on the right have spent more time demonizing me and the LGBTQ community than I’ve ever seen,” said Mr. Hernandez, a state representative who is running in the Aug. 2 Democratic congressional primary in Tucson. seat area.
In the Arizona gubernatorial primary, Ms. Lake, the Trump-backed candidate who leads in some polls, took advantage of the recent uproar over drag performers — in response to a viral video of children at a drag show in Dallas — to show off your sharpness swipe right.
“They kicked God out of schools and welcomed Drag Queens,” Ms Lake said in a tweet last month. “They took down our flag and replaced it with a rainbow.” And Republican leaders in the Arizona Legislature, denouncing “sexual perversion,” called for a law banning children from drag shows.
Carrie Lake, left, at a rally in Tucson. Ms. Lake, the Trump-backed candidate for governor of Arizona, seized on the recent scandal surrounding drag performers. Credit… Rebecca Noble/Reuters
But Phoenix drag performer Rick Stevens accused Ms Lake, who he said had been a friend for years, of hypocrisy. “I’ve had a show for Carrie’s birthday, I’ve performed at her house (with kids in attendance) and I’ve performed…
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