Just say 'no' to the hatred and bigotry

Let's use our votes to send a message to Trump and MAGA about their abuse of women, immigrants, and transgender people

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

Many conservatives once claimed to believe in the dignity of all people. They professed to embrace individual freedom. They touted their belief that big government must stay out of the way as people go about their lives.

If people are minding their business, conservatives once said they believed, then the government and everyone else should mind their own business.

Ronald Reagan stated those beliefs well: “The dignity and worth of every human being, and the right to freedom and equal justice, are eternal principles that must always be upheld.”

And Barry Goldwater put it more succinctly: “There is no place in this country for practicing religious bigotry, and that’s what it is when you tell me that to live my life, I have to live it the way you live yours.”

I’m not suggesting the conservative movement fully embraced these sentiments — far from it. Still, its intense distrust of government and professed respect for individual liberty occasionally kept some of its worst instincts at bay.

That was then.

That was the conservative movement of the past. That was a Republican Party that, if it ever existed, is no longer.

What was once a “conservative” movement is now a cult of personality animated not by respect for the individual but, instead, by hatred of “the other.”

It is a mean-spirited crusade that disparages immigrants of all kinds.

It’s an ugly movement that denigrates women, denies them bodily autonomy, and deprives them of vital reproductive care.

And it’s a nasty coalition of hatred for and fear of one of the country’s most vulnerable groups: transgender people.

The Trump/MAGA/GOP campaign of disdain toward women and immigrants has been at the forefront for years. No one must tell you how much Trump and his movement detest and disregard women’s reproductive rights or how much they despise immigrants.

But GOP loathing of transgender people has received far less attention.

While I’m hopeful Tuesday’s election results will send a resounding message about Americans’ desire to restore reproductive rights and to respect and embrace legal immigration, I’m just as eager for this election to send an unmistakable message about Americans’ disgust over the hatred, fear, and bigotry directed at transgender people.

If you don’t live in a battleground state, you may not know how much of Trump’s campaign is built around this particular hatred. Here’s the text of a typical spot that Trump’s campaign has been running in battleground states:

Narrator: Kamala supports taxpayer-funded sex changes for prisoners.

Kamala Harris: Surgery —

Interviewer: For prisoners.

Harris: — for prisoners, every transgender inmate in the prison system would have access.

Narrator: It’s hard to believe, but it’s true. Even the liberal media was shocked Kamala supports taxpayer-funded sex changes for prisoners and illegal aliens.

Harris: Every transgender inmate would have access.

Narrator: Kamala’s for they/them. President Trump is for you.

According to CBS News, Trump has invested heavily in this messaging:

The Trump campaign has spent more than $19 million on two television ads that have aired nearly 55,000 times since Oct. 1, according to data from AdImpact. Make America Great Again Inc., the leading super political action committee supporting Trump, has spent more than $1.1 million during the same time period on a similar ad that has aired more than 6,000 times. 

The campaign's ads are playing in all battleground states and airing during NFL and college football games, a Trump campaign official said. 

The ads focus on taxpayer-funded gender transitions for people in prison and immigrant detainees. They use Vice President Kamala Harris' comments from 2019 in which she said she supported transgender inmates having access to gender-affirming surgery. She made similar comments in an American Civil Liberties Union questionnaire in 2019, saying she supported "medically necessary care" for federal inmates and detained migrants. 

First, let’s be clear: Trump and his allies don’t care about this issue.

During his presidency, Trump could have changed the policy mentioned in this spot. He didn’t. 

As Kamala Harris said a few weeks ago, “I will follow the law. And it’s a law that Donald Trump actually followed. I think, frankly, that ad from the Trump campaign is a little bit of like throwing stones when you're living in a glass house.” 

As she noted, Trump kept in place “hormone or other necessary medical treatment” for transgender inmates. In a budget request, Trump administration officials even defended their decision as a “statutory mandate to provide basic medical and mental health care” for all inmates.

If Trump wanted to end this legitimate but rare practice, he would have done so when he lived in the White House. But he didn’t. And that’s because it’s only a cynical concern to him and his allies during campaign season when they can exploit ignorance to stoke fear and loathing of a vulnerable population.

Just as Trump scuttled the bipartisan immigration bill because he needed an issue, not a solution, he is using transgender people as a symbol that he hopes will make Harris and other Democrats look deviant.

But here’s the problem: While such messaging might work with Trump’s base of deplorables, ordinary people are turned off by such hatred.

Decent people who want a government that works for them don’t get how depriving transgender people of the care they need will make anyone’s life better. Not to mention that I think average people — even if they don’t support gender-affirming care — don’t see any need to spew hate-filled insults about it.

This is not just a feeling. Data back it up.

National polling released recently by Data For Progress revealed:

• The use of political attack ads against transgender people was described as “sad and shameful” by most Democrats (61%) and Independents (58%) and even by a plurality of Republicans (41%). Most voters also said that they feel that these ads are “mean-spirited” and “out of hand.”

• 85% of Republicans said candidates should back away from transgender messaging, more than the share of Democratic (75%) and independent (82%) voters who said the same.

• By a more than 20-point margin (52% to 31%), voters said they would back a candidate who supports transgender rights over a candidate who opposes them; by similar margins (52% to 29%), voters trust the Democratic Party over the Republican Party to oversee transgender issues.

Another study from Ground Media found that Trump’s anti-trans spots generated “no statistically significant shift” in voter choice, mobilization, or voting likelihood.

As Kathryn Smith of the Human Rights Campaign observed, “It’s not just the ads that voters dislike, it’s also the policies.”

Data for Progress found that among likely voters, nearly three in four (74%) say that transgender people deserve to be treated with dignity and respect; 58% of respondents believe the government should be “less involved in regulating what transgender people are allowed to do, including health care they can receive”-- including 61% of Independents and a plurality (45%) of Republicans; 55% of respondents there is too much legislation targeting transgender people, and view them as “political theater.”

On policy grounds, Trump is badly misguided on transgender rights.

He’s wrong on reproductive rights and immigration, too.

We can discuss the policies of all these issues another time. But my concern here is the dark motivation behind Trump’s positions and his messaging: Exploiting fear and hatred of “the other.”

With women, it’s a long, disgraceful, well-document record of misogyny and rape and sexual abuse of women.

With immigrants, it’s peddling fear and racism that he knows animates a significant portion of his base.

Finally, regarding transgender people, it’s bigotry and fear of “the other.”

It’s all ugly, dark, and dangerous — and, in each case, it puts the lives of people in these groups at risk.

Trump has nothing positive to offer independents and undecided voters. What he’s pitching, instead, is fearmongering to drive up his MAGA numbers in the basest, ugliest major presidential campaign in over a hundred years.

It’s that raw, undisguised bigotry that makes all this so abhorrent.

And that’s why Tuesday’s election must send a signal to Trump and every other hate-filled MAGA clone who tries to stoke fear and hatred of vulnerable people.

The message must be loud and unmistakable: The American voting public won’t tolerate hate campaigns that target vulnerable individuals.

On Nov. 5, you and I can condemn Trump’s bigotry with our votes. Let’s go do it!

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