Congressional candidate sees GOP attacks on transgender people as attack on democracy

LGBT rights activist Sarah McBride speaks during the final day of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, Thursday, July 28, 2016. | J. Scott Applewhite/AP

MAGA Republicans will not get away with using their increasing attacks on transgender people to gin up votes for themselves in November if Sarah McBride, a Delaware Democrat running for Congress, has her way. If elected she will be the first transgender member of Congress and she says she will represent everyone, not just the wealthy few.

“We know the stakes in this election and what MAGA will do to LGBTQ people and especially trans people if given the opportunity,” she declared before the LGBTQ Caucus at the Democratic National Convention in August.

“They’ve made crystal clear their project 2025 agenda and in state legislatures across the country. They’ve given us a glimpse of the America they have in store for our community. And we’re not going backward,” she said.

McBride stands to make history as the first openly transgender member of Congress if elected to an open seat in November. McBride is one of hundreds of LGBTQ candidates running in an atmosphere of homophobia and anti-trans hate created by MAGA Republicans and their assault on democratic and LGBTQ rights. It’s a campaign they hope will scare voters into backing them in November.

MAGA and white Christian nationalists vow to “weaponize the U.S. government to authorize, encourage and mandate widespread anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination” if they prevail in November, eerily reminiscent of LGBTQ persecution during the Nazi era in Germany. It was a horrific policy of not just hate toward LGBTQ people but a policy also aimed at winning support from the majority who they sought to scare into believing that LGBTQ rights somehow threaten, rather than strengthen everyone’s rights.

But “if Democrats win the White House and Congressional majorities it will be possible to make advances on issues across the board,” said McBride. “We know we can deliver livable wages, affordable childcare, and housing, universal health care, protect reproductive freedom, voting rights, and LGBTQ rights. We are here to make hope and history rhyme.”

For example, “we can get the Equality Act to a pro-equality president’s desk,” she declared.

The Equality Act would ensure existing civil rights protections cover sexual orientation and gender identity in the way that they already do for race, disability, and veteran status across critical areas of life, including employment, housing, credit, education, public spaces, and services, federally funded programs, and jury service.

The diverse LGBTQ community is a vital part of the anti-MAGA majority coalition. In July, a GLAAD poll found 70% of LGBTQ voters planned to vote for President Biden, including 72% in battleground states.

As of 2024, 810 openly LGBTQ elected officials serve locally. Voters have elected nine openly LGBTQ members in the United States House of Representatives, three openly LGBTQ U.S. Senators, three governors, and many state elected officials.

And scores are running for office this year, overwhelmingly as Democrats, including a record ten LGBTQ candidates for the Iowa state legislature. McBride is one of six other LGBTQ members who hope to be elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, expanding the LGBTQ caucus to 15 members.

“We are expanding LGBTQ representation to an extent that would have been unthinkable for most of our nation’s history. We are on the verge of electing the first trans member of Congress, Sarah McBride,” Equality PAC co-chair Rep. Ritchie Torres told LGBTQ Victory PAC.

If Trump wins the White House and MAGA Republicans win a Congressional majority, they are prepared to implement a “catastrophic rollback” of LGBTQ rights. Their governing agenda, Project 2025, is a blueprint to impose a Christian Nationalist fascist regime on the U.S. and roll back every democratic advance won over the past 100-plus years.

Many in its crosshairs

Project 2025 has women, people of color, immigrants, and the LGBTQ community in its crosshairs. The MAGA Republicans are implementing their anti-LGBTQ agenda in the so-called “red” states they govern. This year, Republicans introduced 530 anti-LGBTQ laws in state legislatures, including attacks on gender definition, censorship, gender-affirming care, and bans on transgender athletes. While Democrats defeated most bills, MAGA Republicans and their allies whipped up hate and attacks on the most vulnerable communities to a frenzy.

Among other things, Project 2025 would roll back existing nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQ people in housing, healthcare, employment, education, and a range of federal programs. Project 2025 reinstates the transgender military ban and codifies state restrictions on transgender rights at the federal level, in addition to limiting recognition of same-sex relationships.

Government policy under Project 2025 would end all acknowledgement of an acceptance of gender identity and LGBTQ people, and only recognize marriages between a man and a woman and the traditional family ideal of a man and woman. Trump has repeatedly said that he would ban gender-affirming care for minors.

The MAGA-dominated U.S. Supreme Court and right-wing-dominated lower courts also threaten LGBTQ rights. The repeal of Roe vs. Wade and federal protections for abortion ominously opened the door to the repeal of LGBTQ rights, including marriage equality.

Before 2015, whether a same-sex couple could marry varied by state. With its landmark 5-4 decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, the Supreme Court extended the federal right to marry to same-sex couples.

“In Clarence Thomas’s (concurring opinion in striking down Roe vs. Wade) he says the quiet part out loud: next they are coming for Windsor and Obergefell and Lawrence,” HRC Kelley Robinson says. These Supreme Court landmark rulings created the right to marriage equality for LGBTQ people.

In Lawrence vs Texas in 2003, the Supreme Court ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment protects the right of consenting adults to engage in private sexual activity without state interference. In United States vs. Windsor in 2010, the Supreme Court struck down the Defense of Marriage Act that defines marriage as a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife.

Project 2025 would also abolish executive orders, regulations, and rules and eliminate scores of departments and agencies responsible for protecting LGBTQ rights.

White Christian Nationalists are a critical part of the MAGA coalition and have woven their racist, patriarchal, and homophobic ideas throughout Project 2025. They refuse to recognize gender equality and LGBTQ rights, and a current of Christian Nationalists even believe LGBTQ people should be subject to physical violence and even executed.

“While I’m not running to make history with an election, I’m running to make a historic change on all of the issues that matter,” said McBride. “We do know that if you’re not at the table you’re on the menu. And people like me, like many of us – we’re on the menu right now. We’re not going back!”

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CONTRIBUTOR

John Bachtell

John Bachtell is president of Long View Publishing Co., the publisher of People's World. He is active in electoral, labor, environmental, and social justice struggles. He grew up in Ohio, where he attended Antioch College in Yellow Springs. He currently lives in Chicago.