TOWN HALL TRANSGENDER RIGHTS: At last night's Town Hall, one of the top focuses of the GOP was the Women's Athletics a/k/a anti-trans kids bill. It was the only area of questioning last night where my temper was tried and I kept the responses as milquetoast as possible to avoid escalating with them.
Today is Trans Visibility Day. And Axios published a data heavy article on anti-trans legislation. A key component to keep in mind is that this focus on Women's athletics is not a random choice of focus. Axios shows a majority of Americans support laws protecting Trans people, but a majority support requiring Trans kids to play on sports teams that reflect their gender assigned at birth. So anti-Trans efforts are focused on this narrow wedge issue, which as I explained last night, is used to put a definition into law that there are two genders and you can only be the one assigned at birth. Basically defining Trans kids out of existence in law. So it is important to always push back on this issue, but it needs to be done with finesse as it has been chosen by anti-Trans activists as it puts them on their strongest foot.
State of play: The legislative proposals come at a time when roughly eight in 10 Americans believe there's some discrimination against transgender people in our society, a 2022 Pew Research Center survey found.
The survey also found that most Americans favor laws to protect trans people from discrimination.
But the survey also gave a clue why conservative Christians and Republicans have focused on high school athletes in many bills: It said about six in 10 Americans favor requiring transgender athletes to compete on teams that match their sex at birth.
Representative Bob Marshall
*This post is solely the opinion of the author and not necessarily the opinion of the Douglas Co. Democratic Party.