Digging INTO Politics: Homophobic attacks, Harris on Fox, and Trump on the trail

It’s now just 16 days to the 2024 November elections, only two weeks to go. As these campaigns near their ends, LGBTQ+ topics remain a big part of the conversation. Trans issues, in particular have been a target of attack ads from the Trump campaign, and homophobic attacks have started to crop up as well. With all of this going on, it can be hard to keep up with everything. We have you covered so you can know what is at stake for the queer community and be ready to cast your vote on November 5 (or before in early voting).

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This week, there was some good news, and also some not so good news. Harris’ media blitz has taken her into spaces where she is reaching out directly to traditionally Republican voters. The governor of California signed some pro-LGBTQ+ bills, but also vetoed some. And there is a growing trend of Democratic candidates capitulating to their opponents attack ads on trans issues.

Gross right-wing attacks are targeting Tim Walz

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This week, Tim Walz became a particular target for right-wing trolls, both those on Twitter/X and those who have been fired by Fox News. On Sunday, Twitter user @DocNetyoutube posted what they claimed was an email thy had received inviting a phone call to discuss Walz’s past. They reported that the caller claimed that Walz was a pedophile and a predator. The account has posted fictious stories against Harris and her campaign in the past, the email has been identified as fake, and there is nothing to support any of the hateful claims against Tim Walz. Additionally, the notably seem to mirror debunked claims from August that claimed Tim Walz had redefined “sexual orientation” to include pedophilia.

On Wednesday, Tucker Carlson went on The Megyn Kelly Show and the two spent their time claiming that Tim Walz was obviously gay. After playing a clip of Walz clapping at a rally and waving to attendees, Kelly claimed she didn’t ‘know any man who behaves like that.” Carlson went on to insinuate that the Democratic party were actually the homophobes all along because they were forcing Walz to stay quiet about his sexuality. After spending time making up baseless claims about Tim Walz’ private life, Carlson went on his own rant about how we shouldn’t pry into people’s private lives.

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Harris responded to attacks over her support of gender-affirming care in prisons

This week, Kamala Harris came for Trump where he lives, sitting down for an interview on Fox News with Brett Baier. Baier brought up Trump’s attack ads that focus on Harris’ past support of people in prisons receiving gender-affirming care. While serving as California’s attorney general in 2015, Harris denied two trans inmates requests for gender-affirming surgeries but later apologized, said she people needed to understand more about trans people’s needs, and in a 2019 ACLU questionnaire said that she supported incarcerated trans people being able to receive gender-affirming care.

When Baier asked if Harris still supported the policy, Harris said she did, but in a roundabout way. Explaining that it was the law that the government was “obligated to provide necessary medical care to all individuals in its custody, including transgender people” and that “All major U.S. medical associations have indicated that gender-affirming care is medically necessary for patients with gender dysphoria. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that denying such care violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.” The answer can feel like a bit of a cop out, as it presents the notion that she might not support trans care, but simply what is already law. However, given that this interview was on Fox News it might be reasonable to give her the benefit of the doubt and assume that she was trying to reach the viewers where they were. She also highlighted the fact that the law was followed when Trump was president as well and that he had spent $20 million on these ads based on a topic that doesn’t represent the concerns of most Americans.

Trump on the trail

Donald Trump has been making headlines with his campaign, but they might not be the headlines that he wants. At a townhall this week that was intended to be a policy Q&A where voters could get him to drill down on the details, he abandoned the format after five questions and instead gently swayed to his choices of music on stage for 40 minutes as he organized his own personal dance party. But that has drawn attention to the huge influx of anti-trans ads that Trump’s campaign has been pushing out as we near election day. Ironically, the goal appears to be to represent the Democrats as caring more about trans issues than issues that affect everyday voters. Yet Harris’ campaign is focusing on the economy, while Trump’s appears primarily focused on trans people.

At another town hall this week, Trump made other outlandish claims, including calling himself the “father of IVF” (a title that would be more appropriately given to Dr. Patrick Steptoe and Sir Robert Edwards). But perhaps most concerningly was his attacks on trans people in sports, using the transphobic dog whistle line from his campaign platform saying he wanted to “keep men out of women’s sports.” Asked how he would do this, he claimed that as president he would simply ban it, saying “you just ban it. The president bans it. You don’t let it happen. Not a big deal.” Trans participation in sports is carefully regulated by organizations such as the Internation Olympic Committee and the National Collegiate Athletic Association, as well as numerous smaller bodies. Inclusion often requires hormone treatments at certain levels be underway, and significantly more nuance is involved than Trump seems to believe.

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Florida’s anti-DEI moves hit universities

Last year, Florida passed Senate Bill 266. The bill means that schools cannot spend federal funding on any aspects of their work that might, by Florida’s definitions “distort significant historical events,” or “teach identity politics.” The effects of that bill are now being seen more fully as 12 state universities in Florida have had to remove a huge range of classes, including ones teaching LGBTQ+ Studies, Sociology of Gender, Women in Literature, and Humanities Perspectives on Gender and Sexuality. LGBTQ+ centers and support programs have also had to be shutdown as part of the response to this bill. Similar anti-DEI bills and policies have affected other states such as Georgia.

Newsom’s legislation time

Gavin Newsom, governor of California, signed several bills into law in the past week. This included SB 729, which protects access to IVF regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity, and a bill known as “California Freedom to Read Act,” which pushes back against book bans. Sadly, Newsom vetoed a bill that would have expedited the licensure process for out-of-state physicians that provide gender-affirming care. While he agreed with trying to address “healthcare gaps” when it came to gender-affirming care, he expressed concern over the expedition process creating problems down the road, creating an administrative jam, and increasing licensing fees.

Democrats waver on trans issues against Republican attacks

Last week, a Texas senate race became about trans issues after Ted Cruz attacked his Democratic opponent, Colin Allred, for supporting “boys competing with girls.” The transphobic attack was especially strange as the images used depicted Mack Beggs, a trans man who was forced to compete in the women’s wrestling competitions because Republican rules wouldn’t allow him to compete in the correct gender category. Allred responded shortly afterwards with a response that he “does not support boys in girls’ sports.” The response was the first notable time that a Democrat seemed to pick up their opponent’s dog whistle attacks and try to defend with their own transphobic remarks.

In a debate this week between Cruz and Allred, Cruz was openly transphobic, while Allred avoided making any commitments to trans rights. Cruz used the momentum from the discussion to suggest that Allred’s support for the Equality Act was about attacking women’s sports.  The bipartisan bill is about providing protections against discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity which will support both those in the LGBTQ+ community and others. But Allred also set a precedent for Democratic candidates. This week in Ohio, JD Vance’s coworker, the state’s Democratic senator who is running for a fourth term released a response to a Republican smear campaign that claimed he “voted multiple times to allow transgender biological males in women’s sports” and “supported allowing minor children to receive sex change surgeries.” Brown’s response does not defend trans people in sports or gender-affirming care for trans people, but rather highlights that the state has already banned trans women from playing in sports and sides with the state’s anti-trans governor by saying that the decision should be left to sports leagues. Erin Reed has pointed out how the ad “reinforces the narrative that transgender women are ‘biological men.’” The desire to try to avoid Republican attacks by sidestepping issues and not defending trans people could be extremely dangerous in the future. It will make it harder for trans affirming legislation to be on the books in these states in the future and will lose these candidates votes from the LGBTQ+ community at a time when they need to be supporting trans people, not capitulating to hateful members of a base who won’t vote for them anyway.

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