We’re just a week and a half from election day on November 5. The closer we get to the election, the more anti-trans ads and talking points seem to come out of the Republican campaign. Meanwhile, the Democrats have started speaking up more in defense of trans people, despite fresh attacks that include deepfakes. Early voting is already underway and in the 2024 election there’s a lot at stake for the queer community. If you haven’t cast your vote yet, make sure you’re informed, check out our guide to voting while trans, and take a friend with you to vote.
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It’s been a bizarre week in the headlines. Just around Trump alone, the ex-president put on a strange display at a McDonald’s drive-thru, we heard about how Trump admires Hitler, and also got the scoop on what Trump knows about the late Arnold Palmer’s genitals. Similarly, the LGBTQ+ news has obviously been dominated by the election. New responses and studies on anti-trans attack ads reveal what their true effect is. Trump has clarified his plan for education has only one goal. And we find ourselves back to having marriage equality on the ballot this November.
Anti-Trans ads don’t work (when it comes to votes)
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Time and again, it has been shown that the Republicans who make their campaigns about demonizing trans people fail more often than they succeed. That hasn’t stopped Trump and his cohort from pushing anti-trans ads throughout this election series with wilder and wilder lies about trans people, sports, and surgeries being given to kids. As Trump continues to attack Harris over trans people in prisons receiving healthcare, a new survey shows once again why these campaigns aren’t a good idea politically. Data for Progress released their polling data, which showed that respondents on both sides of the political aisle felt that trans people “deserve to be treated with respect,” and that both Democrats and Republicans need to spend less time talking about trans issues. Even 41% of Republicans felt that Republican candidates’ use of anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric in their campaigns was “sad and shameful.”
Republicans are attempting to appeal to a vocal minority of voters who have come to believe the demonizing lies about trans people, and that has been pushing away more moderate voters. However, that doesn’t mean these ads aren’t having an effect. This week Ground Media also released new research results. As expected they found that the anti-trans ads aren’t affecting people’s voting plans. What they are doing however is damaging the social support for trans people in the United States. People might not vote differently, but those who take the ads to heart have become less inclined to accept someone in their lives who comes out as trans and are less likely to support gender-affirming care. It might not be winning the election for Trump and other Republicans, but it is doing serious damage in an insidious way.
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The vast majority of voters across all parties said that political parties should focus less on transgender issues.
Attacks on Tim Walz are coming from Russia
Last week, we talked about the right-wing attacks against Tim Walz that try to smear him as a pedophile or take a homophobic tack of implying he is gay. We’re getting more information on the origins of these sexual assault allegations which have all been shown to be entirely false. Far-right accounts have been spreading fake claims about Tim Walz that have arisen from QAnon spaces. These include deepfake videos that appear to portray ex-students of Walz making claims against him. These have quickly been identified as fake, but the origin of the deepfakes might be more concerning, if not terribly surprising. It appears that the organization behind these is Storm-1516, a network that also tried to claim that Harris had committed a hit-and-run in the past. The group is a propaganda network backed by the Kremlin and appears to represent another attempt from Russia to influence US elections.
Democrats speak up on trans issues
Throughout the 2024 presidential campaign, it has been noticeable that Trump’s side have been loud on trans issues, claiming it is all that the Dems talk about, while Harris has been relatively quiet on trans issues. The last week has seen a bit of a turn on that. After recent weeks when democrats like Colin Allred in Texas responded to Ted Cruz’s baiting with language that veered into transphobic territory, that might have been a concern. But the responses from Harris and Walz have been some mild comfort.
Talking on the We Can Do Hard things podcast, Walz responded to a question about what the administration would do to “protect our queer kids today.” His response covered not only what they would do, but also chastised the Trump campaign for their approach:
We need to appoint judges who uphold the right to marriage, uphold the right to be who you are, making sure that’s the case, uphold the right to get the medical care that you need […] We should not be naive. Those appointments are really, really important. I think that’s what the vice president is committed to.
[…] We see it now: The hate has shifted to the trans community. They see that as an opportunity. If you’re watching any sporting events right now, you see that Donald Trump’s closing arguments are to demonize a group of people for being who they are. […] They’re running millions of dollars of ads demonizing folks who are just trying to live their lives.
Harris had previously noted that her support for gender-affirming care for trans people in prisons was simply following the same laws that Trump did while he was in office. That was avoiding the question somewhat, but she addressed things slightly more directly this week in an NBC interview, saying that trans American’s access to gender-affirming care was “a decision that doctors will make in terms of what is medically necessary.” The major medical groups of the US all support gender-affirming care for trans people, and leaving the decision with doctors rather than politicians is the right call here.
Marriage Equality is on the ballot this year
In 2022, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, meaning that every abortion ban on the books in any of the fifty states would come into effect. While some have claimed that it will stop there, there are plenty of reasons to be worried about Obergefell v. Hodges, the SCOTUS precedent that means that same-sex marriage is legal federally. Trump said before he was elected in 2016 that he would consider appointing judges who would overturn it, and justice Clarence Thomas has suggested that he would be open to revisiting the case. Three states will have ballot measures relate to marriage equality this year, aiming at providing legal protection for same-sex marriage in states that still have marriage bans on the books, which would come back into effect if Obergefell was overturned. If you are voting in California, look for Proposition 3, in Colorado, for Amendment J, and in Hawaii for Question 1.
Donald Trump’s education plan
Trump has made it extremely clear that his concerns around education in the United States have a lot to do with trans people. He has pushed for the removal of the Department of Education entirely, and has supported challenging Critical Race Theory and teaching revisionist American history designed to make white people look better. But this week he’s been doubling down on his claims about the evils of trans people in schools. When asked what he would do to improve public schools, Trump’s replies focused entirely on how he would stop schools from transitioning children, noting that “There are some places your boy leaves the school, comes back a girl […] Without parental consent. What is that all about? That’s like — when they talk about a threat to democracy, they’re a threat.” Not only are trans people not a threat to democracy, schools are, of course, not transitioning children.
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Voting has already started for the 2024 election. You’ve heard the rhetoric, but what do these candidates really mean for the LGBTQ+ community?
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