On Thursday, the eve of Transgender Day of Visibility, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene posted a lengthy tweet disparaging the fight for transgender rights.
“Trans doesn’t need trans rights,” he began. his rule“because they are already equal and have the same rights as others.”
He once ostracized The Georgia Republican, now welcomed to the House Republicans by Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), suggested that it is actually American Christians whose rights are under threat, concluding that “trans people have nothing for to fight”.
She couldn’t be further from the truth.
More than 650 anti-LGBTQ+ bills have been introduced in 46 states in just the first three months of 2023, civil liberties think tank Movement Advancement Project, or MAP, told HuffPost on Friday.
Legislation is currently pending across the country to prevent transgender people from receive gender-affirming health careto prohibit official recognition of transgender or non-binary identity and stop LGBTQ+ people to be recognized in schoolsamong other tactics.
And the bills keep coming. When MAP published a report on attacks on LGBTQ+ rights last week, the number of anti-LGBTQ+ bills stood at around 580 across 45 states. More anti-LGBTQ+ bills have been introduced this year than in all of 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015 combined, the group said.
MAP has been adding to its “Under Fire” series of reports to paint a full picture of the ways that conservatives are attempting to “erase” the LGBTQ+ community.
“If you look at everything they are doing, it becomes clear that their goal is to force LGBTQ people out of public life,” MAP Deputy Director Naomi Goldberg said in a statement.
“If LGBTQ youth cannot be mentioned in school, if the government cannot collect survey data on the lives of LGBTQ people, and if transgender youth must be called by their old names and pronouns, it will be as if the LGBTQ people no longer existed,” Goldberg said.
Greene claimed in his tirade that transgender people can participate in society “just like everyone else.” However, several of the legislator’s examples are obviously wrong. To receive a driver’s license with your correct gender identity, for example, transgender people in some states have to go through administrative hoops not applicable to others. Transgender people can “go to school and be educated like everyone else,” as she stated, except that republicans in several states they are trying to make it difficult or impossible for them to do so while expressing their core identity.
More than half of transgender youth between the ages of 13 and 17 have lost access to gender-affirming care or are at risk of losing such care, despite recommendations from major medical organizations, according to the Human Rights Campaign. Lawmakers in Florida became the first in the country to target healthcare for transgender adults earlier this month, passing a bill that would ban private health insurance from covering gender-affirming treatments.
And the attacks go beyond the legislation. Some legacy media contribute to the problem by raising the grievances of organizations and individuals who oppose transgender rights, hiding from the public how the medical community supports transition for people of different ages.
after monday terrifying school shooting at a private school in Nashville, right-wing media and pundits seized on the dead shooter’s possible trans identity, going so far as to suggest that being transgender predisposes someone to acts of violence.
In recent years, conservatives have also reinvigorated decades-old smears against LGBTQ+ people, painting them as pedophiles who want to “groom” children for abuse.
Greene may be known for making dubious, false, and outrageous claims. wherever she goes. But his claim that trans rights are the same as everyone else’s is one of the easiest to debunk yet.
