The Latest Casualties of the Culture Wars
The Republican Party has traditionally catered to the needs of the business community with a legislative agenda focused on cutting taxes and reducing regulations. It was this gospel of “small government” that led to the Great Depression. In response, the nation’s voters elected Franklin Roosevelt who enacted his New Deal which featured large government programs designed to help those devastated by the Depression as well as a plethora of governmental regulations designed to reign in a then-to-fore unbridled business community. The role of the federal government continued to be expanded during World War II and the administrations of Presidents Truman, Kennedy and Johnson and culminated during President Johnson’s second term with the passage of the Civil Right Act and the Voting Rights Act.
Barry Goldwater’s resounding defeat in the 1964 presidential election, however, prompted Republicans to reassess their political strategy. Under their new game-plan they would expand their political base to include those segments of the population that were dissatisfied with the policies that had been advanced by Democratic politicians. This included evangelicals, libertarians as well as white southerners dismayed by the prospects of civil rights legislation. Notwithstanding this adjustment, their pro-business policies would remain the cornerstone of their political agenda which they promoted by claiming it would facilitate the creation of jobs, all to the benefit of the public at large.
Over the past 60 years this new strategy has slowly caused the Republican Party to paint itself into a political corner. In both the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, the party enacted major tax cuts. Those tax cuts did little to enhance the well-being of average Americans and made it more difficult for the nation to invest in programs that would sustain economic growth. This became increasingly clear following the administration of George W. Bush which culminated in the Great Recession of 2008-9. In response, Republicans embarked on their REDMAP program, an effort to gain control of as many state governments as possible and through systematic gerrymandering skew their electoral systems in their favor. This initiative not only led to Republican domination of the political agendas in those states, it was also critical in the 2016 election of Donald Trump even though Trump lost the popular vote by almost three million votes.
Trump’s election and his over-the-top rhetoric, however, tore away the scab that was obscuring the Republicans’ dirty little secret; namely, that over 80% of their supporters enjoyed few of the benefits of their legislative efforts. The party’s continuing failure to address the needs of average Americans and Trump’s authoritarian tendencies and embrace of right-wing extremists caused a significant portion of the Party’s supporters to renounce their Republican affiliation. It also caused those who continued to associate with the Republican Party to become more anti-government and more violent. With their voter base diminishing it became all the more critical for the party to maximize the voting participation of its remaining supporters.
To address this problem Republicans returned to the “culture wars” that they had first waged in the 1970s. Rather than pursue bipartisan efforts designed to enhance the wealth and welfare of the vast majority of Americans, they focused on those issues that divide the nation by arousing the hates and fears of their supporters. In this way they would make the outcome of elections turn on non-economic issues designed to excite their supporters. To this end, they nominated three Supreme Court Justices committed to restricting abortions, an issue of significant importance to evangelical voters. They also advocated restricting immigration claiming that immigrants take jobs away from Americans and bring with them crime and debilitating drugs. In addition, they opposed restrictions on gun-ownership seeking to appeal to those individuals who had lost faith in their government’s ability to protect them.
The culture wars reached a culmination this past year when the Supreme Court finally overturned Roe v. Wade, fulfilling a Republican campaign promise that dated back almost 50 years. More than any other issue, abortion had solidified the loyalty of Republican voters. This, in large measure, explains why Chief Justice Roberts, breaking with the Court’s other conservative justices, declined to overrule Roe v. Wade when it came before the Court in July, 2020. Although Republican politicians are now seeking to ride the abortion issue further by vowing to enact nation-wide restrictions on abortions, that issue has now become a liability for Republican politicians as it is providing an even greater motivation for Democratic voters. This reality was evidenced this past week when Florida Governor Ron DeSantis chose not to publicize his state’s new law prohibiting abortions after the sixth week of a pregnancy.
Other facets of the culture wars also seem to be in remission. Republican efforts to politicize gun ownership have lost much of their voter appeal with the ever-growing number of mass shootings, many of which involve school children. Republican anti-immigration efforts have similarly lost some of their luster with national unemployment at an all-time low and the bad press that emanated from the Trump administration’s child separation policies. Even their attacks on same-sex marriages no longer seem to motivate conservative voters now that they have been approved by a decidedly conservative Supreme Court and have become more common place.
It would thus appear that Republican politicians are now having difficulty identifying new targets for their culture wars. To this end they have resurrected the term “woke” which was first used in the 1940s by black communities to refer to becoming sensitized to public issues. Instead, Republican politicians are using that term to denigrate any and all policies and things that progressives politicians embrace. As such, it has become of an undefined insult allowing listeners to consider it to encompass anything that they abhor. A recent example of that phenomenon surfaced this past week when Kid Rock, an American singer and songwriter, labeled Bud-Light beer as “woke beer” because Anheuser-Busch published an ad for it featuring Dylan Mulvaney, a transgender woman.
That brings us to the current bruhaha over transgender individuals which has become the cause célèbre du jour designed to motivate conservative voters. Republican politicians have begun railing against transgender school children using the restrooms designated for their chosen gender (rather than their birth gender) and from competing in athletic events based upon their chosen gender. These hardly seem like the pressing issues of our times as people with gender-identity issues pose no serious threat to other high school and college students. While these individuals certainly have problems, it would be best if their problems were left to the families of those involved and their medical advisors without government interference. Such is the overwhelming opinion of medical experts.
By any measure, the problems associated with transgender individuals do not pose a significant threat to the nation. Of the approximately 330 million people residing in the U.S. only about 1.6 million of them (less than 0.5%) identify themselves as transgender and over 1.3 million of them are 18 or older. This leaves roughly 300,000 transgender Americans between the ages of 13 an 17, or roughly less than 100 individuals in each of the nations’ 3,007 counties. Despite the relatively inconsequential number of persons involved, by the latest count there have been 492 bills (35 in Texas alone) introduced in 47 state legislatures designed to restrict the actions of transgender individuals and their medical advisors. This figure does not even include state regulations targeting transgender individuals such as the one adopted by the Missouri Attorney General imposing, among other things, a three-year waiting period on obtaining “gender affirming care.” These action eclipse the 425 bills introduced in 49 states following the 2020 presidential election ostensibly seeking to prevent voter fraud.
According to the Trans Legislator Tracker, these bills (only 29 of which have actually been enacted) fall into five principal categories. About 40% of them deal with schools and education and seek to limit transgender students from participating in school activities. Most prohibit in-school discussion of LGBTQ people and issues and mandate the removal of books discussing such issues from school libraries. Some education-related bills even force teachers to “out” transgender students. Approximately 27% of these bills limit access to medically necessary healthcare for transgender individuals such as banning affirming care for transgender youths and creating penalties for providing that care. Other healthcare-related bills block funding to medical centers that offer gender-affirming care or insurance coverage for providing such care. Another 8% of them attempt to undermine or weaken non-discrimination laws by allowing individual employers, businesses and hospitals to refuse to employ or serve transgender individuals. Another 3% attempt to prevent transgender individuals from changing official records such as ID cards and driver’s licenses. There is also a small percentage of bills that limit the use of public bathrooms by transgender individuals.
There has been no significant public outcry against transgender individuals although some individuals have equated transgender individuals with “pedophiles.” To be sure, there have been no marches in the streets calling for restrictions on transgender individuals like those voicing opposition to excessive use of violence by police officers, escalating levels of gun violence and the Supreme Court’s decision to eliminate a woman’s right to terminate an unwanted pregnancy. These are all serious national problems none of which have prompted Republican politicians to call for legislative action even though fourteen Republican senators did finally break with their party in the last Congress and vote in favor of a very limited gun control bill. This leads me to suspect that very few Americans have even knowingly encountered a transgender individual.
Aside from stoking the latent fears of Republican voters, one has to wonder what, if any, public interest is to be served by the current tsunami of legislative activity. Generally speaking, Republican politicians seek to support the libertarian leanings of their political base. This is evidenced by their outspoken opposition to governmental regulations on private industry. Moreover, it was not so long ago that Republican politicians vociferously opposed the Biden administration’s efforts to curb the spread of the Covid-19 virus by requiring Americans (including members of the armed forces) to wear masks and be vaccinated. They waged those campaigns even though the Covid virus has caused the deaths of more than 1.1 million Americans.
While restrictions on individual freedoms are often clearly appropriate in certain circumstances, restrictions on the freedoms of transgender individuals seem particularly hard to justify. Those opposing a woman’s right to abort a pregnancy can conceivably be justified (at least in the eyes of some) on the basis that such restrictions are necessary to protect the lives of unborn fetuses. Even that justification would not seem to apply to those who seek to alter their sexual identity. I can even understand that some women athletes might feel at a disadvantage in competing against an individual born with one “X” and one “Y” chromosome. A recent poll, however, revealed that only 28% of Americans support a ban on transgender women competing against female athletes.
This harkens back to 1976 controversy when Renee Richards (née “Richard Raskind”) unsuccessfully competed in the U.S. Tennis Open Tournament. Still, this tends to be a rare occurrence as few males seeking to alter their gender do so to enhance their chances of prevailing in athletic competitions. More importantly, it’s not at all clear that transgender women are particularly successful athletes. For those who can remember, Billie Jean King demolished Bobby Riggs, a former world tennis champion, in three straight sets in a highly publicized tennis match promoted as a “Battle of the Sexes.”
I can also understand that there might be some individuals who view a sex change as somehow altering the intentions of the “god” that they purport to worship. Fortunately, the laws currently give them no right to impose their religious beliefs on others even though some of the pending bills would permit them to refrain from doing business with transgender individuals based on their religious beliefs. More importantly, notwithstanding individual religious beliefs, the First Amendment prohibits the government from imposing religious beliefs on its citizens.
In reality, however, not all humans are born without flaws. We applaud the work of physicians who repair cleft palates and defective heart valves occasionally found in new-born enfants. Moreover, if this rationale were so compelling, why are there no laws preventing adult males from undergoing vasectomy operations or prohibiting an adult female from undergoing a tubal ligation or having her ovaries removed. The simple answer seems to be that it would be political suicide to try to scapegoat issues that affect large segments of the population. It is the very limited number of transgender individuals that make them such inviting targets for fear-mongering politicians.
In a recent speech delivered at an NRA convention, former president Trump said that if he were re-elected he would have the FDA investigate whether “transgender hormone treatments and ideology increase the risk of extreme depression, aggression and even violence.” While it’s not unusual for our former president to make statements without any factual basis, this assertion is pure demagoguery as it not only displays an appalling ignorance about the nature of gender-affirming care but also encourages hostile actions toward transgender individuals.
It’s no surprise that transgender individuals, like other members of the LGBTQ community, are disproportionately the victims of violent hate crimes. According to a study by the Williams Institute within the UCLA Law School, LGBTQ individuals are nine times more likely to be the victims of violent hate crimes than non-LGBTQ individuals. Even though hostility toward homosexuals has receded since the Supreme Court’s acceptance of same-sex marriages, hostility toward transgender individuals remains high perhaps because they represent a much smaller and more vulnerable segment of our population. Sadly, this best explains why Republican legislators have chosen to focus so much legislative attention toward restricting their liberties as the current principal targets of their culture wars.
Aside from the problem that a culture war targeting transgender individuals elevates the possibility of hate crimes against them, depriving transgender children of gender-affirming care greatly increases the possibility of their undertaking self-destructive actions. Scientific American, reporting on a 2020 study published in the Journal of Pediatrics, wrote that transgender children who wanted hormone treatments and did not receive them face greater lifetime odds of suicidal thoughts than those who received gender affirming care. While embarking on a culture war campaign may be an effective means of augmenting voter participation, it’s not without adverse consequences to those who are the targets of those campaigns.