Yahoo News Marjorie Taylor Greene Is Wrong (Again): Trans People Have Everything To Fight For
On Thursday, the eve of Trans Visibility Day, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene posted a lengthy tweet belittling the fight for trans rights.
“Trans don’t need trans rights,” she began her screed, “because they are already equal and have the same rights as everyone else.”
The once-ostracized Georgia Republican, now welcomed into the House GOP fold by Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), went on to suggest it is actually Christian Americans whose rights are under threat, concluding that “Trans people have nothing to fight for.”
She could not be further from the truth.
More than 650 anti-LGBTQ+ bills have been introduced across 46 states in just the first three months of 2023, the civil liberties think tank Movement Advancement Project, or MAP, told HuffPost on Friday.
Legislation is currently pending around the country to stop transgender people from receiving gender-affirming health care, to bar official recognization of transgender or nonbinary identity and to stop LGBTQ+ people from being acknowledged in schools, among other tactics.
And the bills keep coming. When MAP released a report about the attacks on LGBTQ+ rights just last week, the number of anti-LGBTQ+ bills stood at around 580 across 45 states. There have been more anti-LGBTQ+ bills 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 comprehensive picture of the ways that conservatives are attempting to “erase” the LGBTQ+ community.
“If you look across 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 are unmentionable in school, if government cannot collect survey information about LGBTQ people’s lives, and if transgender youth must be called by their old names and pronouns, it will be as if LGBTQ people no longer exist,” Goldberg said.
Greene claimed in her rant that transgender people are able to participate in society “like everyone else.” Several of the lawmaker’s examples, however, are obviously flawed. To receive a driver’s license with their correct gender identity, for example, transgender people in some states have to jump through administrative hoops not applicable to others. Transgender people can “go to schools and receive education just like everyone else,” as she claimed — except that Republicans in several states 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 either lost access to gender-affirming care or are at risk of losing such care, in spite of recommendations from major medical organizations, according to the Human Rights Campaign. Lawmakers in Florida became the first in the country to take aim at transgender adults’ health care earlier this month, passing a bill that would bar private health insurance from covering gender-affirming treatments.
And the attacks go beyond legislation. Some legacy media outlets contribute to the problem by elevating claims from organizations and individuals that oppose transgender rights, obscuring from the public how the medical community supports transitioning for people at various ages.
After Monday’s horrific school shooting at a private school in Nashville, right-wing outlets 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 her assertion that trans rights are the same as everyone else’s is one of the easiest to debunk yet.
