It wasn't that long ago, less than ten years, in fact, where, in a confirmation hearing for Attorney General nominee Loretta Lynch, Sen. Lindsey Graham, who was a prick even before his mouth became Donald Trump's penis koozie, wailed and gnashed about the growing passage of laws in the states allowing same-sex couples to marry, "What’s the legal difference between a ban on same-sex marriage being unconstitutional but a ban on polygamy being constitutional? Could you try to articulate how one could be banned under the constitution and the other not?" While this whole issue would be put to rest a few months later by the then-relatively sane Supreme Court in the Obergefell decision, Graham's screaming mimi routine had been echoing throughout the nutsosphere for years: same-sex marriage would lead to legalizing marriage with animals or marriage with babies. It was crazy shit. One ultra-evangelical group of fucknuts said that if New York legalized same-sex marriage in 2011, it "could prove to be decisive in the culture war for America's soul."
Of course, of course, of fucking course, none of this came true. Not a goddamn thing. No one tried to get a law passed so they could marry their dog. Babies are still single. And polygamy is still illegal even if some religious shitdicks practice it. The worst thing that's wrong is that it was not, in fact, decisive in the culture war. All that happened is that same-sex couples could get married and have the pleasures and pains of matrimony that opposite-sex couples got to enjoy. For nearly three-fourths of Americans, it's all good. That mass support for same-sex marriage happened pretty fucking quickly after the Supreme Court decision, but it had been building for years as more and more states legalized it and more and more people got exposed to it. What once seemed exotic and alien now just seemed normal as hell to most everyone. Essentially, they realized that it didn't affect them in any way whatsoever, so why the fuck should they care? God bless the apathetic USA, I guess.
One of the biggest issues in GOP ads in the 2024 election was rights for trans people, both youth and adult. The Trump campaign and his party decided that the idea of trans kids participating in sports (or, to be specific, trans girls participating in girls sports since no one seems to make a fuss about trans boys doing the same in boys sports) and the idea of a trans woman using a bathroom for her gender rather than biological sex (or, to be specific, trans women using women's bathrooms since no one seems to make a fuss about trans men using the men's room) would freak people the fuck out and turn them against the Democrats. They and their PACs spent a couple hundred million dollars on the ads, running them in Senate races and elsewhere, and flooding the airwaves with them for Trump. The accuracy of the ads didn't matter, as truth and reality doesn't matter at all to the right. One line in an ad, "Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you," pretty much said everything that assholes wanted to hear.
And while the jury is out on how much they tilted the election for Trump, they defined Democrats as supportive of some kind of deviancy, even if the real deviant fucknuts are those who obsess over the genitals of children and those of people taking a shit. I'll just add that, anecdotally, everyone I've talked to who voted for Trump told me it was because of trans issues. I've heard the same from other friends who dares to ask Trumpers how they could vote for someone who is objectively one of the shittiest people ever to draw breath.
Lots of people will be quick to point out that Kamala Harris didn't talk about trans people at all. Sure, Tim Walz might have, since he actually did something to assure gender-affirming care for trans kids in Minnesota. But the Democratic presidential campaign avoided the issue like a potato on fire, and that was fucked up. I'm on the side of people like Ed Rendell, the former governor of Pennsylvania, that it was a huge fucking mistake not to stand up to the attacks and defend trans rights. Like not allowing a Palestinian speaker, it was political malpractice not to have a trans speaker at the Democratic National Convention. It didn't matter that Harris wasn't campaigning on "woke" or trans or anything else. Republicans were going to say she was, so, fuck it, may as well do the honorable thing and defend people who need defending.
Harris's silence on all things trans (except in the most generalized mention of LGBTQ+ rights) allowed Republicans to damage not just her but, more importantly and in a far worse way, trans people. If nothing else was being fed to people about trans men and women and youths, if all they heard was the horrific negative shit, then they'll assume that's all there is to say about it. Fucking hell, they barely came at Trump for saying that kids go into school and get their sex changed at recess or some such bullshit, which was legitimately insane. Trump and the GOP are planning to unleash hell on trans people, especially on kids seeking gender-affirming care. And, instead of calling out the GOP for being fear-mongering little bitches, Democrats are actually debating if they should abandon trans people altogether on some issues.
That's an absolute dereliction of political and social duty and so anti-progressive that you may as well close up shop. You can see the effects of this refusal to engage in the battle with Republicans feeling absolutely free to be the worst version of their already motherfucking awful selves, especially with the election of Democrat Sarah McBride as the first transgender person in the Congress. A former LGBTQ+ ally, Rep. Nancy Mace did a heel turn and decided to make life miserable for McBride and all trans people in the Capitol by getting Speaker Mike "I want to see what porn my son sees" Johnson to say that everyone has to use the bathroom of their biological sex, which begs the unanswered question of who is going to check and how. Not one to be out-crazied, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a troll both inside and out, allegedly said that she'd "fight" a transgender woman who came into her precious ladies room.
To their credit, led by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrats have finally found a spine on this trans issue, speaking out against Mace and Johnson for their transphobia. Now how about translating that into other action? How about saying that unless someone announces their biological sex, it's impossible to know whether the person in the bathroom stall has a dick or a pussy? How about saying that if it was so easy for men to get away with sexual assault by putting on a dress and going into a bathroom, a whole fuck of a lot of them would have done it (and even if that did happen, it's about a cis male committing the act, not a trans woman)? How about saying that the number of trans girls playing high school sports is so small that it's fewer than the number of trans people who are murdered for being trans each year? How about saying that it's between kids and their parents if they want to take puberty blockers or have top surgery? How is that any goddamn business of anyone else's? You get to stand up for parental rights there.
This is what the fuck we're supposed to do as Democrats: work to make sure that oppressed and demonized groups feel safe in this America and have the same opportunities as everyone else, including the right to just live their fucking lives. Don't do the assholes' job for them by being silent. Speaking out and being an active ally can lead to normalization, yes, but also demystification. See, the more you talk about it, the less scary it becomes. The more visibility Democrats give trans people, the more it just becomes another thing that everyone learns is no big deal to anyone except the trans person and their loved ones. That, like same-sex marriage, it's not about you unless it is you.
