As 19th News found in an investigation in 2021, the vast majority of anti-transgender bills never use the word “transgender” at all. Lawmakers instead pitch the bills as critical to securing rights for women in sports and larger society. Those arguments fail to acknowledge transgender women, and advocates say they are increasingly out of touch with the general electorate.
Chris Bull is the editorial director of queer media firm Q.Digital and the author of the 2001 book “Perfect Enemies: The Battle Between the Religious Right and the Gay Movement.” Bull argues that Republican lawmakers have abandoned 80 percent of their voters to cater to a sliver of their voters.
“I think that the cliche of American politics is not holding anymore,” he said. “They’re really running base campaigns, that 20 percent of the electorate.”
Still, political scientists warn that the strategy to attack trans rights could backfire and cost them support among an increasingly diverse electorate. More Americans, like Colby, know transgender people than ever before. More than that, evangelicals are statistically shrinking as a voting block, while the number who support LGBTQ+ people continues to rapidly grow.
In the 2018 midterms, the Human Rights Campaign, with polling firm Catalyst, found that people they dubbed “equality voters,” those whose support for LGBTQ+ rights strongly influenced their voting choices, made up 29 percent of the electorate. White evangelicals made up 26 percent of the vote.
In 2020, both groups showed up in greater numbers for the presidential election. Still, White evangelicals made up just 28 percent of the vote, and equality voters had jumped to 37 percent of the electorate.
Geoff Wetrosky, campaign director for the Human Rights Campaign, warned there’s a reason why anti-trans bills still have a foothold.
“Even as they’ve shrunk as part of the population, [White evangelicals] are still showing up to vote in disproportionate numbers, in much higher numbers of their proportion of the population,” he said.
In this, Balmer sees a desperate last gasp. The religious right is shrinking, he says. Younger people are coming out in greater numbers. Youth won’t entertain laws discriminating against their peers the way their parents might have.
Supporters pray as President Donald Trump speaks during an “Evangelicals for Trump” campaign event held at the King Jesus International Ministry in January 2020 in Miami, Florida.JIM WATSON/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
“I have real doubts that any legislation is going to be able to sweep back the tide,” Balmer said. “I just don’t think that’s a realistic expectation.”
Older voters are involved, too. Colby and Ashton are part of a national campaign called “Conservatives Against Discrimination” that aims to highlight voices on the right who back LGBTQ+ equality.
Colby still supports candidates who pushed anti-LGBTQ+ bills this year. He likes their economic policies, he said. He thinks those policies will give Ashton the best future. That leaves him in a hard spot at the voting booth, he said. And it leaves Ashton, now 30 and politically moderate himself, navigating complexity, too.
“It’s really human, it’s really challenging because he’s voted for people that I would never vote for,” Ashton said. “But I love my dad, and my dad loves me.”
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