The tea: The LGBTQ community is no longer your wedge issue

 

The New York Times reported Sunday they had obtained a memo from the Department of Health and Human Services that indicated they were considering narrowly defining gender as someone’s sex assigned at birth, which would eradicate protections for transgender people under Title IX that then-President Barack Obama put in place.

While campaigning for president, then-candidate Donald Trump tried to paint himself as an ally of the LGBTQ community, specifically at a rally in Colorado in 2016, but I would say his stance on rights for gender and sexual minorities was more a message of keeping Muslims, whom he implied would be harmful to the LGBTQ community, out of the country.

Even after the leak of this memo, Trump still claims to want to protect everyone, but his actions disprove that time and time again. He most noticeably tried to ban trans people from joining the military and created a “religious liberty†task force, among other things. “Religious liberty†is the term people who want to discriminate against LGBTQ people use to avoid legal repercussions.

In 1994, House Republicans devised a plan to retake control of the United States House of Representatives, which Republicans had not controlled  for 40 years at that point. This plan largely relied on wedge issues, or issues that are controversial and hotly-debated that splinter voters, to polarize voters. 

Some of these issues were outlined in their “Contract with America,†a document with a list of promises Republicans planned to keep if they gained the majority, and included things like banning “partial-birth abortion,†which is a sensationalized term for the late-term procedure called intact dilation and extraction used for both late-term abortions and miscarriages. 

One of the wedge issues was same-sex marriage, which at the time was highly controversial. Their aim was to force people who were on the fence about whom to vote for to their side by playing to the voters-emotions with these big then-taboo subjects. Their plan worked. They won both the Senate and the House that year and would hold the Senate until 2001 and the House until 2006.

Politicians have used these wedge issues to turn out their bases for a very long time. The problem with Trump taking away rights for trans individuals not only stems from the hypocrisy of campaigning on being an ally of the LGBTQ community, but also that it is not a sustainable practice. A May 2018 Gallup poll found that 67 percent of Americans, or about two-thirds, supported same-sex marriage. While 54 percent of all Americans think sex is determined at birth, 50 percent of millennials think it can be different from sex at birth, according to 2017 data from the Pew Research Center. When it comes to this issue, the beliefs of the younger people are at odds with the current administration.

As time goes on, logic would dictate younger voters would start to accept trans people more and more. If Trump and his Republican base choose to hold onto these ideals of social conservatism, they risk turning off younger voters and doom their entire political base.

In 1994, there were not really any LGBTQ people to speak of in public discourse. Ellen DeGeneres did not publicly come out until 1997. Today, everyone at least knows of a gay person, if not one personally. The issue is not as scandalous or scary as it once was, especially since same-sex marriage became legal in 2015. 

To the deny the general will of the people will at some point seal your fate. As we head continue to count down the days until this year’s midterm elections, I just want to remind the people in charge that you reap what you sow.

And that’s the tea on that.