In the past few years, right-wing activists agitating against LGBTQ rights and freedoms insist that they aren't acting out of bigotry towards trans or queer people. No, they argue, they are doing this to protect "the children."
In Florida, Republicans defended a law critics dubbed the "don't say gay" law with risible accusations that erasing LGBTQ identities from the classroom is necessary to prevent "grooming" of children, equating, for instance, a book that features a same-sex married couple with a pedophile manipulating a child into accepting sexual abuse. The escalating protests of drag shows and brunches around the country are justified with claims that the shows expose "children" to "sexualized" material, even though performers and audiences have testified that shows geared towards families with small children don't feature the ribald jokes of more adult fare. Republican legislators and conservative activists have targeted trans kids in schools, saying their access to sports teams and restrooms must be restricted in order to protect the "privacy" of cis children. A growing national moral panic over gender-affirming care for minors has even led to protests and threats against children's hospitals, even though the American Academy of Pediatrics describes the treatment as the "accepted standard of care for adolescents at risk of or suffering from gender dysphoria." In fact, it's rare to unheard-of for minors to get major surgical interventions.
Skeptics, however, have long argued that concern over "the children" is just a convenient fig leaf for homophobia and transphobia.
The goal "is to stop people from being trans," ACLU lawyer Chase Strangio told GQ in May 2021, noting that the right only targets children because kids are a "group of people who don't have as much power."
"Bigots aren't freaking out about drag queens reading to children because they're confused about the nature of these events," Michael Hobbes of the Maintenance Phase podcast recently tweeted. "They're freaking out because they're bigots." The heavily orchestrated moral panic is "not about children," journalist Jill Filipovic wrote in a recent newsletter. It's "about criminalizing adults simply for existing and doing their thing."
"Pushing anti-LGBTQ+ bills and spewing dangerous rhetoric towards our community has led to more stigma, discrimination, and ultimately, deadly violence."
While anti-LGBTQ activists continue to insist that their only goal is "protecting" children, recent months have proven the critics right.
On Wednesday, Maggie Astor of the New York Times published a round-up of bills proposed by Republican state lawmakers on these issues. Across the board, the people and behaviors being targeted are no threat to real-life children. Instead, the bills primarily work to make life harder, if not impossible, for LGBTQ people —both adults and minors — who are just trying to live their lives.
Legislation in Oklahoma and South Carolina would make it a felony to provide hormonal or surgical transition treatment to transgender people younger than 26 — an uncharted incursion into adults' health care. Other bills in both states, and in Kansas and Mississippi, would ban such care up to age 21.....
A bill in Mississippi — declaring that "separate is not inherently unequal," an allusion to Plessy v. Ferguson, the 1896 ruling in which the Supreme Court upheld segregation — would define sex as immutably set at birth, denying transgender identities under state law. A measure in West Virginia would define "any transvestite and/or transgender exposure, performances or display" as obscene, potentially outlawing transgender people's presence around children.
In the Washington Post on Thursday, Ariana Eunjung Cha and Fenit Nirappil reported that the Republican-controlled government of Tennessee "rejected millions of dollars from the federal government for HIV/AIDS prevention," which critics say was done to punish groups who support trans and abortion rights. Gov. Bill Lee has been vocal in his loathing of "a task force on transgender health issues and Planned Parenthood." While state officials will allow funding for HIV prevention in "first responders, victims of human trafficking and mothers and children," they are cutting off programs that serve communities with much higher rates of HIV, namely, "men who have sex with men and transgender people, particularly in communities of color."
In Oklahoma, Republican state legislator Kevin West has introduced a bill banning "drag" where it can be seen in front of children. As journalist David Futrelle points out, the definition of "drag" is incredibly broad: "a male or female performer who adopts a flamboyant or parodic feminine persona with glamorous or exaggerated costumes and makeup." That definition would outlaw any kind of performance by anyone femme- or female-presenting. Theater performances, rock shows, et. Any situation where someone applies makeup to look glamorous on stage could be subject to a $20,000 fine.
"State lawmakers pushing anti-LGBTQ+ bills and spewing dangerous rhetoric towards our community has led to more stigma, discrimination, and ultimately, deadly violence – particularly against the transgender community," Sarah Warbelow, the legal director of the Human Rights Campaign, told Salon. "They are introducing these bills to sow hate and fear and to rile up extreme members of their base, the only voting bloc they are moving on these issues."
Concern over "the children" is just a convenient fig leaf for homophobia and transphobia.
Monica Hesse of the Washington Post pointed out in June that the drag queen story hours targeted for protests are aimed at children but feature no sexual content. What aggravates conservatives, she wrote, is therefore "[n]ot sexualization," but "the existence of drag queens" or of anyone who "might present in a way that was at odds with a certain vision of how men or women should dress or present or behave."
Looking over this legislation supports Hesse's claims over those who say this is about "protecting" children. Even if one rejects the opinions of experts who support gender-affirming care for minors, the laws being proposed increasingly aren't about minors at all but are stripping the medical rights away from adults. The West Virginia law may invoke children, but the obvious purpose is to criminalize transgender people at large at all, as it would make it impossible for trans people to go to the post office, the grocery store, or any place children could be present — including in their own homes or around their own family members. The Mississippi bill outlaws trans identities for anyone of any age. The Oklahoma bill is so broad that it could easily be read to simply outlaw anyone who isn't male or male-appearing from performing publicly at venues that allow minors, as if the mere presence of a female or feminine figure on stage makes a performance "sexual." In Tennessee, the "protecting children" pretext has been abandoned entirely, as it's just about defunding medical care for adults.
It wasn't that long ago that conservative arguments against LGBTQ rights were blunter.
Sen. John Cornyn, R-Tex., for instance, wrote a 2004 speech drawing an equivalence between same-sex marriage and bestiality. In 2003, Justice Antonin Scalia defended law criminalizing homosexual relations by sneering at the "homosexual agenda" and arguing that it was necessary to uphold public morality. Former vice president Mike Pence argued against gay rights saying, "homosexuality at a very minimum is a choice by the individual, and at the maximum, is a learned behavior."
But in the past decade, especially after the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage in 2015, overt disapproval of LGBTQ identities — and the legal right of LGBTQ people to live freely — has become politically difficult, if not downright toxic. Invoking the safety of children, however, puts a moral and defensible gloss on policies that the public would otherwise reject. It doesn't take much digging, however, to see that "protect the children" policies do nothing of the sort, and in many cases, deprive children of safety and medical care. Increasingly, the link between "the children" and the proposed policies is tenuous at best, or totally missing, leaving no doubt that the goal is to punish gender expressions or sexualities that the religious right still disapproves of, even if more quietly than they used to.
