Donald Trump had recently finished a familiar riff about banning gender transition surgery for children when the former president, speaking to an audience of Evangelical voters, moved on to something new: a policy that would affect transgender adults.
“I will ban all taxpayer funding for sex or gender transitions at any age,” said Trump, receiving thunderous applause at the Faith & Freedom Coalition conference in Washington last month. The Republican leader, who moments earlier had also pledged to reinstate a ban on transgender men and women serving in the military, paused for several seconds to soak in the crowd’s adulation.
It’s the kind of moment — and the type of policy — increasingly common on the GOP presidential campaign trail this year.
I think it’s more insidious than that. Plain old bigotry is one thing. It’s wrong and bad, but I don’t think this is that. They need a targeted out-group to organize their in-group against so they don’t look at what bad things they’re doing and instead look at what they’re doing to the “bad” people. It’s not that the politicians necessarily hate trans people, rather that villainizing trans people let’s them sneak behind the bigots backs and do things that harm them without them even noticing.
Exactly! It’s telling people to hate their neighbors, coworkers, even their children sometimes just so they can pick their pocket and poison their air. Or even just encouraging the hate already present. A true act of evil if I ever saw one