'Do y'all ever get tired of being on the wrong side of history?'
Listen to MAGA Republicans get the rebuke they deserve for their obsession with trans people
Intro by Sam Bellamy
Transgender people make up only 1% of the U.S. population, but some days they seem to occupy 100% of the MAGA mind.
Track meets and bathrooms appear to be the places where Trumpers feel the most menaced, leading to numerous threats from the Oval Office and multiple legislative efforts across the nation to quell the alleged uprising.
Fox News, among other wingnut outlets, floods viewers with stories about hordes of transgender and intersex people posing a threat to America that’s apparently no less serious than the Cuban missile crisis.
Earlier this year, in retaliation against the governor of Maine over her refusal to accept all this fearmongering, the Trump administration froze federal funding for child nutrition programs in the state and added a requirement that parents in Maine (and only Maine) show up with their newborns at Social Security offices rather than sign up for a number at the hospital.
This week, Trump threatened to withhold federal funding from California if officials there don’t bar transgender students from sporting events with girls.
Regardless of how one feels about the fairness of transgender people competing against women, the ferocity of the MAGA response to the matter and the breadth of legislative initiatives is – when viewed calmly with the TV turned off – rather outsized. The furor also runs counter to the administration’s goal to return decisions regarding schools to the states.
In the video below, you’ll hear Texan Nick Mollberg offer an eloquent summary of what’s happening there (and across the nation). Texas lawmakers just passed a bill that defines a man and woman by whatever their birth certificate reflects. Never mind that some people, slightly under 2% of the population, are born intersex.
Mollberg points to the GOP’s long, long pattern of scapegoating targeted groups and using fear of The Other to win support. “Do y’all ever get tired of being on the wrong side of history?” he asks.