Democrats Should Never Again Rise to Trump’s Anti-Trans Bait |
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Democrats Should Never Again Rise to Trump’s Anti-Trans Bait
Democrats stayed seated as Trump attacked trans kids at the State of the Union. With midterms coming, there’s more where that came from.
“These people are crazy! I’m telling ya — they’re crazy,” President Donald Trump exclaimed, pointing to Democratic members of Congress near the start of his lengthy and lie-drenched State of the Union speech.
At that particular moment, the Democrats in question were doing the right thing: refusing to stand and applaud when Trump called for a nationwide ban on the ability for trans kids to exist in public.
“We must ban it, and we must ban it immediately,” the president said.
The Democrats in question were doing the right thing: refusing to applaud Trump’ attacks on trans kids.
The Democrats in question were doing the right thing: refusing to applaud Trump’ attacks on trans kids.
The “it” here did not refer only to gender-affirming health care for trans youth, which is already banned or restricted in at least 27 states. Trump appeared to be going even further: The thing he wants banned would be the ability for trans kids to socially transition safely in school.
“Surely we can all agree no state can be allowed to rip children from their parents’ arms and transition them to a new gender against the parents’ will,” said Trump, whose administration has a standing policy of ripping children from their parents’ arms.
In response, Republican members of Congress — supporters of industrial-scale family separations — rose in a standing ovation.
Democrats sat still in their benches.
With midterm elections approaching, Trump will inevitably escalate these attacks on trans kids.
Democrats should refuse to take the bait. They should stay, at least metaphorically, seated. They don’t need to prove to some imagined anti-trans majority that they are not “crazy” for refusing to support persecution of a vulnerable minority.
On Tuesday, the president’s vehicle for attacking trans kids was the story of Virginia teen Sage Blair, a student at Liberty University, whose mother Michele is suing the Appomattox County School Board.
Rambling Man: Trump’s State of the Union
According to reports, Michele is accusing members of the school district of failing to disclose to the family that Sage was identifying as male; she claims this contributed to the teen running away and subsequently facing sexual abuse. Both Sage and Michele attended the State of the Union as Trump’s special guests.
Sage’s tragic story is now being used as the basis for Virginia legislation aimed at forcing schools to notify parents should a student identify with a gender other than their sex as assigned at birth and requiring parental consent to allow a student to use a new name or pronoun in........