More than 100 anti-LGBTQ bills have been filed in nearly half the states in this country so far this year—and it’s only March.
It’s been almost a year since Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the “Parental Rights in Education” bill—more accurately referred to as the “Don’t Say Gay” law—sparking a nationwide legislative push to demonize the LGBTQ community, with a rash of Republican-led states following suit with copycat legislation.
The push to criminalize and marginalize an already vulnerable population hit a fever pitch at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) last week.
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For many years, CPAC was a must-attend annual event for a wide berth of conservatives, but ever since Donald Trump came on the political scene it has fully devolved into a vile cesspool of bigotry, conspiracy-mongering, and Trump cultism.
And then there are the CPAC “intellectuals,” who cloak their hateful ideas in grandiose language about “civilization.” One of those faux-smart guys who made a CPAC splash this year was Michael Knowles, a Daily Wire commentator and former co-host of Sen. Ted Cruz’s podcast, who spoke about the eradication of “transgenderism.”
“There can be no middle way in dealing with transgenderism. It is all or nothing. If transgenderism is true, if men really can become women, then it’s true for everybody of all ages,” Knowles said. “If it is false, then for the good of society, and especially for the good of the poor people who have fallen prey to this confusion, transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely—the whole preposterous ideology.” (It’s important to note that this statement was met with rapturous applause.)
To be clear, the definition of eradicate is “to remove or destroy utterly.”
After his words were quoted by numerous outlets, Knowles insists he didn’t mean what he so very clearly articulated. He says he didn’t want to eradicate a community of people, but an idea.
Now, dear reader, ask yourselves how one eradicates an idea without also completely destroying or removing the very community that embodies it? It’s quite simple, you can’t.
Terminology like this is used for one purpose—to separate people from their humanity. Why? To normalize brutality, to make violence—legislatively or physically—not only justifiable, but necessary. (When Adolf Hitler and the Nazis referred to the Jewish people as “vermin” that needed to be eradicated from Germany, they were able to convince enough of the population that their neighbors were sub-human.)
It’s all part of a larger reactionary push to split the country in two, as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene proclaimed when she called for “a national divorce.” For one country, equal rights and legal protections for marginalized communities. For the other, a perverse state of intolerance and hatred.
And while Republicans wage an all-out war on the transgender community (and the LGBTQ community as a whole), the resistance from the White House and Democrats has been woefully insufficient (to put it kindly).
While the president called out these actions when signing the “Respect for Marriage Act'' last year, and referred to Republicans as semi-fascist, much more needs to be done. At the very least, the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights unit should open up an investigation into DeSantis and other governors for their attacks on the LGBTQ community. Biden should issue executive orders protecting LGBTQ youth in schools and adults in the workplace. Democrats should present an organized and united front, introducing legislation that codifies the civil rights of LGBTQ people. And both the White House and Biden’s party should talk with queer influencers and leaders about the best and most effective ways to fight against the GOP’s legislative onslaught.
For far too long Democrats didn’t want to meet Republicans on the culture war battlefield—and this lack of courage has cost the LGBTQ community its safety and well being, and possibly their lives.
According to the Trevor Project, with a study conducted in 2021, 45 percent of LGBTQ teens have considered suicide, a rate that has continued to rise for three consecutive years. We told these young queer kids after a rash of suicides in the early 2000s that “It gets better.” And yet Democrats, the party that claims to fight for equality and inclusion, haven’t lived up to this. Things can only get better if you choose to fight the very people who are telling you unequivocally that they want you eradicated, destroyed, removed, pulled up by the root and eliminated.
Republicans aren’t mincing words, so we should take them at theirs.
Pastor Martin Neimöller, a complicated figure in history who changed his antisemitic views once he was imprisoned in a concentration camp, wrote “First They Came,” a poem that so eloquently lays out what happens when you don’t speak up for groups you are not a part of once they are attacked.
Republicans are laying out their plans. First they come for the transgender community, but because a majority of Americans don’t know a person who is trans, they do nothing. Eventually, they come for you.
It’s time we as Americans wake up and realize the enemy to freedom—and our collective humanity—is within, and the war has already begun.
