Marjorie Taylor Greene & Ron DeSantis attack transgender people in RNC speeches

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) both used their speaking slots at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee this week to attack LGBTQ+ people, suggesting that the Republican party will try to make LGBTQ+ rights a major issue in the 2024 campaign season.

The “establishment in Washington… promised unity and delivered division,” Greene said in her speech on Monday night. “They promised peace and brought war. They promised normalcy and gave us Transgender Visibility Day on Easter Sunday.”

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The crowd booed.

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“And let me state this clearly: there are only two genders,” she said, pausing for cheers, “and we are made in God’s image, amen. And we won’t shy away from speaking that simple truth ever.”

Her mention of the Transgender Day of Visibility was a reference to how the TDOV – which is always on March 31 – happened to fall on Easter this year. Greene also has a sign outside her office that often gets stolen that says that there are “only two genders: MALE & FEMALE.” The statement is meant to be an attack on transgender people, even though many trans people are of those two genders.

On the second night of the RNC, DeSantis spoke and attacked “gender ideology,” a conservative expression that refers to the knowing that transgender people exist.

DeSantis said that “they want to ban gas automobiles, eliminate Second Amendment rights, and impose gender ideology on everyone from our infantrymen to kindergartners.” The crowd booed.

“They stand for DEI, which really means ‘division, exclusion, and indoctrination,’ and it is wrong,” he continued. DEI refers to diversity, equity, and inclusion, usually in reference to the workplace.

“We believe schools should educate, not indoctrinate,” DeSantis said. DeSantis is known for his “Don’t Say Gay” law, which bans teachers in Florida from discussing topics related to LGBTQ+ people in schools. “We stand for parents’ rights.”

“We seek a strong, focused United States military, not one distracted by a social agenda,” he said. His state’s legislature debated a bill last year to send a letter to the federal government denouncing “woke social engineering” in the military. The bill cited the military’s opposition to racism in the workplace and the facts that “openly gay and bisexual men and women have been allowed to serve in the military” and “the ban on transgender individuals serving in the military was lifted” as examples of “woke” military policies.

The Republican Party’s national platform this year drops for the first time the party’s longstanding opposition to same-sex marriage in an attempt to soften the party’s image, but still remains anti-trans. Two of the party’s 20 stated goals in the document refer to opposition to transgender equality.

Moreover, Donald Trump’s own “Agenda 47” calls gender-affirmign care “child sexual mutilation,” calls on Congress to define gender as sex assigned at birth, and promises that Trump will order the Department of Education to ban states and school districts from promoting tolerance of transgender people. “Project 2025” – a blueprint for a second Trump presidency that Trump praised in the past – calls on the federal government to “maintain a biblically based, social science-reinforced definition of marriage and family.”

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