If their cause has benefited from better visibility for several years, “there are also resistances which are very strong“, confirms Hugo Bouvard, lecturer in United States history at Paris Cité University, specialist in LGBT issues. Above all, there is a “high anxiety” for trans, gay and lesbian people in states led by Republicans. Several of them have also passed homophobic laws in recent years. In Florida, for example, it is prohibited to teach subjects related to with sexual orientation or gender identity in public school.It is obvious that these communities do not feel safe there. The situation is surely different for someone who lives in New York or San Francisco.“
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Change of target
One community, in particular, has become a prime target for conservative groups that oppose LGBT rights: trans people, who do not identify with the binary male/female gender system.
This shift in target is partly strategic, analyzes Hugo Bouvard. “Conservative groups know that today, frontal attacks against gays and lesbians could no longer take place in the public space. However, they use the same homophobic rhetoric from the 1980s and 1990s. Sometimes it’s copy and paste.“At the time, homophobic people claimed, for example, that gays and lesbians were trying to convert children. Today, conservative Republicans are playing on parents’ fear by using the same argument with trans people. Donald Trump so claimed on October 17 on Fox News that trans peopletake your child. In some places, your boy leaves for school, and he comes back as a girl. Without your consent.”
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Masculinist discourse
For Hugo Bouvard, with this strategy, the Republicans are trying to recover mothers who have stopped supporting them because of their position on abortion. “At the local level, these subjects are particularly politicized. Republican candidates are attacking their Democratic opponents by saying they support a bunch of measures that scare parents.“Even though Democrats proudly claim support for trans rights,”some local elected officials are starting to give up a little ground on these subjects. They may therefore abandon their progressive position when they feel cornered.“
Kamala Harris has shown her proactive support for the LGBT movement for a long time. And Donald Trump plays with it. He even showed imagination by linking the subject with… illegal immigration, his favorite fight. During the televised debate with his rival in September, he claimed that if she is elected, illegal immigrants detained in prisons will be able to undergo sex reassignment operations.paid by the taxpayer“.
However, the Republicans have not always played this intolerance card to attract conservative voters. “There may have been openings within the Republican camp in the 1970s, at the very beginning of the gay and lesbian movements.explains Hugo Bouvard. There are also Republican LGBT groups in the United States, but they have lost a lot of influence today.“Today, Republicans are very conservative on gender norms. They make virilistic speeches, nostalgic for the domination of one gender to the detriment of the other.
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Paid strategy?
Are all these positions taken towards LGBT people paying off at the electoral level? Is there an LGBT vote? “Being LGBT is a factor of politicization on the left. There is more support for the Democratic Party. But it is not a single and absolute factor. Lots of other parameters come into account.“
In total, Republicans have spent more than $65 million on ads targeting transgender people, according to an analysis by the New York Times (“Kamala is for them. President Trump is for you“). “The Republicans are making a ton of it, but it doesn’t pay off electorally“, estimates Hugo Bouvard. According to several polls, the Republicans do not win elections when this issue is at the center of the campaign.
According to a Pew Research Center poll, 57% of Democratic supporters believe that legalizing same-sex marriage is good for society, compared to 11% of Republican supporters.
