When House Republicans did double back flips Thursday to make certain an anti-LGBT measure remained in a key funding bill, they issued a stark reminder to voters: We’re still the party of transphobic homo-haters and don’t you forget it!
The hugely symbolic fight on the House floor that most Americans probably missed is worth revisiting. The provision at issue seeks to repeal nondiscrimination protections that President Obama extended to LGBT employees of federal contractors in 2014. And although the final vote tally originally showed a majority of lawmakers—including 35 Republicans—voting against the measure, the Republican leadership did some quick arm-twisting among its members, resulting in a seven-vote turn around that kept the anti-LGBT portion intact.
Chaos momentarily erupted on the floor with Democrats chanting “Shame! Shame! Shame!” and Democratic Minority Whip Steny Hoyer taking to the floor to demand answers for how the vote changed after the clock had run out.
It was the capper to a week in which GOP lawmakers across the country made clear that they will indeed force LGBT issues into the headlines this election cycle, even though it originally appeared that gay and transgender issues would mostly be on the back burner.
Not only were four vulnerable GOP House members from Obama swing districts among those forced to switch their vote, attorneys general in Texas, Oklahoma, and West Virginia sent an aggressive letter to the Obama administration looking for ways to avoid allowing transgender students to use the proper bathroom. In Mississippi, the same GOP lawmakers who recently enacted the state’s sweeping anti-LGBT law strong-armed the state’s Education Department into not following the federal directive on transgender bathroom use. But Oklahoma lawmakers really stole the show by declaring a bathroom “emergency” in the state.
Meanwhile, Democrats advanced a strong case for protecting transgender Americans and especially transgender students, right up to President Obama himself. Making his first remarks on the public school directive, Obama explained Tuesday that gay and transgender kids are “vulnerable” and “subject to a lot of bullying.”
“I think that it is part of our obligation as a society to make sure that everybody is treated fairly, and our kids are all loved, and that they’re protected and that their dignity is affirmed.”
The same day, Minority Leader Harry Reid put his flag down on the side of transgender rights from the Senate floor, assailing North Carolina’s transphobic HB2 law.
“This kind of shocking and discriminatory lawmaking has no place in the 21st century. It certainly has no place in America,” he said.
And after the House vote, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi rounded out the week, saying, “The American people will not forget how hard Republicans worked to target LGBT Americans for discrimination.”
Nor will millennials—a key part of the Obama coalition who need every possible reason to turn out in November. In a CNN poll last week, 62 percent of voters under 34 said they oppose laws forcing transgender people to use bathrooms that correspond with the gender they were assigned at birth.
Republicans could have avoided making LGBTQ issues a centerpiece of this election cycle given that marriage equality was in the rear view mirror. But this week they dove in full force, giving millennials an extra nudge toward the polls come November.
