Trust Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene to show, in the ugliest possible way, why federal civil rights protections for LGBTQ people are so very necessary. The House is on the brink of passing the Equality Act, which would include sexual orientation and gender identity in existing civil rights laws, extending protections in jobs, housing, education, public accommodations, and more.
Republicans oppose the bill because, essentially, some people might want to discriminate. It’s not okay for a business owner to discriminate against an interracial couple on religious grounds, they mostly agree, but the Republican position is that discrimination against same-sex couples should be a different case.
Most Republicans are willing to keep their opposition to voting against the bill and giving obnoxious quotes to the media, but not Greene. She first tried to delay the vote, then launched ugly personal attacks against Rep. Marie Newman, who has a transgender daughter and whose office neighbors Greene’s.
“I rise today on behalf of the millions of Americans who continue to be denied housing, education, public services and much, much more because they identify as members of the LGBTQ community,” Newman said in a House speech in support of the bill. “Americans like my own daughter, who years ago bravely came out to her parents as transgender. I knew from that day on, my daughter would be living in a nation where [in] most of its states, she could be discriminated against, merely because of who she is.”
She then, in response to Greene’s efforts at delay, hung a transgender flag outside her office, writing “Our neighbor, @RepMTG, tried to block the Equality Act because she believes prohibiting discrimination against trans Americans is ‘disgusting, immoral, and evil.’ Thought we’d put up our Transgender flag so she can look at it every time she opens her door.”
That’s when Greene got really ugly, with a tweet referring to Newman's daughter as her “biological son.” Greene followed that up by tweeting a video of herself posting a sign outside her office—directly across from Newman’s—saying “There are TWO genders: MALE & FEMALE. ‘Trust the science.’”
That is not, in fact, what “the science” says. Rep. Ted Lieu pointed out as much, in a tweet quoting Scientific American that “The science is clear and conclusive: sex is not binary, transgender people are real.”
But of course Greene doesn’t care about science. She cares about the politics of personal grievance. She revels in cruelty. She embraces conspiracy theories. “Science” is, in this instance, a convenient claim for her to make to back her politics of hate, but even when she selectively uses the concept, she does it wrong.
That kind of false claim in support of bigotry is apparently welcome on Facebook, though—more welcome than Newman’s support for equality and statement of love for and pride in her daughter.
It’s important to remember, though, that while not all Republicans are out here personally attacking the children of their coworkers, Greene’s opposition to the Equality Act is squarely in the establishment Republican mainstream.
According to the Heritage Foundation, the Equality Act is a “Trojan horse for abortion lobby and more.” The National Review concurs, and adds a host of other very scary dangers to the list. The Family Research Council issued dire warnings starting with “To wrest special privileges for sexual orientation and gender identity, the so-called Equality Act would eliminate women's privacy and safety, forcing them to share public bathrooms, locker rooms, showers, and even battered women's shelters with biological males” and going on from there.
This is ugly, ugly stuff. It’s a series of outright arguments that yes, discrimination is good. Allowing people to lose jobs or be denied housing or public accommodations is good, Republicans argue. For this set of people, and please ignore how similar these arguments are to past arguments against other civil rights bills. Equality for women and racial equality have drawn the same kind of fearmongering, demonizing arguments over the years, and establishment Republicans know they now need to hush a bit on those specific points, but the strategies remain the same. The only way Greene is different is that she’s making it personal against a colleague in Congress, rather than keeping it hypothetical about public bathrooms. Every Republican who votes against the Equality Act is telling Newman that they don’t think her daughter should have equal rights.
