POLITICS
Transphobia, Bigotry, Lies Front and Center at RNC
Republican Party uses national stage to fi re up right-wing base ahead of November 3
BY MATT TRACY
Some speakers during the
fi rst three days of the Republican
National Convention
(RNC) spouted
blatant transphobia, others tore
into abortion rights and combined
racism with xenophobia, and the
only out gay person to speak didn’t
even bother mentioning LGBTQ
rights.
Leading up to President Donald
Trump’s big speech on August 27,
the convention has been an overwhelming
display of right-wing
rhetoric fi lled with typical themes
of the modern-day Republican
Party: Trashing protest movements
against racial injustice, smearing
undocumented immigrants, criticizing
the Obama-Biden administration,
fi ghting to “preserve” what
they view as America’s “heritage,”
and attacking trans folks, among
others.
On the surface, it may have
seemed like a far cry from a video
published just days before when
out gay former Acting Director of
National Intelligence Ric Grenell
called President Donald Trump the
“most pro-gay president” in American
history. But it was aligned
with the administration’s strategy
to narrow its feeble attempt at LGBTQ
outreach to only pursue gay
voters, which comes as little surprise
in light of the administration’s
disproportionate targeting of
transgender Americans in healthcare,
schools, the military, and
other fronts.
To that end, Cissie Graham
Lynch, the granddaughter of the
late evangelical leader Billy Graham,
used her speech at the Republican
National Convention on
August 26 to deliver blatant messages
of transphobia to Americans
across the country.
“Democrats pressured schools
to allow boys to compete in girls’
sports and use girls’ locker rooms,”
she said, echoing the nationwide
effort by Republicans and conservative
legal groups like the Alliance
Defending Freedom to chip away at
the rights of trans girls. That campaign
Ric Grenell, who as the Trump administration’s go-to gay pledged to lead a US effort to end anti-homosexuality
laws worldwide, offered a grab bag of defenses of the president’s “America First” policies
without a peep about LGBTQ rights.
has gained enough support
from GOP lawmakers in certain
states to create punitive laws, but
courts have already started halting
legislation that seeks to sideline
transgender girls from the
playing fi eld.
The argument she made was not
some quibble over whether trans
girls have an unfair advantage in
terms of physical strength or their
testosterone level — it was a blatant
refusal to recognize that they
are girls at all.
The speech drew criticism from
Human Rights Campaign president
Alphonso David, who said in
a written statement that her “comments
were despicable and must
be widely condemned by anyone
who claims to be an ally of LGBTQ
people.”
Meanwhile, Grenell — who last
year pledged to lead the US’ global
push to end laws against homosexuality,
an effort Trump said he
was unaware of — did not bother
invoking anything about queer
folks in his speech, instead focusing
on foreign policy and praising
Trump for his so-called “America
First” approach. Grenell, who is
also the former US ambassador
to Germany, patted Trump on the
REUTERS/ TOM BRENNER
back for asking Germany to pay
more toward NATO — based on
a fundamental misreading or deliberate
obfuscation of how NATO
contributions are calculated — attacked
Democratic nominee Joe
Biden, and hopelessly tried arguing
that the GOP’s economic policies
do not favor the wealthy.
Vice President Mike Pence also
delivered his speech on the same
evening, offering a distorted view of
the Trump presidency on a range
of topics including the coronvirus
pandemic, protests, hurricane relief,
and more, all while perpetuating
anti-abortion sentiments and
arguing that the administration
would never allow the nation’s
“heritage” to be “demeaned” or “insulted”
— apropos nothing in particular.
The president’s son, Donald
Trump, Jr., also pushed similar
messages during his speech on
Monday when he warned against
erasing America’s history and
stressed that “we’re not going to
tear down monuments and forget
the people who built our great nation”
— even if they were Confederate
traitors who tried to destroy
the United States in defense of
slavery. Racist dog whistles went
off throughout the fi rst few nights
when speakers like Trump, Jr.,
said the election is “shaping up to
be church, work, and school versus
rioting, looting, and vandalism,”
while Pence offered an unbending
defense of police — even in the face
of obvious cases of wrongdoing —
and asserted that “we will have
law and order on the streets of our
country…”
And while Pence may or may
not have been voicing coded anti
LGBTQ rhetoric when he said
Democrats believe the federal government
should dictate “how we
should raise our children,” he did
not shy away from launching fresh
attacks on abortion rights — which
impact not just women but trans
men and non-binary individuals
as well.
At one point he bragged that the
administration has “supported the
right to life and all of the God-given
rights enshrined in our Constitution”
and incorrectly said Biden
“supports taxpayer funding of
abortion, right up to the moment
of birth” — a politically-motivated
deliberate mischaracterization
of abortions performed when it is
clear that fetus viability does not
exist or the carrier’s life or health
is threatened.
Day four of the RNC’s program
is scheduled to kick off at 8:30
p.m. Eastern time and will feature
Housing and Urban Development
Secretary Ben Carson, Senate
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell,
bigoted evangelical religious leader
Franklin Graham, Ivanka Trump,
the president’s daughter who has
a West Wing role, former New York
City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, and others
before the night is capped off
with Trump’s acceptance speech
at the White House.
Like Fort McHenry in Baltimore,
where Pence gave his acceptance
speech on Wednesday evening, the
White House is federal government
property where offi cials are not
supposed to hold partisan political
events. But it’s very late in Trump’s
term for administration offi cials to
pay heed to those sort of legal niceties.
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