Despite the midterms and a mass shooting, trans people remain a target

This is not a new message from the GOP’s Walker, nor is Gaines’s endorsement. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution covered Walker’s anti-trans message in September, something that the paper explained was seen by Walker’s campaign as “a way to energize socially conservative voters — particularly women — who are uniquely motivated by the issue.” (The crowd at one rally at which Gaines made an appearance responded positively to Walker’s rhetoric, the paper reported, which included telling children that “Jesus may not recognize you” if you’re trans, blocking your entrance to Heaven.) The claim about Warnock’s vote, incidentally, is also misleading.

It’s the timing of the Walker ad that’s remarkable. On Saturday night, a shooter killed five people — including a trans man — and injured 18 others in an attack at a gay club in Colorado Springs. The accused shooter has been charged with five hate-crime counts. But here’s Walker apparently again seeing anti-trans rhetoric as an issue that will energize voters, despite his deployment of anti-trans rhetoric having left him in second place in the first round of voting earlier this month.

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For months, some in the right-wing media have focused on trans issues as a way to cast the political left as holding views that sit somewhere between out-of-touch and unholy. Medical procedures aimed at helping children physically transition to their gender identity are framed as commonplace, nefarious and deviant. Broader cultural acceptance of trans people is disparaged, including incessant mockery of people choosing what pronouns they’d prefer others use when referring to them. Drag shows — like the one that was reportedly underway at the time of the shooting in Colorado Springs — have been attacked as purported conduits for “sexualization” of children.

That rhetoric overlaps with an undercurrent to right-wing rhetoric that attempts to label gay people and the left more broadly as “groomers” — people who intentionally try to acclimate children to sexual behavior. Encouraging recognition that same-sex relationships exist is warped into an effort at indoctrination. The right-wing QAnon movement’s claims that a satanic cabal of pedophiles is drinking children’s blood aims to cast the left as deviant and unnatural; anti-trans rhetoric tries to do something similar by reframing actual behavior.

There’s overlap here with the right’s focus on casting teachers and school administrators as hostile to parents. The “groomer” push accompanied the passage of a law in Florida targeting discussion of same-sex relationships in schools. Last year, an alleged sexual assault at a school in Virginia was blamed on a trans student, though that was inaccurate. Administrators were accused of facilitating the assault by being overly generous to trans students.

Few have been as enthusiastic about this effort as Fox News host Tucker Carlson. Carlson helped elevate the story about the assault in Virginia. Analysis of closed-captioning data collected by the internet Archive shows that Fox News has mentioned “drag” in the context of children in more than seven times as many 15-second snippets as has CNN over the past year. Fox News has mentioned sexualization eight times as often and Lia Thomas 20 times as often. And over and over, it’s Carlson’s show that brings the subject up the most.

The most mentions of “transgender” over the past year? Carlson’s show, according to GDELT. “Groomers” or “grooming”? Same. “Puberty,” as a point of discussion about transitioning? Carlson. Earlier this month, the woman behind the consistently anti-trans Twitter account Libs of TikTok posted a photo of herself on the set of Carlson’s streaming show. On Friday, Carlson hosted the founder of a group called “Gays Against Groomers,” which shares content aimed at casting trans people and drag as toxic and dangerous to children.

The idea that acceptance of trans people is a net negative is common on the right in particular. Washington Post polling conducted with the University of Maryland earlier this year found that Americans are more likely to say that increased acceptance of trans people is good for society than to say that it is bad. Among Republicans, though, respondents were three times as likely to say it was very or somewhat bad for society than to say it was good.

Despite Carlson’s focus on the issue and despite the amplification of anti-trans and anti-gay themes in other right-wing media and by conservative candidates, the issue never gained much traction as a motivator for midterm voters. Fox News polling conducted last month found that only a handful of respondents viewed social issues including LGBTQ concerns as a determining factor in supporting a candidate. Again, Walker himself came in second place.

The point of the rhetoric all along has been to cast Democrats as deviant threats to traditional values and traditional America. Carlson’s shtick is always that everything is about to collapse, from diesel fuel soon becoming unavailable (it didn’t) to immigrants supplanting native-born Americans in elections. His assertions about trans people are similarly alarmist for similar reasons: turning viewers against his political enemies.

Carlson and others amplifying concerns about trans people are not directly the reason that the shooter in Colorado Springs opened fire in that nightclub, as far as we know. But elevating people as potential targets can demonstrably lead to those people being targeted. Even before the Colorado Springs shooting, there was a rash of protests at drag shows that included threats of violence.

It didn’t work for Walker in November and a trans man is dead after the Colorado Springs shooting. Yet Walker nonetheless released his new anti-trans ad, hoping that he can inspire conservative voters to come out and vote for him next month.

After all, look what Sen. Warnock stands for.