LGBTQ people urge Democrats to forcefully reject GOP attacks

Political observers and activists noted parallels in today’s rhetoric with that around same-sex marriage in the 1990s and 2000s.

“The T stands for transgender,” a teacher explains in a video on a Maine Department of Education website launched during the coronavirus pandemic.

“A transgender person is someone who the doctors made a mistake about when they were born,” the teacher says in the lesson plan targeted at kindergartners. “But some people, when they get a little bit older, realize what the doctors said was not right.”

“Our lives and our existence are being used as political fodder to ramp up the GOP base, and they’re not coming to our defense,” said Deja Alvarez, a transgender woman who finished third in the Democratic primary in a heavily LGBTQ state legislative district in Philadelphia. “They’re not rallying the troops and saying, ‘Hey, we can’t stand for this.’”

As Pride month began this week, President Joe Biden tweeted his support for LGBTQ rights. He recently named Karine Jean-Pierre as the first openly gay White House press secretary and was critical of Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis this year after he signed legislation to ban the discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through third grade.  Even after she distanced herself from the Department of Education video, Mills released a statement this week ticking through LGBTQ-friendly legislation she has signed. She insisted that if she is reelected, Maine “will remain a safe and welcoming place to live for LGBTQ people.”

“The root of why this is happening is a real lack of familiarity with and lack of understanding for trans folks and what it’s like to be transgender,” Hutchins said.

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