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| According to The Daily Beast, Trump's attempt to ban trans troops has backfired. |
According to columnist Samantha Allen in a recent edition of The Daily Beast, Donald Trump's sloppy method of banning transgender men and women from serving in the military has backfired on several levels. It has not only taken the attention mostly away from "bathroom bills," but overall it's causing the entire transgender community to gain public support:
Ever since July 2017, when Trump acceded to the religious right and tweeted a ban on transgender military service without consulting military leaders first, the administration has been dealt blow after blow, suffering two major defeats in the past week alone.
. . . Indeed, by trying to hurt the transgender rights movement at a crucial and vulnerable moment, the Trump administration will only help speed it along
It’s important to remember that the political discourse around transgender people was literally in the toilet before Trump tried to ban transgender military service.
Restroom use was the transgender controversy of 2016 and early 2017—and public opinion was actually fairly divided on the bathroom question, with some polls like Gallup’s, showing narrow support for requiring transgender people to use restrooms according to their assigned gender at birth and others, like Pew’s, showing narrow support for allowing transgender people to use restrooms matching their gender.
Fast forward to 2018 and not only are anti-transgender “bathroom bills” failing, but thanks to Trump, the battlefield has displaced the bathroom as the trans topic du jour.
Public opinion on transgender military service is not nearly as divided as it is on the bathroom question. The latest Economist/YouGov poll—published in March 2018—shows that only 34 percent of Americans oppose transgender military service, while 49 percent support it.
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To me, it's simply a matter of history repeating itself. The enemies of LGBTQ equality haven't taken heed to the lessons their loss in the marriage equality fights should have taught them. In the long run, it doesn't matter how much money you have, resources you have to craft the narrative the way you want, or influence to spread your narrative. If your foundation is made up of lies and distortions, it will crash and fall on your head.
