Then there’s the laughable notion that these sorts of bills will fail to pass. Once Heritage and ADF have made it unthinkable to oppose such bills, legislative hearings become a kangaroo court. During the last hearings to ban health care for trans youth in South Carolina, the ADF couldn’t even be bothered to send anyone to support the bill because its leaders already knew that passage was a forgone conclusion. Everyone who testified in person was both a South Carolinian and opposed to the bill. And yet, it was still voted out of committee on a 4–1 party-line vote.
The extreme bills in Ohio, Florida, and West Virginia are almost certain to end up being passed in half the country within the next two years. We’ve seen this happen again and again with sports, health care, and bathroom bans over the past four or five years. They’ve told us what they plan to do, and now they are starting to do it, and it will happen even if Joe Biden wins reelection.
Trans people have already begun fleeing hostile states en masse, and it is only going to get worse. Transgender students effectively can no longer get a public education in half the states. This was deliberate and has direct analogies to German school policies in the 1930s. The Republican Party, and Donald Trump, have made it clear that they intend to seize power and spread this to the rest of the nation. The idea that our institutions will save us is ridiculous, as Trump’s lawyers are literally arguing at this moment that he has the right to have Supreme Court justices, senators, and representatives executed on a whim (presumably for opposing him acting like a dictator).
It is happening here.