(LifeSiteNews) — As the Democrats continue to grapple with the scale of their 2024 election losses and hone their messaging for the midterms, there is a growing split in the party over one key issue: transgenderism.
Old school Democrats, many of whom likely never bought into the premises of the transgender movement to begin with, want to pivot—or at least want the “T” in LGBT to be a bit quieter for a while. Even hardline progressive Democrats with presidential ambitions, such as Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez and Pete Buttigieg, quietly dropped their “pronouns” from their social media bios.
Other progressives are desperately trying to persuade Democrats to hold the line. Podcaster Jennifer Welch recently melted down during an interview with prominent Democrat (and former Obama chief of staff) Rahm Emmanuel when he suggested that voters had disliked their focus on trans issues. “That is such bull****! That is total bull****!” she shot back. “That is buying into the right-wing media narrative and I’m so sick of Democrats like you selling out and saying this … It upsets me. It upsets me so much.”
Late night host John Oliver, who has been one of the most prominent celebrity supporters of transgender ideology, including sex changes for children, similarly urged Democrats to stick with the movement. Oliver went so far as to insist that the issue was not difficult to defend at all, and went off on one of his signature rants to prove it. It turns out defending transgenderism to a hand-picked audience with giant “APPLAUSE” signs on either side of your set stage is pretty easy, actually.
But in the real world, the trans movement did hurt the Democrats. According to the Associated Press’ VoteCast, a survey of over 120,000 people who voted this fall found that more than half of voters said that “support for transgender rights in government and society” has “gone too far.” Only 2 in 10 said that support hadn’t gone far enough, and only 2 in 10 said “it’s about right.” 85 percent of those who voted for Trump said support for the transgender agenda has “gone too far.”
A quarter of Harris voters agreed.
One Trump ad highlighted Harris advocating for taxpayer-funded sex change surgeries for prisoners, and featured photos of trans-identifying and cross-dressing members of the Biden administration. The ad ends with the slogan: “Kamala Harris is for They/Them. President Trump is for you.” Bill Clinton was so alarmed by the impact of the ads that, according to the New York Times, he reached out to the Harris camp and urged them to repudiate their support for the policy. He was told the ad would be inconsequential. The ads moved voters 2.7 percent.
Those numbers explain why Emanuel, Clinton, and others want Democrats to back away from the transgender movement—and why ambitious Dems are edging slowly away from aspects of the trans agenda. California Governor Gavin Newsom is as slippery as they come, but he is very adept at reading polls, which is why he suddenly had Charlie Kirk on his podcast to agree with him on how unfair it is for men to be permitted in women’s sports.
I have been saying for years that many of the politicians who toe the line of transgender ideology don’t actually believe many of the premises they obediently parrot in public. They don’t actually believe that women can have penises, or that men can get pregnant. They don’t actually believe that a brawny bearded bloke who changed his pronouns on his official documents is a woman—not really. So when trans ideology becomes a political liability, we discover which politicians were true believers.
UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, for example, embraced the UK Supreme Court’s affirmation that “transwomen” aren’t women with barely concealed relief. Trans activists attacked Starmer for his willingness to turn on them so swiftly. But the truth is that Starmer probably never fully accepted transgender ideology to begin with. The trans movement was not a grassroots movement—it was a top-down imposition of an ideology. Now, progressive parties are facing a moment of truth. It will be fascinating to discover how the Democrat civil war will resolve itself.
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