Social Issues Can’t Save the GOP This Time

Republicans want to change the subject. So, the other day they passed a series of bills in the Wisconsin Legislature aimed at reviving transgender issues where they hold mostly popular positions.

The bills would ban the participation of transgender females in girl’s and women’s sports, prevent minors from getting gender-affirming treatments and require parents to sign off before students could be referred to by different names or pronouns. Those are all popular positions and so Republicans brought them to the floor of the Assembly for a vote to get all the Democrats to vote against them, which they did.

It’s all performative since Democratic Gov. Tony Evers will veto them all. Also, it shouldn’t be lost on anyone that the Republican leadership let these bills sit in committee until the late stages of the session — closer to the November election.

But it won’t matter. The Republicans will probably get toasted in the fall anyway. That’s because social issues have taken a back seat to the cost of living and now ICE’s over-the-top deportation raids. And even those issues are playing out against the backdrop of a listless GOP base, a fired up liberal electorate, independents swinging against any party in power and the historical momentum of parties out of power in mid-term elections.

Still, these votes and Evers’ inevitable veto are a problem for Democrats. Activists, as is their wont, have gotten too far out in front of average Americans on these issues. I don’t think most people want to discriminate against anyone. If the Democrats’ position was simply that, they’d be fine. But the three issues the Republicans have chosen to highlight run up against common sense. Most people think that biological men shouldn’t have an unfair advantage over women in sports. They think that irreversible treatments should be put off until after puberty. And they think parents have an obvious right to be involved when their kid decides to change their gender identity.

As you might guess, my views are in the middle. I agree that transgender girls shouldn’t participate in girls sports. But I also think the Legislature has no place in that debate. It doesn’t rise to the level of government action. Let the WIAA and the NCAA figure that out. Maybe there are some cases and circumstances in which competitive fairness can be preserved. And anyway, this is pretty much a non-issue since there are so few instances of it.

I think it’s a mistake for kids to get irreversible treatments before puberty and there’s a growing body of evidence to support that view. However, here again, I don’t think it’s the government’s place to tell families what kinds of treatments they can get for their kids. There’s enough debate in the medical community so that this is a long way from equating gender treatments with blood letting or electroshock. If this is what parents want for their kids, I may be queasy about it, but I don’t get to have a say. Weren’t the Republicans once the party of the family and personal freedom without government interference?

But on the last issue, except for one caveat, I’m all in with the GOP. Parents should be involved when their kids decide they want to be identified by a different name or pronoun. The caveat is that the Republican bill would require a notarized document for that, which is overkill. But the activists’ view on this is just way off base. If a kid is going down a road this significant, a school district has no right to keep it from the parents. I suppose you could add some sort of provision that allows schools to opt out of the requirement to inform parents if there is some credible threat of mistreatment at home, but that bar should be very high.

These transgender issues are just killing the Democrats. The party needs to find a way to get around them. It seems to me that the answer is to return to the simple notion that nobody should be discriminated against. A good issue for Democrats to emphasize is Trump’s move to drum transgender soldiers out of the military. They want to serve their country. Why shouldn’t they be allowed to? But in the long run, they cannot be identified as the party of transgender activists and hope to win a lot of elections.

But for now it won’t matter. The social issues that hurt Democrats are on a cold back burner. Try as they might to change the subject, there’s no reason to think the Republicans can do much of anything to save themselves this November.