Protecting Women's sports is anti-Gay?
I think this requires a breakout thread unless there already is one about the whole transgender issue in sports, but I am happy to explain my view in a limited degree here, as it's still about Trump.
There are myriad issues with genetically male or female students crossing into other gender for sports, and even more when it comes to children and youth. Unfortunately, and to the fears of the conservatives among us, they play into the Fox News hype that trans and gay people pose some kind of existential threat to heterosexual norms. This propaganda, exactly the same way abortion was lifted from the shadows in the 1980's to become the active ingredient in growing GOP ranks, is a fear topic, just as immigration and crime are.
The GOP, not just Trump, has consistently used these social issues to get middle class and uneducated folks out to vote, for them. The whole complexion of the party has changed as the century-old constituency was shaken up and out to stay relevant after social progressives succeeded in moving the country to the center on issues like women's rights, environmental protection, civil rights for blacks and others, and gay rights. It's been a constant march . . . to the center to give MORE Americans what white male landowners have traditionally held as the ones endowed by the Creator.
Gay rights have been depicted as foisted upon the straight population, as always in their face. They don't want to ever have to see a pride flag. They don't ever want their children to see men kissing in any venue, entertainment, or merely in a city park. If you frequent internet strongholds of young male conservatism that are not political per se, like 9gag or YouTube, you find Europeans and American young men constantly making statements that are outright anti-gay, a position the GOP cannot afford to say in rallies here or there. It is too costly if they do. SO, they pick off the trans and use them as a proxy for all gays.
Be clear about what is really happening. Gays are being depicted as evil, as God-less, as pedophilic predators, intent and able to turn youth from their erstwhile "normal" orientation to gay or trans. We're literally equated to Pied Pipers luring children with rainbow lollipops or whatever into depravity. Orientation doesn't work that way. That's but one reason why the GOP is fishing deeper and deeper to the bottom of the pond to appeal to the uneducated.
It is the party plank equivalent of the Democrat exploitation of organized labor, with the huge difference that the Democrats built a coalition of social causes that HELP citizens from the privations of disease, discrimination, inequality, and exploitation, rather than simply use fear to foster loyalty and division.
The article mentions that conservatives (according to MAGAs) are being "forced" to send their poor children to Christian schools to shelter them from ever being raped in their school bathrooms (my characterization). The cost of such a move is trotted out as an unfair burden on the Fundamentalist. The truth is, that's not what is happening.
Christian conservative Evangelicals already began the abandonment of the common weal, including public schools, some three decades and more ago. Unllike their Catholic brethren, Evangelicals were in headlong flight from racial integration, gay rights, and the teaching of evolution and sex education. Unlike the Catholics, Evangelicals didn't have a ready pool of nuns an priests who were scholars and highly qualified to teach. Fundamentalist schools were characterized by white flight, missing certified teachers, and higher curricula. But, they served as glorified (pun-intended) babysitters for fearful Fundamentalists.
Smarter middle-classed parents saw this deficit immediately and put in motion reforms to turn to home schooling, an option not available to the lower class where both parents had to work if they were going to afford that honking SUV and the trappings of middle class. Never mind that they were progressively abandoning community and brotherhood with the neighbors that Jesus spoke so vehemently about loving. Talk missionary zeal, but circle the wagons and don't trust God at all.
So, Fundamentalists already abandoned public schools long ago in any community where the Fundamentalists did not hold sway and control the school boards and/or state legislatures. It's all well and good to wave a thousand flags and rant about the military and our American freedoms until you're actually in a pluralistic demographic where you're forced to share power.
What the left continues to miss about Trump as they imagine him to be the Great Satan, pulling the country along with his converted party to hell, is that he is not piping the tune at all. He is riding the wave. It's actually a diminishing wave, as all the evenly divided states already show, but it's the last gasp of the ancien regime. Trump and his strategists read the reactionary tea leaves and cobble together all ther fears of the baby boomers to get the uneducated out to the polls, so the rich and the big corporations can continue not paying taxes and spending gazillions on the death industry, i.e., "defense."
Smart parents know their children are in no danger from very marginalized and rare transgendered youth. The much more common pink-haired neo-Goths are simply the next incarnation of the same disaffected youth who've existed in every decade since the 1950's.
Competitive sports is a whole different problem and topic, and religion, and one deserving its own thread.
What will become of Trump's devotees after he's dead will likely be nothing. He's tapping into a generational anxiety, and he's self-appointing himself as their Messiah. Unlike in North Korea, his dynasty is likely not able to hold power in a less authoritarian system. And, because Trump literally shares the power (read limelight) with no one else, he's extinguishing his own candle in time.
Like the forest, the rest of us just have to survive the passing flames and recover, and most forests do.
](/images/smilies/bang.gif "Brick wall ](*,)")
