Progressive Politics

“There’s a long history of using ballot initiatives to target gay people,” said Shannon Minter, legal director of the National Center for LGBTQ Rights. “There’s always been a very powerful political overlap between exploiting anti-LGBT bias and using that to fuel ballot initiatives and to use well-funded campaigns to sow fear. It’s a really sordid history. The other community that’s been targeted this way are immigrants, but there’s very few groups that you can so openly target. It’s hard to imagine ballot initiatives targeting other potentially politically vulnerable groups, but sadly we’re living through a moment where it’s acceptable to do that to transgender people. It really causes a lot of harm and [spreads] false information about transgender people, demonizing transgender people in a way that feels very dangerous.”