Transgender issues: Trump, DeSantis, and 2024 GOP hopefuls’ viewpoints debated.
The First Republican Presidential Debate: Up For Debate
The first Republican presidential debate is fast approaching on Aug. 23, when candidates will hope to close the gap on former President Donald Trump and separate from the rest of the pack. In this series, Up For Debate, the Washington Examiner will look at a key issue or policy every day up until debate day and where key candidates stand. Today’s story will examine transgender identity.
The Contentious Transgender Debate
The debate over what to do with people who claim transgender identity has become one of the most fractious in the country and is set to be a contentious topic of debate in the 2024 electoral cycle.
However, the 2024 Republican presidential primary field appears nearly unified in its rejection of many aspects of the transgender issue, especially medical and social interventions for children and biological men competing in female sports.
Up For Debate: Where Trump, DeSantis, and Rest of Republican 2024 Field Stand on Key Issues
Some 20 states have enacted bans on both medical interventions for children and sports. The transgender debate has struck a chord, touching on issues including humanism, morality, biology, and mental illness.
The issue exploded onto the national political scene, thanks in part to an infamous school board meeting arrest of Loudoun County, Virginia, father Scott Smith in 2021. Smith’s daughter was raped by a boy wearing a skirt who was allowed to use the girls’ restroom because of the district’s transgender policy. Many Americans caught a glimpse of the ideological infrastructure that had been set up seemingly under their noses.
Schools across the country, parents found out, were secretively allowing children to change their names, pronouns, clothing, and identities in schools. Moreover, doctors and other medical professionals not only advocate in favor of gender transition procedures for children, but in many cases lock parents out of the decision-making process entirely.
The backlash brought on a phenomenon in which elected officials began questioning the insistence of American doctors who, as several state attorneys general have said, use the so-called “gender-affirming care” model as a “cure du jour for pediatric gender dysphoria” in spite of mounting evidence questioning its efficacy and safety.
In addition to restrooms, sports, and medical interventions, military service is another major question for the transgender debate, including whether transgender-identifying members should be allowed to serve and whether taxpayer dollars should fund transition surgeries, as planned by the Biden administration.
Donald Trump
Former President Donald Trump has come out strongly in favor of national bans against biological men in women’s sports and genital mutilation and chemical castration for children, which he calls “left-wing gender insanity” and ”child abuse.”
“No serious country should be telling its children that they were born with the wrong gender — a concept that was never heard of in all of human history — nobody’s ever heard of this, what’s happening today,” Trump said. “It was all when the radical left invented it just a few years ago.”
His policy plan is extensive and includes an executive order to “cease all programs that promote the concept of sex and gender transition at any age.”
It also includes a national law banning child genital mutilation, the termination of Medicaid and Medicare programs for participating hospitals and healthcare providers, supporting the right for victims of the procedures to sue doctors, and eliminating federal funding for schools that suggest “to a child that they could be trapped in the wrong body.”
Trump also calls for a Department of Justice investigation into pharmaceutical companies and hospital networks to find if they have “deliberately covered up horrific long-term side-effects of ‘sex transitions.'”
Trump also wants only male and female sexes to be recognized by the U.S. government and says he will ask Congress to clarify that Title IX bars men from competing against women in sports.
When Trump was in the Oval Office, he placed restrictions on transgender-identifying personnel from serving in the military and receiving taxpayer-funded medical transitions. While President Joe Biden rescinded the plan, earlier this month, Trump vowed to reinstate it.
Ron DeSantis
Florida governor Ron DeSantis has focused on transgender issues during his governorship, in many ways making Florida the national state leader on the issue.
The perspective from Florida is also often how his national presidential campaign decides to message on the issue, stopping short of specifying a role for the federal government.
“Governor DeSantis has led the way in protecting children from harmful mutilation in the name of radical gender ideology,” DeSantis campaign press secretary Bryan Griffin told the Washington Examiner. “It is illegal in Florida to perform sex changes on children or give them chemical hormone or puberty blocker treatments for gender dysphoria.”
DeSantis also barred biological men from competing in women’s sports and from using facilities such as restrooms and locker rooms in Florida. On national policy, DeSantis told host Megyn Kelly that as president, his administration would “look within the constitutional authority and federal government” to try to do the same.
The Florida Republican has vowed to revoke Biden’s executive order on transgender military service while backing a Trump-style restriction.
Tim Scott
Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) has been vocal on the issue, particularly as it relates to parental rights and sports.
The Scott campaign told the Washington Examiner that the South Carolina Republican is opposed to sex changes for minors.
Last year, he introduced a bill in the Senate that would cut off federal funding to schools that do not obtain parental consent before using a “preferred pronoun” or name for a student.
Scott talks often about the transgender issue in terms of sports specifically, saying at a town hall event with Fox News’s Sean Hannity that “transgender ideology is ruining women’s sports, and we have to put an end to that.”
“Biological men should compete against biological men. Period, end of conversation,” he continued.
The Palmetto State senator’s position on transgender people in the military is unclear, and his campaign did not respond to a request for comment on the position.
Nikki Haley
Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley supports banning gender transition procedures for children and biological men from competing against women in sports.
Like her fellow South Carolinian Scott, Haley also frequently speaks about the transgender issue in terms of sports, with limited discussion about medical interventions, besides her campaign confirming to the Washington Examiner that she is opposed to the procedures for children.
In an op-ed for National Review, Haley said: “President Biden is the latest man to do the rigging, which is strange coming from someone billed as a defender of women.”
“In one of his first acts as president, he signed an executive order paving the way for a federal mandate that all schools receiving federal funding let biological men play on women’s sports teams,” the Palmetto State Republican continued. “The order was framed as a matter of transgender rights. But really, it was an attack on women’s rights.”
Haley, however, has said she would not support a ban on transgender military service, but did call out the Biden administration for having the military take “gender pronoun classes.”
Vivek Ramaswamy
Entrepreneur and political newcomer Vivek Ramaswamy is on par with Trump with how outspoken he is about transgender issues.
Ramaswamy would ban all genital mutilation and chemical castration for children, campaign spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin told the Washington Examiner. He is also totally opposed to biological men competing in women’s sports.
McLaughlin said Ramaswamy regards transgender identity as a “delusion” and a “social contagion,” using that as the source for many of his policy positions on the issue.
Ramaswamy calls requests from people to use their “preferred” pronoun, restroom, and locker room usage “tyranny of the minority.”
“There are two genders and we are not going to change our society” for a “very small subset of people who are actually infecting the minds of a lot of young people,” McLaughlin said. “Don’t infect the rest of the culture with your delusions.”
Ramaswamy said the U.S. does not need to institute a ban on members of the military because there is already a ban on serving with mental health disorders.
“If you suffer from delusions, you cannot serve in the military,” McLaughlin added.
Others
Former Vice President Mike Pence has called for a Trump-style restriction on transgender military service, as well as a federal ban on transgender medical interventions for children.
Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson signed legislation barring boys from using girls’ restrooms in school in response to an Obama administration directive, as well as moving Arkansas to becoming the second state in the country to ban transgender athletes. He also supports state-level actions on banning surgeries for children.
“It’s a sad testament that such legislation is even needed,” Hutchinson told the Washington Examiner. “But until sanity prevails, I will do everything I can to protect children and parents.”
Gov. Doug Burgum (R-ND) has signed bans in North Dakota for transgender medical interventions for children, opposite-sex bathroom use, transgender athletes, and preferred pronouns.
Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie came out against bans on genital mutilation and chemical castration for children. While governor, Christie signed a bill prohibiting health insurance providers from denying care based on gender identity and heavily implied he was against Trump’s military restrictions.
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