How abortion foes are using transphobia to derail NY's Equal Rights Amendment

This article is a great example of why it frustrates me when people say the Democrats spend 'too much time on identity politics'. The Democrats don't spend the time, the GOP does and they make people's private lives and personal choices about their identity into wedge issues that destroy the changes Democrats try to pass that are fundamental to their policy platform.

Equal Protections for the "marginalized and demonized, including LGBTQ people" should be an obvious shoe-in on the left, but because the Democrats refuse to take a strong, clear, visible stand on defending trans people and their rights, the Republicans are leveraging hate, misconceptions and confusion about trans people to attack the Dem's entire strategy.

Trans rights are human rights, they aren't up for debate, and by waffling on defending trans people as some sort of galaxy brain political strategy the Democrats are now at risk of losing important major reforms. If they stood up, made their support of trans people clear, defined defense of them clearly within the framework of their overall policy plans, it would be a lot harder for their opponents to use misinformation and bullshit to not just sink protections for trans people but for all types of people, pregnancy and abortion.

The opposition campaign, the Coalition to Protect Kids, is largely funded by an upstate anti-abortion activist, Carol Crossed, who is vice president of Feminists Choosing Life of New York. Yet it has leaned heavily on anti-trans rhetoric, arguing the amendment would increase trans people’s access to girls’ sports, women’s bathrooms, and gender-affirming medical care—and that these things would be dangerous. “Anti-abortion extremists are pushing a harmful and cruel agenda,” says Sasha Ahuja, campaign director for New Yorkers for Equal Rights. “They’re lying about a small handful of innocent kids to divide New Yorkers and distract us from what this amendment is actually about: protecting the right to abortion, guaranteeing our personal freedoms, and protecting all of us against government discrimination.”

This is truly core to the issue. An attack on any vulnerable people in New York state is implicitly an attack on all vulnerable people and any whose rights have not been well-acknowledged by the state or federal government. NY Prop 1 could have been a key to the Democrats strategy but because the GOP level anti-trans bullshit and the Dems refuse to stand up and speak out against it the right may turn it against them. I support Prop One and the Dems should do the right thing and support it too. They should tell the message of what the law really does and they should also tell their neighbors why they shouldn't be afraid of trans people or giving them their rights. Anything short of that is a hypocrisy from our government officials that will leave the Dems open to be undermined by hatemongers.

For Ilyas, who is transmasculine, the extremist rhetoric feels very personal—and deeply worrisome. “People don’t think that it could happen in New York, just because it’s New York,” Ilyas says. “These people do exist in New York, and they just maybe haven’t had an outlet.”