All politics are identity politics. Republicans have long mocked this notion, treating the very concept of “identity politics” as a left-wing fixation. In reality, the GOP’s success is entirely due to the cheapest form of identity politics: For decades, but especially now, they have worked to distract voters from the party’s ruinous policies with appeals to their identity as white, provincial and, most importantly, Christian. This campaign has been enormously successful. White evangelicals have been the backbone of the GOP for decades not because they love tax cuts for the rich and environmental degradation, but because they have been told, repeatedly, that Democrats are demonic and there is no such thing as a liberal Christian.
This is why there’s a growing panic in the Republican ranks over the campaign of James Talarico, the Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate in Texas, and it’s not just fear that he could beat Ken Paxton, the state’s Republican attorney general. Win or lose, Talarico — a seminary student-turned-politician — embodies an existential threat to the right’s long-standing myth that to be Christian must necessarily mean voting Republican.
None of that has changed. He just feels different about a couple issues.
“feels different”? When talking about real actual day-to-day life, he talks about trans people like they’re second class citizens.
Does he? You got examples of this?
His stance on trans people in sports for one. He says he opposes trans people in sports if it affects the “safety or fairness” of the sport. It’s the exact same line white racists used to justify segregation in sports. It implies trans people are inherently unsafe, untrustworthy, or otherwise “less” than non-trans people, ie, treating them as second-class citizens.
You said he was talking about trans people’s real actual day to day lives. But your only example is sports.
And even your reason for feeling like a second class citizen there seems like a stretch. Nobody is saying trans people are unsafe or untrustworthy or even “less” than. You are putting a lot weight on these comments that don’t seem justified.
Yes they are, or else trans inclusion in sports would be treated as the common-sense no-brainer that it is, instead of openly opposed. And how is this reasoning a stretch? It’s literally a bigot dog whistle, the exact same type of discriminatory “reasoning” that was used to justify segregation. It’s not even consistent with his whole “God loves all people, including queer and trans people, equally” schtick, because if that were true, they’d be treated equally. And until all of us are equal, none of us are equal.