Human Rights Campaign's "State of Emergency" for LGBT People Is Divorced From the Reality of Progress

Since 1980, the Human Rights Campaign has been an advocacy group for LGBT rights. For the first time in its forty-plus-year history, HRC declared a state of emergency for LGBT rights in its new report entitled LGBTQ+ Americans Under Attack. This report covers 75 anti-LGBT bills that have passed in 2023 year to date. By HRC's count, this is about double from what it was last year, which was the previous record. You would think an advocacy organization would have at least some idea of the issue that for which they are advocating and have perspective. Does HRC honestly think that out of all the past 40 years, this year is the absolute worst of them all for LGBT rights? If we look at the progression of LGBT rights over the past 40 years, the idea that LGBT rights are worse than ever is downright ludicrous:

• The Supreme Court ruled in 2015 that same-sex marriage is constitutional in all 50 states (Obergefell v. Hodges). 
• As we see below from data released last week, approval for same-sex marriage is at an all-time high of 71 percent (Gallup). 
• In 2022, Congress passed the bipartisan Respect Marriage Act, which codified same-sex marriage into legislation and ban the Defense of Marriage Act. 
• In 2019, the Supreme Court expanded employee discrimination protections to LGBT employees (Bostock v. Clayton County). 
• Most Americans no longer think that same-sex relations or same-sex adoption are morally unacceptable (Gallup), which is more than could be said twenty-plus years ago.
• Gay men and lesbians were banned from serving in the military from 1993 to 2011 vis-à-vis Don't Ask, Don't Tell. President Biden reversed Trump's ill-founded transgender military ban in January 2021. 
• Look at all the Pride celebrations and corporate marketing for Pride that take place throughout the United States. 

Without fail, these major strides in U.S. history are not only good for LGBT rights, but individual rights as a whole. So what is HRC getting so upset over that it feels the need to declare a state of emergency? 

Forget for a moment HRC's pie chart has a 25 percent of unspecified "Other discriminatory bills." That is simply poor data visualization and makes me wonder what they are hiding in such a large piece of the pie. That 25 percent set aside, I notice something about the remaining 75 percent: it is primarily focused on the transgender community. As we see with Gallup polling, support for the gay community has never been higher. Yes, there are still people who take issue with gay, lesbian, and bisexual individuals. At the same time, most of the legal hurdles have been cleared and much of the cultural barriers are down, as well. Even HRC recognizes the emphasis on the trans community. Out of the 543 bills filed, 220 of them (or 40.5 percent) are filed explicitly towards transgender individuals. As for the bills passed, we see an even larger emphasis on the transgender community. 

Back when the gay rights movement was fighting for equality (not equity), the argument was that the gay community wanted the same rights as everyone else and to be treated equally under the law, much like the Declaration of Independence idealizes. The gay rights movement used a libertarian "live and let live" argument that helped advance gay rights. 

What trans activists advocate for is more complex and is not simply a matter of "live and let live." Let's look at the pie chart above and see where the HRC takes issue. The largest specified piece of the pie is gender-affirming care. I personally do not care if a consenting adult decides to undergo the process to transition and not have the government pay for it. Children are a different story, and it is one that I point out since the gender-affirming care bans in the U.S. are almost exclusively towards children. As I pointed out last month, the systematic reviews on youth gender-affirming care coming from Europe show gender-affirming care is not evidence-based practice. Combined with the fact that most adolescents outgrow gender dysphoria, European practitioners are scaling back on providing gender-affirming care to youth. 

After gender-affirming care, the next largest item is trans bathroom bans. This is one I happen to agree with HRC. I took a look at trans bathroom bans in 2016 and found them to be unnecessary, to say the least. 

Third on the list is banning the use of pronouns. On the one hand, banning people from using pronouns is arguably a First Amendment issue. On the other hand, the practice of asking for pronouns has its own issues, ranging from coercion and First Amendment violations to forcing others to accept your perception of reality. One side is trying to ban pronouns. The other side is trying to force the use of pronouns. Do you see where this can get tricky, especially for those of us who still care about freedom?

Tied in third place with the pronoun bans is trans sports bans. I have two main issues with allowing male-to-female transgender individuals participate in women's sports. The first is that of freedom of association and allowing for women to have their own spaces and events without individuals biologically born male. The second has to do with fairness and the unfair advantage that male-to-female transgender individuals have when participating in women's sports. The fairness aspect would help explain why support for trans athletes playing on teams that match their gender identity is declining (Gallup), even amongst Democrats.

Looking at the main types of bills, I come with two main takeaways. One is that the arguments and goals for trans activists are more complicated than the talking points of the Left or the Right. You cannot call someone a bigot or groomer simply for disagreeing with you. As much as is becoming a more prevailing view on the Left, not everything is bigotry. 

The second takeaway is that these do not constitute a "state of emergency." Could there be improvements? Of course! However, saying that the rights of the gay community or the trans community are worse than ever is as erroneous as saying that racism is worse than ever. At best, this is a ploy for HRC to continue to justify its existence. At worst, this sort of hyperbole is coalition politics that ignores the true progress made for individual rights in this country only seeks to widen the ideological chasms in this country. We can do better.