Karissa WaddickUSA TODAY
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The attacks kept coming.
Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear had vetoed a series of bills fromGOP lawmakers to prevent transgender girls from participating in school sports and ban gender affirming health care for transgender youth.
The all-Republican legislature had overridden the vetos. But his opponent in the state’s 2023 gubernatorial election, Republican Attorney GeneralDaniel Cameron, had seized on the opportunity and leaned into anti-trans messaging in his campaign. Cameron began arguing that Beshear supported a “radical gender ideology.”
The rhetoric was working. Internal polling from Beshear’s campaign foundthat voters whootherwise were inclined to support the Democratic leader were wavering. Beshear’s team knew theyneeded to respond – the question was how.
National polls showed that while many Americans favored protections for transgender people against discrimination, support for policies that allowed people to use bathrooms and participate on sports teams that matched their gender identity were mixed, even among Democrats.
“I remember him saying to me that there are some things worth losing political races for,” Eric Hyers, Beshear's campaign manager, said. “Hewas just not going to let a trans kid in Kentucky feel like their governor didn't care about them.”
In a 30 second ad, Beshear looked directly toward the camera and invoked his Christian faith to express support for transgender youth, saying “all children are children of God.”
It was a line Beshear would repeat throughout the campaign. As Cameroncampaigned with Riley Gaines, a prominent opponent of trans athletes' participation in sports, and escalated rhetoric that Beshear demanded “that boys play in girls sports,” in the months leading up to the election, the moderate Democrat stayed steadfastly on message.
The strategy ultimately helped him defeat Cameron. And it’s one Hyers believes could be a blueprint for how other Democratic candidates, including President Joe Biden, can counter conservative messaging and support transgender youth in 2024.
Anti-trans rhetoric
Over the last several years, Republican politicians have escalatedverbal and legislative attacks against trans people, particularly trans youth, as part of culture war debates. And perhaps no policy area are these attacks more concentrated in 2024 than in the arena of athletics.
Half of U.S. states have enacted laws banning transgender studentsfrom joining sports teams that align with their gender identity. That’s despite estimates from the nonprofit think tank, Movement Advancement Project, that only 1% of transgender youth ages 13-17 live in these states.
If elected, presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump has vowed to implement a similar ban related to athletic participation at the federal level.He's also said he would push Congress to pass a law banning gender-affirming care for minors and the Supreme Court agreed on Monday to wade into theissue of a gender-affirming treatmentfor transgender teenagers in its next term.
On paper, the policies appear to be popular.A YouGov Survey conducted in late January, for instance, found that 54% of U.S. adults backmeasures preventing transgender athletesfrom playing on sports teams that match their gender identity, including 34% of registered Democrats.
But LGBTQ+ advocates argue that public support for athletic bans and other anti-trans laws is partially a result of false rhetoric from conservative lawmakers that creates a misunderstanding.
Proponents of laws that prevent transgender students from participating in girls sports argue that they are necessary to preserve fairness and protect competition in girls athletics. But a 2022 study published in the Journal of the Endocrine Society found no evidence to suggest that transgender children who haven't been through puberty, or those that receive gender-affirming care at the onset of puberty, hold any advantage. Treatments that lower testosterone levels in transgender women have been found to erase any potential athletic advantage they may have.
Thomas J. Billard, executive director of the Center for Applied Transgender Studies in Chicago argues that LGBTQ+ advocates and politicians are in a “losing rhetorical position,” on the issue, because explaining the biology behind gender and sex is complicated, particularly in the context of athletics.
Instead, he said political figures should seek to reframe the issue in the context of empathy for children by emphasizing inclusion.
“When we're talking about trans participation in school athletics, we're talking about telling this six-year-old kid that they can't play a game with their friends,” Billard said. “That is to me, where opposition to thesebans is headed”
Still, he and other advocates USA TODAY spoke to said they worried that Democrats who are typically supportive of the LGBTQ+ community, including President Joe Biden, may shy away from addressing anti-trans rhetoric in campaigns altogether because of fear about the counter messaging challenges.
Biden's Title IX conundrum
Anna Baeth, director of research at the nonprofit LGBTQ+ athletic advocacy group Athlete Ally, for instance, expressed concern that the Biden administration made a political calculation when it left proposed protections for transgender student athletes out of its recent Title IX update.
The Department of Education released a proposed rule in April 2023 that said schools and colleges largely could not bannonbinary and transgender students from sports teams under Title IX. It was slated for finalization along with the Title IX update this year, but has been delayed, likely until after the election.
Baeth described the decision as “a marker of politics coming into play when it comes to policies,” and speculated that the decision was based on a calculation that a trans sports policy might not be popular among moderate voters in an election year.
The Department of Education did not respond to a request for comment about the reason for the delay.
But other advocatessuggested that the Biden administration decision to leave out the sports proposal wasa sign that regulators wanted to get the policy right.
Emma Grasso Levine, the senior manager of Title IX policy at Know Your IX, pointed to an update that adds “gender identity” to the list of protections from sex-based discrimination. She said the rule is a sign that the administration is enacting some policies that help transgender students.
Charlotte Clymer, a former press secretary for the Human Rights Campaign, an LGBTQ+ advocacy group, similarly conjectured that the administration “wisely decided to wait for a more good faith environment” to propose its athletic policy. Attorney Generals in more than half of U.S. states sued over the policy, and a federal judge recently halted enforcement of the law as a result.
2024 political climate
Ben Lazurus, a Democratic strategist and pollster, questioned how salient issues around transgender care and athletic participation would be for swing voters across the country in 2024.
“There are very few single-issue voters anymore,” Lazurus said, adding that he hasn’t seen “any evidence that this issue is high on people's priority list.”
A survey published by Glaad, non-profit LGBTQ+ advocacy organization, in March found that 53% of registered and likely 2024 voters said they oppose candidates who speak frequently about restricting access to health care and sports participation for transgender youth.
Beshearwasn’t the only Democrat who triumphed against anti-trans rhetoric in 2023. Across the country, the majority of candidates endorsed by Moms for Liberty, a group that advocates against LGBTQ+ rights, lost school board races.
Still, Clymerargued that while she believes the majority of Americans can see through anti-trans rhetoric, she doesn’t believe it's necessarily worth it for Biden to try and combat it this election.
“Every moment spent debating the finer points of a fraught issue that doesn't personally affect the vast majority of Americans is a moment lost toward making the broader and more important case for saving democracy,” Clymer said, noting the limited time and resources campaigns have.
Although she respects Beshear’s efforts, Clymer added that she believes Biden faces a far different political challenge than he did.
“If Democrats lose a governor's seat, it's a really tough setback but not the end of the world,” she said. “If we lose the White House, it will not only irreparably damage trans rights across the board ... but most importantly: it may be the end of our democracy.”
