After reducing women to second-class citizens with limited rights to their own bodies, facing felony-level criminal penalties for non-compliance, Republicans (as I have been warning you about for months) are now going after LGBTQ+ folks with the intent of criminalizing their existence.
Days after the Supreme Court overturned the right to abortion, Michigan’s Republican candidates for governor were asked if it was also time to roll back constitutional protections for gay rights.
None of the five candidates came to the defense of same-sex marriage.
“They need to revisit it all,” one candidate, Garrett Soldano, said at the debate, in Warren, Mich.
“Michigan’s constitution,” said another candidate, Ralph Rebandt, “says that for the betterment of society, marriage is between a man and a woman.”
Since the Supreme Court decision last month overturning Roe v. Wade, anti-gay rhetoric and calls to roll back established L.G.B.T.Q. protections have grown bolder. And while Republicans in Congress appear deeply divided about same-sex marriage — nearly 50 House Republicans on Tuesday joined Democrats in supporting a bill that would recognize same-sex marriages at the federal level — many Republican officials and candidates across the country have made attacking gay and transgender rights a party norm this midterm season.
In Utah, the Republican president of the State Senate, Stuart Adams, said he would support his state’s joining with others to press the Supreme Court to reverse the right of same-sex couples to wed. In Arizona, Kari Lake, a candidate for governor endorsed by Donald J. Trump, affirmed in a June 29 debate her support for a bill barring children from drag shows — the latest target of supercharged rhetoric on the right.
In Texas, Attorney General Ken Paxton said after the Roe reversal that he would be “willing and able” to defend at the Supreme Court any law criminalizing sodomy enacted by the Legislature. Before that, the Republican Party of Texas adopted a platform that calls homosexuality “an abnormal lifestyle choice.”
And in Michigan’s governor’s race, Mr. Soldano released an ad belittling the use of specific pronouns by those who do not conform to traditional gender roles (“My pronouns: Conservative/Patriot”) and accusing “the woke groomer mafia” of wanting to indoctrinate children.
Some Democrats and advocates for L.G.B.T.Q. communities say the Republican attacks have deepened their concerns that the overturning of Roe could undermine other cases built on the same legal foundation — the right to privacy provided in the Fourteenth Amendment — and lead to increases in hate crimes as well as suicides of L.G.B.T.Q. youth.
“The dominoes have started to fall, and they won’t just stop at one,” said Attorney General Dana Nessel of Michigan, a Democrat who was the first openly gay person elected to statewide office there. “People should see the connection between reproductive rights, L.G.B.T.Q. rights, women’s rights, interracial marriage — these things are all connected legally.”
In the House, Democrats have passed a number of bills shoring up nationwide rights to abortion, same-sex marriage, and contraception access, with the vast majority of Republicans voting against it. The same-sex marriage bill may actually have a change at passage, the rest, not so much.
Don't expect any protections from Republicans. Their answer t everything is literally "Well Go Buy a Gun".
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