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A decade ago, transgender people were not a national political obsession. They lived their lives, largely unnoticed by the forces that now seek to erase them. But the moment marriage equality became law, the culture war machine needed a new target. Who would be next? Who could be vilified for profit? The answer was found in the most vulnerable among us — transgender youth.
The American Principles Project, a group that once campaigned against same-sex marriage, needed a new enemy. Their political survival depended on it.
“We knew we needed to find an issue that the candidates were comfortable talking about,” said Terry Schilling, APP’s president, in a 2023 interview with The New York Times. “And we threw everything at the wall.” What stuck — unexpectedly — was transgender identity. What followed was a manufactured crisis, fueled by think tanks and media outlets eager to whip up fear where none previously existed.
Alabama’s Senate recently passed the so-called What Is a Woman? Act, a law designed solely to strip transgender individuals of legal recognition. There is no functional purpose for this legislation. It does not prevent harm or solve a problem. It does not increase safety, expand opportunity, or promote fairness. It does nothing but inflict cruelty, a political gesture meant to signal to a base primed for outrage that transgender people are not welcome.
The same tired arguments keep resurfacing, just with new targets. The claim that transgender people corrupt society? It was once used against Black Americans demanding civil rights. The warning that trans people endanger children? It was a rallying cry against women fighting for the vote. The moral panic over LGBTQ+ rights? It fueled the push to criminalize same-sex relationships for decades.
The script never changes — because fear has always been an effective tool of control.
This is not just an attack on transgender people. It is an attack on fundamental freedoms. The movement that once draped itself in the language of liberty is now leading the charge to erode it. The same lawmakers who claim to fight for parental rights are stripping parents of the ability to make medical decisions for their transgender children. The same voices who decry government overreach are passing laws that dictate what people can say, what they can wear, and how they must live. The same people who rail against identity politics are using identity as the basis for exclusion. The hypocrisy is staggering, but it is also revealing.
The real impact of these laws is measurable. According to a 2023 report from The Trevor Project, 45 percent of transgender youth seriously considered suicide in the past year, and 14 percent attempted it — rates that increase in states that pass anti-trans laws. Studies from the American Academy of Pediatrics confirm that access to gender-affirming care dramatically reduces suicide risk and improves mental health outcomes. Yet, instead of tackling real issues, lawmakers are exploiting transgender people — especially youth — as collateral in their political war.
Time did not vindicate the segregationists of the 1960s. It did not uphold the so-called defenders of tradition who fought against interracial marriage. It will not be kind to those who demonized gay men during the AIDS crisis. And it will not excuse the cruelty being inflicted on transgender people today.
As a state and as a nation, we’re wrestling with an evolving understanding of gender — though neither the concept or the science behind it is new. What is new is how it’s being weaponized as a political cudgel to punish a single group. There should be thoughtful discussions about transgender participation in sports and medical care for transgender youth. But instead of reasoned debate, we’re seeing a flood of heavy-handed, reactionary laws that aren’t about policy or principle — they’re about control, restriction, and making an already vulnerable group a convenient target.
Transgender people are not harming anyone. They are not a threat to families, society, or public safety. But they have been turned into scapegoats in a political game designed to generate fear, raise money, and justify authoritarian control. And by modern social standards, no group has endured greater hardship than transgender youth. They have been cast as sacrifices in a devil’s bargain, their futures bartered away to sustain a culture war that exists solely to keep certain politicians in power.
Where is love? Where is courage?
History will not be kind to those who stood by as rights were stripped away. They will not be remembered as protectors of children or champions of freedom.
They will be remembered as what they are — cowards who traded decency for a few more years of power.
History will render its judgment, as it always does. The urgent question is whether this calculated campaign of fear and hatred will be dismantled before it’s too late.
