Despite Growing Bipartisan Support, RNC Adopts Extreme Anti-Trans Platform

Last night, the Republican National Committee (RNC) adopted an extreme anti-LGBT and specifically anti-transgender platform that flies in the face of growing bipartisan support for equality. Despite growing support for transgender equality among voters of all parties and elected officials at all levels of government, the platform adopted by the RNC represents a broad and extreme attack on the dignity and well-being of LGBT people across this nation. We hope Americans, regardless of party affiliation, will continue to reject the mean-spirited and harmful ideas in this document.

The RNC platform not only tolerates but endorses discrimination against LGBT people, among members of other communities. It specifically targets transgender people, devoting a long passage to condemning efforts to respect transgender students and enforce federal education laws in a way that matches how they have been interpreted by federal courts. The platform calls supporting transgender students “an ideology alien to America’s history and traditions.” It promotes dangerous fears that have been repeatedly debunked, saying that permitting students to use public facilities consistent with their gender identity “is at once illegal, dangerous, and ignores privacy issues.” The platform goes so far as to “salute” politically-driven lawsuits by some state officials that seek to strip trans students’ and workers’ basic rights.

The RNC platform backs the idea of a federal “right-to-discriminate” law, similar to the one recently struck down in Mississippi. This law would enable charities to turn needy people away from government-funded services; adoption agencies to turn away loving families; doctors and hospitals to turn away sick patients; employers to deny leave to care for a sick spouse; and schools to turn away qualified students—all because of animus against LGBT people.

The platform implicitly calls for protecting the practice of subjecting young people to quack “conversion therapy” aimed at changing their gender identity or sexual orientation, opposing laws several states have now passed to ban this dangerous practice.

The RNC platform also attacks LGBT families, citing junk science that claims being raised by LGBT parents is dangerous for children and leads to drugs, alcohol, crime, and failing in school. The platform would not only prevent same-sex couples from marrying, but would also deny any rights or public benefits to any unmarried couples. The platform calls for appointing judges who would strip the freedom to marry from same-sex couples, and who would uphold any other unconstitutional law that strips rights from disfavored groups of people.

In sum, the 2016 RNC platform claims to oppose discrimination, but repeatedly supports it and advances policies that would undermine the health, safety, dignity, and well-being of LGBT people and their families from all walks of life. The adoption of this platform is a disappointing move that belies Americans’ broad support for fairness.

NOTE: NCTE is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization and as a result does not endorse or oppose any candidate for elected public office.