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Politics

How Anti-Trans Language Became a GOP Campaign Cornerstone

In their bids for Congress, Tim Sheehy and U.S. Rep. Ryan Zinke have made anti-transgender speech a central tenet of their political message

By Denali Sagner
Audience members hold signs at a rally for U.S. Senate candidate Tim Sheehy in Kalispell on June 13, 2024. Hunter D’Antuono | Flathead Beacon

The joke goes as follows.

Tim Sheehy walks into a crowded auditorium — in Bozeman, Kalispell, Lewistown or, in this case, the Republican National Convention — donning a pressed suit and a smile. He breaks the ice.

“My name is Tim Sheehy. Those are also my pronouns. I’ve been a ‘he-she’ for 38 years, and I can promise you, going to elementary school with that name in the ’80s was not fun.”

The Republican candidate for U.S. Senate often follows this opener with the sentiment that, while his pronoun joke is funny, the acceptance of transgender identities in the United States, and in Montana, is not.

It is, in Sheehy’s words, an emblem of “the lunacy we’re living with in Joe Biden and Jon Tester’s America.”

Sheehy often ends these speeches with a “common sense” message, in which he says that Montanans believe in: “Safe streets. Cheap gas. Cops are good. Criminals are bad. Boys are boys. Girls are girls.”

Sheehy’s stump speech is part of a powerful undercurrent of anti-transgender campaigning that has defined the current election cycle in Montana. In podcast appearances, TV ads and rallies, Republican candidates have leaned into language that disparages transgender individuals and calls for the removal of transgender people from sports teams, bathrooms and public life at large. The rhetoric has coincided with an uptick in anti-transgender legislation in Montana, which advocates say has created a hostile environment for the vulnerable group.

For Sheehy and others this election season, anti-transgender speech is not just an item in a long list of policy planks, but a central tenet of their political message.

In media appearances and campaign events, Sheehy, who is running against longtime Democratic Sen. Jon Tester, has frequently rejected the existence of transgender identities and pushed back against trans-inclusive policies, often in the context of “protecting” Montana’s children.

Speaking to supporters in Red Lodge on April 4, Sheehy said, “We can’t tell our boys they can be girls and the girls they can be boys and then be surprised when they get gender dysphoria and depression.”

On April 27, Sheehy appeared on Gaines for Girls, a podcast hosted by swimmer and conservative political activist Riley Gaines, where he said, “It’s embarrassing now that we as a country now have to have a discussion about the fact that there are two genders.”

In a May 13 appearance on a podcast hosted by Josh Smith, the president of the Montana Knife Company, Smith used a slur for transgender people and criticized Tester for the Democratic Party’s support of “transvestites and fricking changing genders.”

Sheehy then said, “I’m a commonsense guy. I’m not some crazy right winger. If you’re a consenting adult and you want to pay to go have your penis removed … but don’t make my kids do it … I don’t want you in a locker room with my 8-year-old daughter.”

A spokesperson for Sheehy said in a statement to the Beacon, “You’re damn right Tim doesn’t want his two daughters or any girls being in the same bathroom or changing in a locker room with men, and it’s total bullshit that Democrats like Jon Tester are letting mediocre men compete against exceptional women in girls’ sports. Tim and his wife Carmen didn’t fight overseas to let Senator Tester and the radical Left change the definition of a boy and girl and force their woke agenda on our kids.”

The claim that Tester voted to allow biological men to compete in girls’ sports is false, per a September fact-check by NonStop Local. The Senate has never voted specifically to allow men to compete in women’s athletics. Rather, Tester and other Democrats voted against amendments introduced by Alabama Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville in 2021 and 2024 that sought to prohibit the disbursement of federal funds to entities that allowed transgender female students to participate in women’s sports.

Sheehy is not alone in making anti-transgender language a cornerstone of his bid for office.

In an ad for U.S. Rep. Ryan Zinke’s reelection campaign, a woman named Heather tells viewers, “Joe Biden and Monica Tranel think your child’s school should be allowed to talk to your kids about transitioning their gender without your knowledge.”

Spliced with videos of children on a soccer field, the video claims Biden and Tranel support “secretly changing your kid’s gender.”

U.S. Rep. Ryan Zinke appears at a bill signing event at the Old Courthouse in Kalispell on June 9, 2023. Hunter D’Antuono | Flathead Beacon

When asked about transgender athletes participating in sports earlier this year, Tranel said, “I think trans kids need to be able to participate. I mean, sports is such a critical piece of life.”

During an appearance on NBC Montana shortly after, Tranel was asked about her comments and said, “I’m a two-time Olympian, and I understand that process has to be fair and that you should be competing in sports based on your gender. I compete against women, men compete against men, period.”

The Tranel campaign said in an email, “As the mother of three daughters, I support parents’ and families’ freedom to make their own private decisions without government interference. Ryan Zinke wants to take away our freedom. The government should not be making decisions about our most private personal decisions, and certainly not Ryan Zinke.”

Another Zinke ad, released to coincide with the beginning of the Paris 2024 Olympics, features Zinke perched against a tree donning a Whitefish Bulldogs jacket. As a teenager, the Congressman led the school’s football team to its 1979 state championship.

“Boys are boys, and girls are girls. It’s just common sense,” Zinke says in the ad.

Zinke campaign spokesperson Heather Swift in an email said that Zinke’s comments have been about children, and that “Ryan Zinke has no issue with adults making these decisions for themselves to live their lives the way they want.”

“There’s no coincidence about why that’s something that they’re campaigning on,” Jessi Bennion, professor of political science at Montana State University, said.

In a competitive race like Montana’s Senate election, Bennion said, candidates’ messaging comes down to targeted, poll-driven talking points. While the GOP has softened its language on same-sex marriage and abortion in recent years, public opinion for transgender Americans has soured, as Republicans have thrust increasingly targeted legislation into the national spotlight.  

Nearly 70% of Americans believe same-sex marriages should be recognized and given the same rights as traditional marriage, compared to just 27% in 1996. Former President Donald Trump in 2016 said he was “fine with” same-sex unions.

However, 90% of Trump supporters and 39% of Biden voters said that gender is determined by one’s sex assigned at birth in an April study by the Pew Research Center. While a majority of Americans support laws prohibiting discrimination against transgender people, a majority also oppose access to puberty-blocking medication for transgender teens and pre-teens, a 2022 Washington Post-KFF survey found.

“That is a very powerful cultural touchstone to campaign on,” Bennion said.

Jami Taylor, professor of political science and public administration at the University of Toledo and national expert on LGBTQ+ politics and policy, said the issues of abortion and gay rights have become “less valuable” to Republicans.

Capitalizing on anti-transgender policies allows Republicans to galvanize their base without alienating the growing swaths of Americans who support same-sex marriage and reproductive healthcare access.

“Elections are about winning,” Taylor said.

Taylor added that there is currently a vast “policy opportunity” at the state and local level to marginalize transgender individuals. Bathrooms, sports teams, healthcare services and access to public spaces are all critical to transgender existence, and easy to legislate away in Republican-controlled states, absent relief from the courts. Issues related to children are of even more “high salience,” Taylor explained, like blocking access to hormonal treatment for minors or prohibiting drag performances in public libraries and schools.

The Montana Legislature in 2021 passed a law prohibiting transgender women and girls from competing on school sports teams that aligned with their gender identity. The law was blocked in district court and struck down by the Montana Supreme Court this spring. The state Legislature in 2023 passed a bill banning gender-affirming healthcare for transgender minors, which was blocked last fall by a district court judge. Also blocked in court is a ban on drag shows and events, passed in 2023.

Lawmakers in 37 states introduced nearly 150 bills to restrict gender-affirming healthcare in 2023, per a Reuters investigation.

Advocates say Republicans’ focus on transgender individuals has contributed to a chilling environment in Montana — one that has inspired successful political organizing within the queer community, but that has also forced transgender Montanans to consider moving to less hostile states.

“The point of proposing these types of discriminatory legislation is to push people out of public life and public participation and to discourage people from meaningfully engaging in democracy around them,” Alex Rate, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Montana, said.  

The ACLU of Montana has challenged a number of anti-LGBTQ+ bills passed by the state Legislature.

Rate described the anti-transgender rhetoric used by Sheehy and others as “part of the same, tired playbook of othering people” that “has been ongoing for decades, if not centuries.”

Bennion tied the “nationalization” of Montana’s political landscape to a rise in anti-transgender policies brought forth by its state Legislature.

The language around transgender individuals, Bennion said, is mirroring much of the discourse dominating the airwaves of Fox News and other conservative outlets.

Kiersten Iwai, executive director of advocacy group Forward Montana, said the increase in anti-transgender rhetoric and policy showed that “Montana and Montanans aren’t immune to the intense conversations and political discourse that go on around the country.”

Iwai called Sheehy and Zinke’s rhetoric “scapegoating.”

“Every person in Montana, and queer and trans Montanans, deserve to live here with safety and dignity,” she said.

According to S.K. Rossi, the owner of a Helena-based progressive policy and advocacy firm and a longtime lobbyist in the state Legislature, the frequency and intensity of anti-transgender policies introduced in the Montana Legislature has ebbed and flowed over the years, but reached an inflection point in 2023 as Republicans held a supermajority for the first time since the 1970s.  

“The rhetoric and the vehemence around those bills from the far-right and extreme religious advocates in the Legislature was much worse than in past years,” Rossi said, adding, “They’re just targeting trans people now.”

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