According to a recent poll from the Public Religion Research Institute ( PRRI), several states have both become more equally divided on trans issues or more sympathetic of anti-trans policy, especially if those states introduced policy restricting access to bathrooms and gender-affirming care for transgender minors.
Even more troubling, the poll revealed a decrease in assistance for LGBTQ+ rights in general, including one for marriage equality. According to PRRI researcher Andrew R. Flores, if these trends persist, the national political divide may widen, effectively creating” two Americas” for LGBTQ+ individuals.
According to Flores, “in 2016 there were more adults opposed to stringent bath policies than in favor of them.” ” Over time, this has slowly changed, with some popular red state becoming more divided and then more supportive of these policies, particularly in the South and parts of the Midwest.” Additionally, he noted that when asked about their opinions on trans-related bathroom policies, survey respondents are less likely to say” I do n’t know.”
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Despite the fact that polling has generally supported same-sex marriage and anti-discrimination policies, Flores claimed that support for the former decreased from 72 % in 2021 to 66 % by 2023, a 6 % decrease.
According to Flores, citizens who support misogynistic regulations are more likely to be found in states where lawmakers passed anti-trans policy. However, he also noted that anti-trans sentiments in these states started to rise in 2021, prior to the country’s overall surge in opposition to trans policy and social speech.
Flores came to his conclusion by examining responses to the 2023 American Values Survey ( AVS), an annual survey carried out by PRRI and the Brookings Institution, a self-described non-partisan think tank in the social sciences.
Flores claimed that political partisanship, or whether one identifies as Democratic or Republican, can also affect a person’s view of transgender issues regardless of age, even though younger individuals tend to support LGBTQ+ civil rights.
According to Torres,” Social change is not a one-way lever toward greater understanding of LGBTQ+ people.” Partisanship is bridge millennial gaps on sentiments toward transgender rights, even though younger years are in fact more accepting than older years.
Geographically speaking, there are two clusters of claims that are more pro-trans and less in the middle, according to Torres. Therefore,” there may be an emergent two Americas for LGBTQ people [and ] particularly for transgender people,” he said.
The anti-LGBT change may be changing the public’s perception of LGBTQ people and rights, just as the eroding of democratic norms by political elites can cause some people in the masses to degrade democracy.
This tendency, according to Flores, is not coincidental. In fact, he claimed that by carefully concentrating on certain contentious problems, anti-LGBT groups are” steering” the LGBTQ+ coverage plan. He asserted that LGBTQ+ individuals and friends will need to concentrate on influencing public opinion and mobilizing voters to “forestall coming floods in anti- Gay costs” in order to regain command of the narrative.
