LGBTQ, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion And Women Are The GOP Targets
Trump’s naming of Sen. J.D. Vance, R-Ohio, as his vice presidential running mate has opened up the flood gates for the incessant GOP assault on women, the LGBTQ+ community and corporate diversity, equity and inclusion or DEI efforts.
Among the latest ominous developments are Vance’s persistent rejection of protections for the LGBTQ+ community along with decisions by two major global companies to end DEI efforts, in response to lobbying by far right organizations.
DEI has been criticized by conservatives as one of many Democrat-supported “woke” initiatives. It encompasses a wide range of practices that advocates describe as ways to diversify companies, schools and organizations and ensure equal access to opportunity. It includes efforts such as recruiting and mentorship programs geared toward underrepresented groups, anti-bias training, and employee resource groups.
At the Republican National Convention, Vance said the GOP is “committed to free speech and the open exchange of ideas.” But his actions speak louder than his words. The one-time trump hater has said that he would vote against a bill to legalize same-sex marriage. He also introduced the Passport Sanity Act, a bill to ban “X” gender markers on U.S. passports, and the “Protect Children’s Innocence Act” banning trans youth care including puberty blockers, hormone therapies and surgeries for the purpose of gender-affirmation. The act is a copy of the House version by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga. It also would charge health care providers who violate the act with a Class C felony, punishable by more than a decade in prison. It would prevent institutions of higher education from providing instruction about gender-affirming care and cut funding for health plans that cover treatment.
Gender-affirming health care — for both transgender youths and adults — is considered safe, effective and medically necessary by most major medical associations. The only acceptable form of gender-affirming care for transgender minors who have not yet started puberty is social transition, which can include using a different name or pronouns or wearing gender-affirming clothing, according to guidelines set by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health and the Endocrine Society.
In April 2022, Vance said he supports so-called “Don’t Say Gay” laws such as the one passed in Florida barring teachers from discussing sexual orientation and gender identities. The anti-trans argument claimed that teachers who taught about sex-related issues were pedophile “groomers.” Asked about using the false term, Vance said, “I’ll stop calling people ‘groomers’ when they stop freaking out about bills that prevent the sexualization of my children.”
Soon after he was sworn in as a Senator from Ohio last year, Vance wasted no time in started a crusade that held up State Department ambassadorial nominations based on his objections to their “woke” and pro-LGBTQ+ views. Last April, Vance sent questionnaires to more than 30 potential State Department ambassadors. Vance wanted to know their views on diversity, equity and inclusion measures at embassies, gender-neutral bathrooms, Pride flag displays and gender-affirming care for State Department employees.
“The publics of many of our allies, and those countries we seek to build stronger relationships with, have traditional Christian, Jewish, Muslim, or Hindu moral values,” Vance wrote in the questionnaire to nominees. “If confirmed, how would you explain to them what the United States’ promoting ‘human rights for LGBTQ people’ would look like in their country?”
After a year of grandstanding and negotiations with the State Department, Vance dropped his opposition to all but two of the nominations in April.
On a positive note, Garden State Equality Action Fund, the state’s oldest and most influential LGBTQ+ grassroots advocacy group, is backing Kamala Harris for the Democratic presidential nomination.
“Kamala Harris has shown through her actions and her words that she is a true ally to the LGBTQ+ community,” said Jeannine Frisby LaRue , the organization’s chair. “Her commitment to equality and justice is personal just like mine, and we are confident she will continue to champion our rights as President.”
Garden State Equality Action Fund praised Harris’ support of marriage equality, and her sponsorship of the Equality Act while serving in the U.S. Senate.
The sharpest racist dig against DEI and Harris came from Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., who complained that Harris was a “DEI hire” as he complained that “white females” weren’t considered for her role as vice president or presidential nominee. In a recent interview, Burchett took issue with Biden’s 2020 announcement that then-candidate Biden would select a woman as his running mate.
“Biden said, first off, he said he’s going to hire a Black female for vice president and… he just skipped over — what about, what about white females? What about any other group?” Burchett said. “When you go down that route, you take mediocrity, and that’s what they have right now as a vice president.”
Burchett said that Harris, whose mother was Indian and her father from Jamaica, was a “DEI hire.”
“100 percent. She was a DEI hire ,” Burchett said. “Her record is abysmal at best.”
Burchett first garnered national media attention in 1999 as a Tennessee state lawmaker when he sponsored a bill to legalize the eating of roadkill, wild animals killed by vehicles, before notifying the county game warden. In 2023, Burchett was again in the news when he claimed that the government has been covering up the nature of UFOs “since the ‘40s.”
Some far right Republicans blamed DEI efforts for the attempted assassination of trump. They claim that Secret Service DEI policies, particularly the inclusion of women agents, was a contributing factor to the shooting. Until her resignation this week, the Secret Service director was Kimberly Cheatle.
Other Republicans also have used DEI as a racist, xenophobic and anti-feminist dog whistle. A recent New York Post headline blared that “America may soon be subjected to the country’s first DEI president: Kamala Harris.” Former trump White House official Sebastian Gorka, a far right purveyor of conspiracies, called Harris a “colored” “DEI hire.” Former trump lawyer John Eastman tried to revive the “birther” conspiracy theory, claiming that Harris, who was born in California, isn’t a natural-born citizen. Harris is a U.S. citizen while her father is from Jamaica and her mother is from India.
Eastman has been indicted for conspiring to disenfranchise voters, and attempting to obstruct an official proceeding in connection with the plot to disavow the 2020 presidential election in favor of trump.
In the wake of the failed assassination attempt, trump said he was “running to be president for all of America, not half of America, because there is no victory in winning for half of America.” Richard Grenell, a gay man who is trump’s former acting director of national intelligence, said that trump “doesn’t care if you’re gay or straight, Black, brown or white, or what gender you are.”
But lead speakers at the Republican national Convention in Milwaukee, Wis., put the lie to trump’s claims.
Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., was the first speaker at the opening night of the convention. Johnson went after transgender athletes when he told the crowd that the Democrats’ “fringe agenda includes biological males competing against girls and the sexualization and indoctrination of our children.”
Johnson whined against transgender women and girls playing on women’s and girls’ sporting teams and claimed Democrats backed the “indoctrination of our children.” Later in the evening, the crowd erupted in cheers when Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., said “There are only two genders. And we are made in God’s image, amen. And we won’t shy away from speaking that simple truth ever.”
Teamsters President Sean O’Brien reposted an anti DEI op-ed written by Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., who wrote “The C-suite long ago sold out the United States, shuttering factories in the homeland and gutting American jobs, while using the profits to push diversity, equity, and inclusion and the religion of the trans flag.”
The C-suite refers to upper echelons of corporate senior executives and managers. C-suite gets its name from the titles of top senior executives which tend to start with the letter C, for “chief,” including chief executive officer (CEO), chief financial officer (CFO), chief operating officer (COO), and chief information officer (CIO).
The Teamsters social media page fired back at O’Brien and Hawley with “unions gain nothing from endorsing the racist, misogynistic, and anti-trans politics of the far right.”
Not surprisingly, in his acceptance speech trump referred despairingly to “men playing in women’s sports.” Trump said he would stop transgender participation in sports while his son, Donald trump Jr., accused Democrats of “teaching our kids that there are 57 genders” and “can’t even define what a woman is.”
Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., who is under congressional investigation for sexual improprieties, said the MAGA days were a time when “We were richer, inflation was low, and there were two genders.”
Adding to the bile was Elon Musk , the billionaire tech mogul who moaned about the Oscars turning “woke” and removed protections on his social media platform against targeted misgendering. Musk said recently that his 20-year-old trans child is “dead” because she transitioned from male to female.
In Oklahoma, the state schools superintendent, Ryan Walters, has expressed intensely negative attitudes about the anti-LGBTQ+ community. Last week, Walters had a parent removed and arrested after she spoke out against him at a state board of education session. The parent, Audra Beasley, told Walters that he is “an obnoxious bigot and bully!” One of Beasley’s children identifies as “part of a sex and gender minority group.” Her child has faced discrimination as a result of Walters’ comments against the queer population.
Walker also named Chaya Raichick to a state committee that is reviewing library material for the state school board. A former real estate agent, Raichick runs “Libs of Tik Tok,” a far-right, anti-LGBTQ social media account. The account reposts hostile, mocking and derogatory commentary from other social media platforms. The accounts promote hate speech and transphobia, and spread false claims, especially relating to medical care of transgender children. The Twitter account, also known by the handle @LibsofTikTok, had nearly 3 million followers as of February 2024.
In New Hampshire, LGBTQ+ rights took a major hit as Republican Gov. Chris Sununu signed sweeping legislation that restricts gender-affirming care and trans athletes. Sununu vetoed H.B. 396, which would have allowed any person or organization to use “biological sex” as criteria for accessing gender-specific spaces such as bathrooms, locker rooms, and prisons. The bills Sununu signed force schools to reorganize sports so transgender student-athletes cannot participate on the teams associated with their gender, ban gender-affirming surgery for minors, and require that teachers notify parents two weeks in advance if they are discussing topic related to gender or sexual orientation.
Valentina Gomez, a GOP candidate for Missouri secretary of state, attacked Harris on X, calling her a “little wh*re.”
“Kamala Harris slept her way to the top, and Tulsi Gabbard already destroyed and exposed her in 2020. Kamala is just another DEI hire, and President Trump is going to eat her alive,” Gomez said in a video.
Never to be outsmeared, former Fox News host Tucker Carlson said that former presidential candidate and secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, was “the most bloodthirsty person I’ve ever seen on the public stage” while calling the late former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright a “total ghoul” and a “nasty, stupid person.”
Carlson added without explaining that Harris is like Pol Pot, the genocidal dictator who ruled Cambodia in the 1970s. “When Kamala says, you know, we’re ‘unburdened by the past,’ what she’s really saying is ‘welcome to Kampuchea,’” Carlson said, referring to the official name of Cambodia under Khmer rule. He also claimed it was “clearly the goal” of Democrats to throw out “all of our standards and norms and traditions” and start at “Year Zero.”
The anti-trans rhetoric reflects the hundreds of transphobic and punitive anti-trans laws that have been enacted throughout red states in the Deep South and Mountain West over the last four years.
Translegislation.com reported that in 2024, a total of 635 bills in 43 states were introduced to block trans people from “receiving basic healthcare, education, legal recognition and the right to publicly exist.” The anti-trans bills tracker found that 47 of the proposals passed, 123 were still active and 465 had failed.
In contrast with the GOP antagonisms toward the LGBTQ+ community, a new poll by the Pulseofpride.com reported on the 20 most LGBTQ welcoming states. They include, in order of support, California, New York, Massachusetts, Oregon, Washington, Illinois, Colorado, Minnesota, Nevada, Connecticut, Maine, Maryland, Rhode Island, Vermont, New Jersey, New Mexico, Hawaii, Iowa, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
The Conservative onslaught against so-called “woke” initiatives has most recently led two major international companies to cancel their DEI efforts. The companies, John Deere based in Moline, Ill., and Tractor Supply Co., based in Brentwood, Tenn., had previously been honored for their efforts at improving diversity in the workplace.
In June, Tractor Supply said it was ending a range of LGBTQ, DEI, and environmental initiatives. The company said it would no longer sponsor pride festivals or submit data to the Human Rights Campaign, an LGBTQ civil rights advocacy group that had previously given Tractor Supply perfect marks in its 2022 Best Places to Work Corporate Equality Index.
Tractor Supply also eliminated internal DEI roles and abandoned its DEI goals to improve employee diversity. The company also gave up its plan to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2040.
Tractor Supply’s anti-DEI decision flew in the face of a 2021 op-ed written by Tractor Supply CEO Hal Lawton, titled, “Why businesses should follow Tractor Supply’s push for diversity, inclusion and climate change prevention.”
“If we are to tackle important issues such as climate that put our children’s future at risk, and if we are to make real progress on a societal commitment to greater opportunities for all, the business community needs to lead by example,” Lawton wrote.
John Deere followed Tractor Supply and said it will stop attending “social or cultural awareness” events and other diversity policies and instead will focus on professional development rather than identity. The company said it would audit training materials “to ensure the absence of socially motivated messages” and will “exclusively” focus business resource groups for employees on professional development, mentoring and talent recruitment, rather than race or sexual identity.
The curtailment of DEI programs at Deere and Tractor Supply came a year after a boycott of Bud Light over its partnership with transgender influencer and actress Dylan Mulvaney. Target also dealt with a boycott and in-store confrontations over Pride Month merchandise last year, prompting the company to pull back its collection from storefronts and remove some merchandise altogether.
Decisions by Tractor Supply and Deere came amid public pressure led by Robby Starbuck, a conservative podcast host who orchestrated a boycott of Tractor Supply over its diversity policies late last month.
“DEI is poison and we won’t rest until the public knows how companies have strayed from American values,” Starbuck wrote. He also posted a video on X this month that said the company had “gone woke.” The video had more than 50,000 likes and over 5 million views.
Starbuck, 36, is a music video director and unsuccessful 2022 GOP write-in candidate for Congress in Tennessee. He produced a 2024 documentary, “The War on Children,” which criticizes the trans movement for allegedly “sexualizing children.
“It’s time to expose Tractor Supply,” Starbuck wrote, listing grievances such as “LGBTQIA+ training for employees, fundingpride/drag events, a DEI Council, funding sex changes, climate change activism, Pride month decorations in the office, DEI hiring practices, and LGBTQIA+ events at work.”
He accused the company’s CEO Lawton of promoting “woke priorities” that do not align with Tractor Supply’s customer base. Starbuck urged his followers to contact Tractor Supply’s corporate office and make their opposition known. His campaign grew with support from Libs of TikTok, the far-right, anti-LGBTQ+ account run by Chaya Raichik.
Not long after, Tractor Supply announced it would dismantle all DEI efforts.
“We have heard from customers that we have disappointed them. We have taken this feedback to heart,” Tractor Supply wrote in a statement.
Deere’s decision also came a month after the company entered into an agreement with the Department of Labor to resolve charges of “systemic hiring discrimination against Black and Hispanic applicants” at production facilities in Iowa and Illinois.
Tractor Supply and John Deere are among the worst but Pulseofpride.com listed what it determined to be the top 21 LGBTQ+ friendly American companies. They are, in order, Apple Inc., Google, Microsoft, Nike, Starbucks, Amazon, American Airlines, Coca-Cola, Facebook, Target, JPMorgan Chase, IBM, Disney, General Motors, Uber, LinkedIn, Adobe, Netflix, Gap Inc., Marriott International and Salesforce.