GOP House members launch new anti-LGBTQ Congressional Family Caucus

A trio of Republican members of the House of Representatives announced on Tuesday the launch of an anti-LGBTQ caucus to “defend the natural family from attempts by the radical Left to erode this core foundation of our society.”

Reps. Brian Babin of Texas, Diana Harshbarger of Tennessee, and Mary Miller of Illinois, the founders of the Congressional Family Caucus, made the announcement on the Washington Stand, a website published by the Family Research Council that is described as the group’s “outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview.”

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Family Research Council is a hate group whose “real specialty is defaming LGBTQ people.”

The lawmakers’ announcement states:

The natural family, a man and a woman committed for life to each other and to their children, was ordained by God as the foundation of our society. … The mission of the radical Left is clear: replace the natural family with the federal government. The Left advances abortion, fatherlessness, surgical castration, and atheism. These woke progressives attempt to subvert parental rights by eliminating parental consent for abortion and “gender transition” procedures. They fill school curriculums with perverse transgender ideology and racist critical race theory. … Today, too many conservatives are afraid to glorify God in public life or acknowledge the irreplaceable benefit of having a mother and a father in the home. We believe we have a moral obligation as servant representatives to protect and conserve the family.

The three conservative lawmakers have a history of opposing equality.

According to the Human Rights Campaign, each received a zero score in the 117th Congress, indicating that they voted against LGBTQ equality at every single opportunity.

On Feb. 15, Miller introduced a bill that would override local school systems’ decisions by requiring parents to “opt in” before students can provide information about sexual orientation and gender identity. Six days earlier, she filed a bill that would change Title IX to ensure its anti-discrimination protections do not apply to transgender and gender nonconforming kids.

In 2016, Babin proposed a similar bill to rescind transgender protections under Title IX.

And in September, Harshbarger’s official website posted a link to an interview with Newsmax in which she called the Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s Clinic for Transgender Health an “abomination, not just to our state, but to the whole country” for offering gender-affirming medical care to children and adults.

The new anti-LGBTQ caucus comes as Republicans across the nation continue to attack the transgender community.

In the first two months of the 118th Congress, GOP lawmakers have introduced a spate of bills aimed at restricting equal rights for transgender and gender-nonconforming people. The bills would ban transgender military service; bar trans people from the bathrooms, locker rooms, and sports teams that match their gender identity; and require parental permission before schools could use kids’ preferred names, pronouns, and gender markers.

More than 100 anti-LGBTQ bills have been filed in state legislatures, including bans on transgender health care and drag performances.

Former President Donald Trump, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL), and others attacked trans people in speeches at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference last weekend.

Along with the anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and legislation on the part of lawmakers, anti-LGBTQ extremists have made violent threats against medical centers, libraries, and other facilities in recent months. At least 38 transgender people were killed in the United States in 2022.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.