Anna I. | Red Phoenix correspondent | Ohio–

A federal judge has struck down the blatantly bigoted Florida law, SB 254, ruling it as unconstitutional. The law, which banned access to gender-affirming treatments to thousands of transgender people under the age of 18 and heavily regulated adult patients who sought care, was signed by the fascist Governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, in May of 2023. The state of Florida plans to appeal the court’s decision.

DeSantis and his ilk are reacting as expected, implying this decision is tantamount to child mutilation. Tellingly, the presiding justice, Judge Hinkle, stated in his ruling that, “there were no complaints from patients, no adverse results in Florida,” and that this is “just a political issue.” Taking this into account, one begins to wonder why the governor and his party have pulled out all the stops in order to legislate and litigate against an alleged non-issue. The answer is, of course, that this is yet another way for capitalists and reactionaries to exert their power.   

The reason that reactionary leaders scapegoat transgender people is to scare and enrage their electorate, stoking their fear to motivate them to the polls. Since the two dominant political parties in the United States are capitalist parties, they will never act in the interests of the working masses, but they still need our votes and nothing motivates voters more than fear. In the utterly broken and failed capitalist electoral system, one method that politicians use to mobilize political support is to manufacture an enemy and then offer themselves up as the only ones who can vanquish it.

When voters are scared and angry at some boogieman, they are distracted from fighting their true class enemies. It is natural to focus on one specific target if it is perceived as a threat. If a politician successfully sells someone the lie that transgender people are grooming children, then their normal, everyday suffering at the hands of capitalism seems less pressing than protecting children. The failures of their politicians and even their most heinous policies seem to fall by the wayside as everything is sacrificed for a false and temporary sense of security.

All of this goes on while the affected group suffers. Legislation targeting transgender people leads to normalization of bigoted rhetoric and violence. This year has already seen a slew of violence against transgender people, for example Nex Benedict and Cobalt Sovereign. Bigots are being emboldened by the mainstreaming of reactionary narratives and using it as a sort of casus belli to commit horrific hate crimes. This same phenomenon can be observed throughout history against many different minority groups. 

When the workers overthrow the capitalists and the means of production are owned in kind, they will no longer be cowed by manipulation. The propaganda from the capitalist governments of the world would have you believe that previous socialist experiments were plagued by a “ruling elite” that constantly misled the gullible masses, but you’d be hard-pressed to find a socialist country of the past that dealt in lies quite as much as our capitalist nation does right now.

This Pride month, and every month, stand up to the fear mongers and sellers of moral panic. Protect trans lives, smash the capitalists, and reject this broken system that has brought the workers to this point of desperation. Socialism is the future!

Categories: Discrimination, Health Care, LGBTQIA+, U.S. News