Despite Transgender Crimes, Democrats Push Their Agenda

On Saturday a man with long blonde hair posted an image of himself wearing lipstick and make-up on social media, and then entered an AMC theater near Boston where he stabbed four girls watching a children’s movie. Jared Ravizza was allegedly “laughing the whole time” while he nearly killed them, the mother of three of them said.

From there, he drove to a McDonald’s in a different town, publicly urinated, and then allegedly stabbed two employees. He is also suspected of killing someone in Connecticut before going on his stabbing spree.

He was ultimately caught by police after crashing his expensive Porsche. His privileged background included living for several years among liberals on Martha’s Vineyard, while his Instagram account with 218,000 followers refers to himself as “she.”

A few weeks ago in Texas, a man who identified himself as a woman named Karon Fisher drove at high speed to strike an older man who was getting his mail, backed up over him, and then repeatedly stabbed him to death. This was caught on video and witnessed by multiple bystanders.

And in California Tremaine Carroll, a male prisoner who was relocated to a woman’s prison after he identified himself as a transgender woman, allegedly raped a woman there. Earlier this month a Biden-appointed federal judge dismissed a lawsuit brought by women inmates against this California policy, by which more than 1,600 men have sought to be housed in women’s prisons.

Last year the massacre of three children and three adults at a private Christian school in Nashville was perpetrated by Audrey Elizabeth Hale, who called herself Aiden Hale. In November 2022, five were murdered at a gay nightclub in Colorado Springs, Colorado, by Anderson Lee Aldrich who identified himself as nonbinary in court filings, and a transgender teen was convicted of murder after a Denver-area school shooting in 2019.

Not long ago transgender inclinations were considered to be gender dysphoria, and something to be outgrown or treated as a mental disorder. Now, however, the remake of the popular Nintendo “Paper Mario” video game includes “Vivian,” a character born male but exclaiming that “it took me a while to realize I was their sister… not their brother,” while other video games also push the transgender ideology.

Biden has bet his reelection campaign on fully supporting the transgender movement. The Biden Administration has created new causes of action for lawsuits against those who do not cave into transgender demands for preferred pronouns or special new rights.

Democrat-appointed federal judges are ruling in favor of transgender rights in every case. Two weeks ago Democrats on the Eleventh Circuit ruled that a transgender sergeant in a county sheriff’s office had a right to health insurance coverage at taxpayer expense for costly transgender surgery.

The Fourth Circuit, by a vote of 8 Democrat-appointed judges to 6 Republicans, held that West Virginia’s Medicaid and North Carolina’s teachers’ and state employees’ health insurance must fully cover transgender operations and treatment. A 3-judge panel of that same court recently held that parents have no right to opt out of public school coursework that pushes their own children toward accepting tenets of the transgender ideology.

Meanwhile, male-bodied student-athletes are winning state championships in girls’ sports, often by a wide margin, in states that allow such unfair competition. West Virginia enacted a law to protect girls’ sports, but it was blocked by a federal court and the Supreme Court declined a petition to review the case.

The transgender issue may explain why Trump leads Biden in the key swing state of Arizona, despite its Democrat governor. A poll last year showed that by an overwhelming margin of 63-20% Arizonans favor keeping transgender students out of girls’ sports, by 54-27% want them kept out of girls’ restrooms, and by 51-30% Arizonans want to ban transgender operations on children.

Hollywood actor Richard Dreyfuss disparaged the transgender movement during an appearance Saturday night in Beverly, Massachusetts, in honor of the megahit movie Jaws that shattered box office records in 1975, and afterward the venue issued an abject apology emphasizing “inclusivity and respect.” The talented Dreyfuss has criticized diversity and inclusion requirements at the Academy Awards by saying “they make me vomit.”

In an interview on PBS’s Firing Line last year, Dreyfuss asked “Are we really risking hurting people’s feelings? You can’t legislate that. You have to let life be life and I’m sorry, I don’t think there is a minority or majority in the country that has to be catered to like that.”

Hollywood movies today are plummeting in popularity just as Biden is, perhaps due to their same embrace of political correctness for the transgender movement and its demands for special rights. This Memorial Day weekend saw the lowest movie box office revenues since 1995, without even adjusting for inflation.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work.