LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Throughout Fancy Farm this yr, a handful of Republican politicians made jokes in opposition to the LGBTQ group, particularly in regards to the transgender group, throughout their stump speeches. Spectrum Information 1 reached out to the Equity Marketing campaign, a Kentucky LGBTQ advocacy group, to listen to their response. The group’s Govt Director Chris Hartman stated, “Disgrace on Kentucky Republicans for making an attempt to show Kentucky’s trans youngsters into political pawns for votes.”
What politicians serve up yearly on the Fancy Farm Picnic is why Hartman advised Spectrum Information 1 he deliberately avoids it.
“I imply I get sufficient of the ham that they dish out on the state capitol in Frankfort so I sometimes really feel like I don’t want to listen to it from the stage of Fancy Farm, as nicely, the place the rhetoric and the vitriol is a lot extra peaked,” Hartman defined.
The Equity Marketing campaign is an advocacy group centered on laws that prohibits LGBTQ discrimination. Since its founding in 1991, 24 of Kentucky’s 120 counties have handed Equity Ordinances, which outlaw LGBTQ discrimination in employment, housing and public lodging.
Yearly Republicans and Democrats are invited to talk at Fancy Farm, however for the previous few years the GOP has made up the vast majority of speeches. This yr three Democrats and 10 Republicans spoke on the occasion.
Fancy Farm emcee and Republican Home Speaker David Osborne (R-59), U.S. Congressman James Comer (R-KY), Agriculture Commissioner Ryan Quarles (R), State Auditor Mike Harmon (R), and Kentucky lawmaker Richard Heath (R-2) have been politicians who made feedback in opposition to the LGBTQ group of their speeches. U.S. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) was not at Fancy Farm, however his spouse, political writer Kelley Paul subbed for him. Her rhetoric in opposition to transgender folks was essentially the most intensive.
“Biden says, ‘Don’t fear, we aren’t in a recession. Properly, I wouldn’t count on a Democrat to know what a session is. They will’t even outline what a girl is,” she stated throughout her speech.
Throughout this yr’s legislative session, lawmakers overrode Governor Andy Beshear’s veto of Senate Invoice 83, which banned transgender ladies in sixth by way of twelfth grades from enjoying ladies’ sports activities and transgender ladies from enjoying on school ladies’s groups.
“It is a tactic as previous as time, and these feedback would’ve been about homosexual marriage ten or 20 years in the past. Sadly, trans youngsters are the assault du jour proper now for conservatives to attempt to communicate as soon as once more to an extremist base,” Hartman stated.
Hartman added the Equity Marketing campaign does have the help of some Kentucky Republican lawmakers, however he known as those that made anti-LGBTQ feedback excessive and stated their feedback have been dangerous.
“These are the sorts of feedback that make, notably trans youngsters, really feel larger ranges of melancholy, expertise larger charges of self-harm and sadly suicide,” he stated.
Hartman believes candidates who use anti-LGBTQ rhetoric throughout their 2022 midterm election campaigns will lose votes.
“And I don’t dare to say that lots of them will lose, however I do assume that their margins won’t be fairly as broad as they first imagined,” Hartman stated.
Hartman stated the Equity Marketing campaign will maintain what politicians say in thoughts because the advocacy group considers who it can endorse and help come Nov. 8.
