Kelley Winters, Ph.D.
2023 March
How did the U.S. theo-confederacy (including religious right and southern evangelical extremism, white nationalism, GOP and MAGA trumpism) choose Transgender and Gender Diverse people as their hated scapegoat class for political gain?
The answer lies in the very same central institution that promoted the horrors of slavery and the treason of confederacy in the antebellum South. The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) was founded in 1845 by southern slaveholders (including, sadly, some monstrous Appalachian kin of mine) to provide a religious justification for their atrocity. Today, it is the largest Protestant and second-largest Christian denomination in the United States and remains the most politically virulent, in opposition to minority human rights. The reported combined total assets of SBC entities were $2.66 billion in 2021 (Baptist News Global, 20220824).
In the run up to the GOP primary for the 2016 presidential election, the SBC published Resolution 2250, “On Transgender Identity,” in June, 2014. This political manifesto condemned non-birth-assigned gender identites and expressions, all forms of affirming medical care, and legal recognition and cultural acceptance of TGD people in our authentic genders. The SBC resolution falsely stereotyped gender diversity as psychopathology (“human fallenness…psychological manifestations as gender identity confusion”) and promoted religious gender-conversion treatments (in terms of “hope of the redemption of our bodies in Christ” and “as they repent and believe in Christ”).
SBC Resolution 2250 served as literal marching orders for prospective GOP presidential candidates in 2016. It was the list of demands, the price of admission, for any GOP candidate seeking endorsement by the SBC and its enormous sphere of conservative influence and access to financial resources. One candidate, trump, was quickest to jump to the SBC’s demands for persecution of TGD people and communities. He was rewarded with the loyalty of the southern-centered evangelical political base, who were led to believe that his conquest of the White House was divinely mandated.
The SBC hate-resolution of 2014 was expanded and clarified by the Family Research Council (a part of the “Focus on the Family” cabal of hate groups founded by James Dobson in 2015) and codified in the GOP platform in 2016. In the post-trump years, the U.S. theo-confederacy has doubled down, over and again, on its campaign of lies about TGD people and our health care and its blitzkrieg of transmissist legislation and litigation.
Content Warning: the text of this linked document of tragic historical consequence is highly offensive and has promoted nearly a decade of systemic hate and discrimination against TGD people. I avoid providing direct links to web sites of hate-biased organizations, so I have included a safe link to an archived copy of SBC Resolution 2250 on the reputable Wayback Machine-Internet Archive site.
Southern Baptist Convention. (2014) On Transgender Identity, Resolution 2250, Baltimore, MD. https://web.archive.org/web/20201221154518/https://www.sbc.net/resource-library/resolutions/on-transgender-identity/
Note about the graphic image: The Southern Baptist Convention did not repudiate the confederate flag until recently in its history, June 2016, and under intense public pressure. Up to that point, the SBC referred to this deplorable symbol as a “sign of solidarity of the whole Body of Christ.” We can’t make this stuff up.
Copyright © 2023 Kelley Winters
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