The partisan fight over ‘weird’ is becoming a proxy war for LGBTQ issues

Walz’s pro-trans policies, signed in a high-profile flurry after Democrats took over Minnesota’s state senate last year, were integral to his rise inside the party. Red states banned gender medicine for minors, sent child services after parents who sought them, and removed LGBTQ-themed books, some with graphic imagery, from schools; Walz drove his state in the other direction.

“We’re trying to build a state that’s the best place to raise a family,” said Minnesota Rep. Leigh Finke. The first trans member of the state legislature, she wrote the law that allows families from states where gender medicine for minors is banned to seek it out in Minnesota.

“It’s deja vu all over again,” said Finke. “Republicans are shining a light on a very small community, and make it seem like trans people are trying to take over the world.”

Then and now, Walz characterized Republican opponents of these laws as meddlers into families’ private lives. Republicans have hit right back, raising questions about Walz’s long pro-LGBTQ record, starting with his sponsorship of a gay-straight alliance as a teacher in Mankato.

“Those are basically government endorsed grooming clubs,” wrote Chloe Cole, a de-transitioner who’s testified in favor of bans on youth gender medicine.

“He’s a creepy guy,” said Ohio state Rep. Gary Click, the Republican sponsor of his state’s ban on gender medicine for minors. “When a mom’s walking down the sidewalk and sees him coming, she grabs her kid by the hand and walks to the other side of the street.”

None of these laws had passed in 2020, and the issue wasn’t invoked much by that year’s GOP candidates. In 2022, incumbent Republicans who passed conservative gender legislation in red states, like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, won easily despite protests; swing state Republicans who ran on the same ideas came up short.

But Trump started this campaign with a promise to end “left-wing gender insanity,” and conservative groups are confident that the public mood has shifted in their direction, no matter how many times Democrats hit them with the “weird” label.

“The policies Tim Walz supports are weird,” said Jon Schweppe, the policy director at the American Principles Project. The conservative group has run ads against re-defining gender, and allowing minors to access sex hormones or surgery, for five years; this cycle, it’s earmarked $18 million for ads on the topic.

“It’s a huge vulnerability,” said Schweppe, who thought that Vance was particularly smart to drive at it. “[Democrats] are probably best off not talking about it.”

Vance has gone further than Trump, delighting conservatives in interviews and speeches where he’s attacked the “trans refuge” policy as “kidnapping,” decrying legislation that allowed family courts to consider whether a parent recognized a child’s gender identity. He similarly raised the issue with Semafor’s Shelby Talcott to push back on the idea Walz’s record, which included free school meals and new child tax benefits, was “pro-family.”

“Tim Walz gets on his high horse about ‘mind your own damn business,’” Vance told ABC News’s Jon Karl. “You should not be able to take people’s children away from them if you disagree with decisions about gender reassignment.” Karl pushed back (the Minnesota law proscribes mediation between parents who disagree with each other on treatment), but conservatives see any invocation of this question as a winner for them — whether or not the media covers it that way.

“It’s going to be on every one of our voter guides. It’s going to be on every one of our door hangers. And I don’t think that was the case in 2020,” Faith and Freedom Coalition President Ralph Reed told Semafor last month, after Vance addressed FFC members in Milwaukee. “Trust me, politically, this is a 70-30, 75-25 issue, and it really helps among minority voters.”

Project 2025, the conservative umbrella group that Trump has sought to distance himself from more recently, decries how “children suffer the toxic normalization of transgenderism with drag queens and pornography invading their school libraries” in the forward to its 922-page “Mandate for Leadership” and contains numerous policy recommendations around the topic.

Democrats and their allies were thrilled by Walz’s framing of who was “weird” and who wasn’t; who wanted “freedom” and who wanted legislators to peer into the exam room.

“These are difficult choices, best made by the family — the end,” said Finke. “That argument consistently wins.”

They were particularly unconvinced that the tampon law, which conservative commentators lampooned last week, would mean much for Republicans. Walz had signed it and moved on; conservative pundits were calling him “Tampon Tim.” The Walz/Democratic theory: Legislating this and moving on was normal, and talking about it a year later would sound weird.

“Anti-trans animus has not worked as a matter of electoral politics, but it has succeeded in ruining a lot of trans peoples’ lives — which is their goal,” said Gillian Branstetter, a communications strategist for the ACLU. “When these attacks come up in any race, politicians who are supportive of trans people and our families should look at this as an opportunity. They’ve allowed themselves to be afraid of a paper tiger, because I don’t think most audiences are nearly as obsessed with this as the far right is.”

Republicans were gearing up for a fight on this issue before Walz was picked, and don’t believe that Democrats truly want to fight about it. They see political weakness when Democrats don’t defend gender norms; they challenged Harris to condemn the Olympic opening ceremony (which she didn’t), and challenged Doug Emhoff to weigh in about a gold medalist Algerian boxer who was widely misidentified as transgender and faced separate gender eligibility questions (he didn’t).

At its core, this is all part of a broader argument about masculinity, gender roles, and fertility — topics that Vance is comfortable talking about, while Trump more carefully picks his targets. Trump hasn’t attacked no-fault divorce, which would be complicated for him; Vance has. Vance has struggled to get past his extended take on “childless cat ladies,” Trump quickly said that people who do not have kids are “every bit as good as anybody else that has the most beautiful family.”

Walz intrigued Democrats, who see “freedom” and bodily autonomy as political winners, for talking so confidently about all of this, especially as a counter to Vance. They were excited to elevate a leader who checks the cultural boxes of the small-town dad — military veteran, football coach, Bob Seger listener — but can rebut the right’s message that this kind of manly lifestyle is under threat from “gender ideology.”

Conservatives see this as a ruse that’s only possible because the press, and the entertainment industry, agree with Walz. They see Walz’s image as phony and destructible, and they believe that, election results aside, the tide is turning against his view of gender identity.

“The whole world is stepping on the brakes, and Harris-Walz are stepping on the gas,” Click told me. This is a real test of the Democrats’ “freedom” theory, which no one in the party disputes.