Media Fetish for Bipartisanship Obscures Risks to Trans Youth

A profile of a Missouri Republican provides an example of how bias towards compromise and bipartisanship can obscure what’s really going on.

by Evan Urquhart

a stylized donkey and elephant

Anti-trans Republican lawmaker Cindy O’Laughlin’s colleagues had some very nice things to say about her, at least according to a glowing profile of the lawmaker in the Missouri Independent. Laudatory quotes came from her fellow conservative Republicans, other Republicans, and even Democrats who serve in the Missouri state Senate, where O’Laughlin recently became the majority leader.

(screenshot from the Missouri Independent)

According to the Independent, O’Laughlin helped secure the passage of a major education bill by agreeing to compromise on some of conservative’s demands. The reporting is right to highlight how unusual any willingness at all to compromise with Democrats has become in an era in local, state, and national politics where hard-liners show little interest in the practicalities of governing and view compromise as anathema. However, the profile papers over some key details about O’Laughlin that don’t entirely fit the image of a kindly bipartisan dealmaker. For example, it doesn’t mention that O’Laughlin has been personally pushing a bill to ban paricipation in sports by trans youth since 2020. Reading between the lines, it’s clear that a ban on trans youth in sports remains one of O’Laughlin’s first legislative priorities today, as are parents' rights, and opposition to honest education on racism in America. Here’s what O’Laughlin said her first tests as the majority leader would be:

(screenshot from the Missouri Independent)

The story makes it sound as if outside forces are pushing the issue of trans participation in sports, but these are O’Laughlin’s priorities according to her own history as a legislator as well as materials from her 2018 campaign.

Late in the Independent’s story a lone voice of dissent is quoted. Shira Berkowitz, the senior director of public policy for PROMO, Missouri’s largest LGBTQ+ advocacy group, provides the only complication to an otherwise glowing picture of O’Laughlin as a bipartisan compromiser:

(screenshot from the Missouri Independent)

The story quickly moves on from Berkowitz’s concerns and returns to glowing descriptions of how O’Laughlin colleagues believe she can be trusted to find common ground. So Assigned contacted Shira Berkowitz and find out if they could tell us about parts of the story the Independent might be leaving out.

“O’Laughlin saying she wants “communication” on this issue, trans youth in sports, right out of the gate is her way of signalling that this is her legislative priority,” Berkowitz explained. “She shares this priority with other Republican leaders, a priority to ban trans youth, transgender girls specifically, from participating in sports.”

Berkowitz explained that their organization had interacted a lot with O’Laughlin during the time the legislator spent as chair of the Senate Education Committee. They described O’Laughlin as one of 10 members of the conservative caucus in the Missouri state Senate, a group of lawmakers who vehemently pushed legislation targeting the bodies of trans youth. Despite the description of her having friendly relationships with her opponents, there’s no reason to believe O’Laughlin’s positions on the issues, positions that placed her in the conservative caucus before it disbanded, have changed in any way. This makes talk of compromise ring hollow.

“There is not a compromise in the discussion on trans youth. When we compromise, we’re compromising against the validity of who a person is,” Berkowitz said.

In recent years transgender youth participation in sports has become a culture war bludgeon, used to associate trans people with the wrong gender and drive outrage on the right. That’s why a complete non-issue has become a major conservative priority despite there being vanishingly few trans youth who participate in sports, and no evidence that their participation harms cis girls in any way. Absurd laws like the one O’Laughlin has pushed in Missouri have ended up targeting tiny numbers of athletes, including one law in Kentucky where the only girl affected has been banned from a team she helped start. These cruel laws do nothing to protect cis girls, existing as cynical political wedges, targeting tiny numbers of trans youth who want nothing more than to play on sports teams the way other kids do. LGBTQ+ organizations oppose these laws because of their cruel, stigmatizing intent, which hurts all trans people by falsely making it seem as though trans people are a danger to women’s rights.

The Missouri Independent is right to highlight a conservative Republican lawmaker who seems more willing to form relationships with Democrats and make practical compromises than others of her extremist bent. However, by papering over exactly what O’Laughlin’s legislative priorities are, and why LGBTQ+ groups stand in opposition to them, the paper contributes to a misleading picture of our political environment. It’s simply not the case that more willingness to compromise wouold fix everything that’s wrong with America today. When people hold up compromise as the ultimate good, the specifics of whose rights are at risk of being compromised away are often ignored.