The Myth of a Well-Funded Trans Lobby

One common belief held by many transphobes is that there’s a lot of money supporting trans rights, but the numbers say somthing completely different.

by Evan Urquhart

It’s an article of faith for many committed transphobes that trans people, despite being twice as likely as other adults to live in poverty, somehow have a well funded lobby that is warping the political landscape with its massive campaign donations. Most of the time this argument is done without providing any evidence, but in an opinion piece in the Washington Examiner today author Pedro Gonzalez has helpfully provided some concrete numbers behind the paranoia. As evidence that “the transgender lobby is a massive and well-funded Leviathan” Gonzalez provides the donation amount for all LGBTQ+ rights groups in the 2020 election, via nonpartisan watchdog OpenSecrets.

That’s $6.9 million (for all LGBTQ+ causes, not specifically trans issues)! Wait. Is that a lot? Well, OpenSecrets has information on several other “single issue” organizations. So let’s compare like to like and see how much some other issue advocacy groups spent, ones that presumable aren’t warping the political landscape (or are doing so as much or more than LGBTQ+ groups are).

Using the same OpenSecrets website that was linked to in the Examiner, we find that gun rights groups spent over $11.3 million, and the NRA alone donated over $9m. Almost all of this went to Republicans. Gun control groups, on the other hand, spent over $5.8 million, mostly going to Democrats. Environmental groups? They must really be warping the political environment, because they spent well over $35m.

Of course, the majority of political donations aren’t made by single issue advocacy groups at all, but by major industries. Agribusiness, for example, spent over $40m, mostly to Republicans. The defense industry spent over $32m, and unusually their donations were roughly evenly distributed between Demcrats and Republicans.

In this context, it’s difficult for a rational observer to conclude that $6.9m for all LGBTQ+ causes represents an outsized amount such that it would skew the political system in favor of trans rights. This makes sense because in 2022 one of the key issues pushed by Republican interest groups and candidates was the opposition to trans rights. So, that checks out.

I wondered how much money was spent opposing trans rights, but for some reason OpenSecrets does not have any good way to estimate the total donations made by groups associated with the Christian Right. To get a sense of the money involved, howeve, Open Democracy revealed in 2020 that the Christian Right had spent over $280 million in dark money, worldwide. Although churches are not allowed to donate directly to candidates, it’s no secret that evangelical political organizing is one of the dominant forces in Republican politics. However they are notoriously secretive and go to great lengths, including taking cases to the Supreme Court, to conceal the extent of their spending on politics.