GLDSA Expresses Support for Trans Rights, Disgust with Michael Knowles

Michael Knowles, who is scheduled to speak this evening at Purdue University, is the latest in a long string of opportunists to seek fame and fortune stirring controversy on the right wing of American politics. He brings to Purdue a well-funded campaign of hatred and bigotry directed especially against transgender people which everyone of good conscience should oppose.

Knowles and people like him act as an arm of a well-organized right-wing corporate political movement. This movement, with notable funders like the Koch Brothers, exploits a rotating array of hot-button issues to pursue a unified political agenda:  to destroy public education, roll back women’s rights, and keep working people in thrall to their bosses. In order to do this, they scapegoat and target hostility and aggression towards the most marginalized and vulnerable groups in society–working class women, LGBTQ people, immigrants, and low-wage workers, disproportionately people of color. Right now, right-wing organizations around the country are stirring up a classic “sex panic”, convincing people that drag shows and story hours present an existential threat to their children. Here in Indiana, meanwhile, the Republican caucus in the state house just successfully stripped state funding from the renowned Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction at Indiana University. House Republicans also recently passed Indiana’s own “don’t say gay” bill HB 1608. If it becomes law, it will ban discussion of LGBTQ people in schools and force teachers to expose transgender students without their consent.

Like so many right-wing grifters before him, it’s likely that Michael Knowles himself is destined for the dustbin of history. But the movement he represents will remain a real threat. So it is crucial to stand in solidarity with the trans community and all others who are the targets of the movement’s scapegoating.