New Poll: Majority of Americans Are Against Laws Limiting Transgender Rights

It seems as if every day another state, school district or local government is shepherding discriminatory bills through legislation, but a new poll conducted by PBS NewsHour, NPR, and Marist found that "two-thirds of Americans are against laws that would limit transgender rights," reports PBS.

A recent Gallop poll reports that only .6% of U.S. adults identify as transgender, but for Gen Z (born between 1997-2002), that number jumps to 1.8%. The PBS article positions the latest trends as a "culture war."

"The parties are speaking to their base people," Lee Miringoff, the director of the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion, told PBS. "The Democratic coalition is more diverse. It's broader. The Republicans are speaking to a much narrower base, and that can put you against the overall public opinion within those jurisdictions."

Many of the emerging bills have focused on transgender youth, with some stopped in their tracks. As previously reported at EDGE, Montana Senate voted to indefinitely postpone a bill that would have banned gender-affirming surgery for transgender minors, effectively killing the proposal. In Alabama, transgender youth, parents and advocates have urged the Alabama House of Representatives, as well as the state's governor, to reject legislation that would ban the use of puberty blockers or hormones to treat transgender minors.

"Who would want anything less for their child than the ability to live their lives with an element of authenticity? That's what gender-affirming care is," Dr. Robert Garofalo, a pediatrician who treats transgender youth at Lurie Children's Hospital in Chicago, told PBS. "There's no evidence to suggest that these treatments are experimental... There's a common understanding within most mainstream medical organizations that access to gender-affirming care for these young people saves lives."

Trans athletes have also borne the brunt of these proposed laws, even though the poll indicates that "only 28 percent of Americans overall support bills to bar transgender youth from competing on teams that align with their gender, while two-thirds oppose the bills."

Marist Poll director Barbara L. Carvalho explained the results to Outsports, noting that "Americans, as a whole, have little appetite for laws that single out trans student athletes. There is, in fact, a consensus among Americans for the Equality Act and significant opposition to state laws that would ban trans athletes from team play."

Take a look at some of the results: