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Checking LGBTQ+ talking points at the 2024 RNC

A sign sits in a seat after the Republican National Convention Thursday, July 18, 2024, in Milwaukee. (AP)

By Grace Abels July 24, 2024

Professional wrestler Hulk Hogan might have captured tons of attention at the Republican National Convention for ripping his shirt off and screaming to "Let Trumpamania run wild," but references to queer and trans issues also ran wild throughout the four-day event.

Leave it to the fact-checkers to tell you this, but: Some of the LGBTQ+-related statements spoken from the Milwaukee stage needed more context.

For example, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., said this about "the establishment in Washington": "They promised normalcy and gave us Transgender Visibility Day on Easter Sunday."

That’s misleading.

The Transgender Day of Visibility, celebrating trans representation, falls on March 31 every year. Easter Sunday moves annually and is determined by the moon. In 2024, they happened to fall on the same day. Biden recognized both days in public statements, prompting claims that Easter had been "replaced."

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Richard Grenell, former acting national intelligence director and the first openly gay Cabinet member, had a more pro-LGBTQ+ message in his speech: "Donald Trump doesn't care if you're gay or straight, black, brown or white, or what gender you are. He knows that we are all Americans, and that it's time to put America first."

But our review of the convention speeches found that most references to LGBTQ+ issues were echoes of familiar talking points about LGBTQ+ "indoctrination" in schools and the military, and concerns around transgender athletes.

Notably absent were claims about gender-affirming medical care for trans youth that have been the subject of numerous statewide bans in Republican-led states. The Biden administration has recently tempered its support of gender-affirming care for youth, saying it opposes surgical procedures for minors, which are rare.

Looking back at our previous coverage, here are some facts and context around the major LGBTQ+ talking points at the 2024 Republican National Convention.

LGBTQ+ "ideology" in schools

On the convention’s first night, Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., described the Democrats’ "fringe agenda" as including the "sexualization and indoctrination of our children."

This theme continued across all four nights, as several speakers raised concerns that LGBTQ+ content in schools harms kids.

"Democrats come for your kids," former Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro said on July 17. "They're indoctrinating them with poisonous attitudes on race and gender."

We have seen this theme of Democratic "indoctrination" dominate Republican talking points in recent years, including from Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who during his July 16 RNC address again raised alarms. He cited diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, also known as DEI, that broadly aim to increase institutional diversity, including in gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability, age, culture, class and religion.

"(Democrats want to) impose gender ideology on everyone from our infantry men to kindergartners," DeSantis said. "They stand for DEI, which really means division, exclusion and indoctrination, and it is wrong."

In 2022, we looked into what research says about gender and sexuality in schools. There is no evidence that increased exposure to LGBTQ+ people or topics makes children more likely to join the LGBTQ+ community, experts in psychology and child development told PolitiFact. Rather, an environment of increased acceptance allows people to more openly consider whether they might be part of the LGBTQ+ community, experts said.

Although we did not hear any RNC speakers say "grooming," the term is often used when discussing concerns about children’s sexualization in schools. However, LGBTQ+ content in schools is not "grooming." Talking about gender identity and sexual orientation in the classroom, or using gender inclusive reading material and lesson plans, would not be grooming, because it is done without intent to sexually abuse a child, experts said.

Curious about LGBTQ+ issues and education? Read more:

"Woke indoctrination" in the military

Diversity efforts are also crippling the U.S. military, several RNC speakers said.

Mike Pompeo, one of Trump’s former secretaries of state, on July 18 told the convention that Biden "put woke into the military that I and you so desperately love."

Rep. Brian Mast, R-Fla., said July 17 of the Biden administration, "They've distracted our troops with millions of hours of so-called extremism training ... They would rather lose a war then use the wrong pronouns, and we've had enough."

Rep. Richard Hudson, R-N.C., bragged on the RNC stage that House Republicans "passed legislation to remove woke indoctrination from our military."

The military has been struggling with recruitment. But complaints that "wokeism" is to blame are off the mark, experts told us.

Military recruitment is down in the U.S. — 2022 was one of the military’s worst recruiting years since the all-volunteer force began in 1973.

The biggest drivers affecting recruiting so far, experts say, include competition from the civilian labor market, the lingering effects of COVID-19 restrictions and a gradual decline in the number of young people who meet the entry standards.

The Pentagon has instituted some policies that critics describe as "woke," including diversity training, healthcare coverage for transgender members and time off and travel allowances for abortion access.

And although it’s possible discussion of these policies could be shaping the advice that influential people — family members, coaches and other trusted community members — might give to potential recruits, surveys have found that it isn’t a high concern among young Americans.

Curious about "woke" in the military? Read more:

Transgender athletes in school sports

We repeatedly heard claims about men and "boys" participating in women’s sports.

"These liberal senators want boys in girls sports," Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., said on the convention’s final night. "They want men in your daughter’s and my daughter's locker room."

Television personality Kimberly Guilfoyle, fiancée to Donald Trump Jr., told delegates the former president would counter such efforts: "We will restore an era of national pride … where high school girls only compete with other girls, not biological men," Guilfoyle said.

In recent years, 25 states have passed laws governing the eligibility of transgender students who wish to participate in school sports. Those restrictions — often focused on limiting the eligibility of transgender girls to play on girls’ teams — have sparked political debate, litigation and misinformation.

There is no official count, but estimates show the population of transgender athletes participating in school sports is very small. So few that lawmakers supporting restrictions have previously struggled to cite examples of trans athletes competing in school sports.

Despite online claims to the contrary, recently released Title IX regulations did not decide the controversial issue of transgender girls and athletic eligibility.

The U.S. Education Department is working separately on a proposal, introduced in April 2023, that would ban schools from adopting "one-size-fits-all" policies that ban transgender students from participating on teams consistent with their gender identity. In the April 19 press release, the department clarified that the "rulemaking process is still ongoing" for the regulation regarding athletics, but that the high number of public comments (150,000) "by law must be carefully considered."

Litigation related to trans athletes’ participation in sports is also winding through federal courts, and with sport taking the global stage at the Paris Summer Olympics, we are likely to see more claims related to trans athletes.

Claims about transgender athletes are a frequent subject of online misinformation, so always remember to fact-check! Read more:

Democrats can’t "define what a woman is"

One consistent refrain from convention speakers was that Democrats couldn’t define the word "woman."

"Biden and Harris can't even tell you what a woman is," Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders said. Daines and Donald Trump Jr. made similar statements.

This claim is rooted partly in a high-profile exchange during the March 2022 Supreme Court nomination hearing for Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson when Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., asked Jackson to define "woman."

"Can you provide a definition for the word woman?" Blackburn asked.

"Can I provide a definition? No. I can’t." Jackson replied.

"You can’t?" Blackburn said.

"Not in this context. I’m not a biologist," Jackson said.

This question is a favorite of conservative podcast host Matt Walsh who made a documentary titled "What is a Woman?" The documentary’s trailer criticizes gender-affirming care and questions the authenticity of transgender identities.

Today, medical experts and most major medical organizations agree that sex and gender are different.

Sex is a biological category determined by physical features such as genes, hormones and genitalia. People are male, female or sometimes have reproductive or sexual anatomy that doesn’t fit the typical definitions of male or female, often called intersex.

Gender is different, experts say. Gender identity refers to someone’s internal sense of being a man, woman or nonbinary. For cisgender people, their sex and gender are the same. Transgender people may experience a mismatch between the two — their gender may not correspond to the sex they were assigned at birth.

But, grappling with this cultural, scientific, and legal shift in the meaning of "sex" and "gender," lawmakers in some states have tried defining the terms narrowly in state law as biological and binary.

The Kansas Legislature, for example, passed the "Women’s Bill of Rights" overriding Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto of the bill. The law defines male and female as based on whether a person’s reproductive system "is developed to produce ova," or "is developed to fertilize the ova of a female."

Read some of our recent coverage on transgender issues:

You can read all our coverage of this year’s RNC here:
It’s a wrap: Read our fact-checks and stories from the 2024 RNC

PolitiFact Staff Writer Ranjan Jindal contributed to this report.