If you are reading this, then there is a good chance that you are one of the four billion or so people who were eligible to vote this year. Described as a super year for elections, with more people voting than ever before, democracy was exercised – and on the line – across the world in 2024.
From tiny villages and major metropolitan cities, voters determined how the global geopolitical landscape will look for the next few years.
The biggest story was, of course, the US presidential election which ended with Donald Trump defeating Democratic vice-president Kamala Harris to replace Joe Biden in the White House.
Trump’s upcoming second term has left LGBTQ+ people feeling, at best, extremely apprehensive but before that, let’s look back at 2024, and specifically, some of the most embarrassing moments for anti-LGBTQ+ Republican politicians.
Valentina Gomez gives firebrand politics a new meaning
Republican Valentina Gomez grabbed the public’s attention in February when she set fire to LGBTQ+-inclusive books, using a flamethrower.
“This is what I will do to the grooming books when I become secretary of state,” Gomez claimed in a video which was swiftly deleted from Instagram. “These books come from a Missouri public library. When I’m in office, they will burn.”
She was running in the Missouri secretary of state primary elections and quickly became infamous for her controversial and aggressive campaigning, which included telling voters not to be “weak and gay“.
She finished sixth out of eight candidates with just a 7.5 per cent share of the vote.
Marjorie Taylor Greene gets publicly dragged by Jasmine Crockett
Donald Trump superfan Marjorie Taylor Greene is no stranger to using choice words, shall we say, for just about everything and everyone.
However, in May, the US representative from Georgia got a slice of humble pie when Texas Democratic congresswoman Jasmine Crockett opened the library and read her to fifth.
During a House Oversight Committee debate on whether to hold US attorney general Merrick Garland in contempt of congress, Greene clashed with Crockett and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, also a Democrat, after she mocked Crockett’s “fake eyelashes” and suggested they could affect her ability to read.
Crockett hit back at Greene’s “bleach-blonde, bad-built, butch body”, a phrase which quickly went viral, and the Democrat capitalised on it by releasing the Crockett Clapback Collection.
Republicans wear ear bandages in solidarity with Donald Trump
In July, American politics was thrown into a tailspin when Trump was the target of an assassination attempt during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania.
The shooter was identified as 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, who killed one person in the audience and wounded two others, as well as nicking Trump’s ear, before being shot dead himself.
Just days later, delegates and members of the audience at the Republican National Convention wore ear bandages to match Trump’s in a bizarre – and not at all cultish – show of solidarity.
JD Vance’s drag queen past
In August, the Republican ticket of Trump and JD Vance failed to deny that a picture of the Ohio senator was him during his college days… wearing drag.
The picture showed Vance dressed in a skirt, wearing a blonde wig and sporting thick black eye-liner.
Unsurprisingly, the photograph quickly did the rounds on social media, with people making memes and branding Vance a hypocrite, given his anti-LGBTQ+, anti-trans stance.
Vance has previously labelled anyone opposing bills aimed at limit gender-affirming care a “groomer” – a term weaponised by conservatives to smear drag queens and the LGBTQ+ community by comparing them to paedophiles.
Vance faced a tough time on the campaign trail. Between rumours about sexual liaisons with a couch and misgendering himself, a secret drag past was not his only gaffe.
Mark Robinson’s internet history
Vehemently anti-trans Republican Mark Robinson – who had called LGBTQ+ identities “fifth” and “what the cows leave behind” – had his internet history broadcast by CNN. And it turns out he likes trans pornography. Oh, and he also described himself as a “Black Nazi”.
Airing in September, the in-depth investigation alleged a username linked to Robinson, who was vying to be governor of North Carolina, posted various contentious comments related to sexual and racial topics on the message board of a porn website called Nude Africa more than a decade ago.
“I like watching t****y-on-girl porn. That’s f**king hot! It takes the man out while leaving the man in,” the account is said to have proclaimed. “And, yeah, I’m a ‘perv’ too!”
On the message board, Robinson also reportedly called civil rights leader Martin Luther King a “f*cking commie b*stard… worse than a maggot… a “ho f**king, phoney”.
Robinson denied the claims, calling them “tabloid trash”, adding: “We are not getting out of this race. There are people who are counting on us to win this race.”
He lost to Democrat Josh Stein at the polls in November.
Nancy Mace’s pathetic and spiteful campaign to ban Sarah McBride from the Capitol toilets
Just a couple of weeks after Trump won the US presidential election, Nancy Mace, a US representative from South Carolina, tabled a resolution to restrict access to single-sex spaces – such as toilets – based on “corresponding biological sex”.
Mace later admitted the restrictions were introduced because of incoming Democrat Sarah McBride, who will become the first trans person in congress when she takes up her seat in January after winning the election for Delaware’s at-large district.
The proposal was passed a day later – on Trans Day of Remembrance – with Republican speaker Mike Johnson confirming: “Single-sex facilities in the Capitol and house office buildings, such as restrooms, changing rooms and locker rooms, are reserved for individuals of that biological sex. Women deserve women’s only spaces”.
Democrats, such as trans lawmaker Zooey Zephyr and congresswomen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Jasmine Crockett criticised the policy.
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