Marjorie Taylor Greene fronted an anti-trans rally outside Congress and only a dozen people showed up

Georgia Republican has long history of anti-trans attacks

Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene continued her long history of attacks on LGTBQ+ people this week, appearing at a rally at the Capitol featuring a number of anti-trans activists. The event, however, does not appear to have had a large turnout, drawing a crowd of about a dozen people.

On Wednesday, the Georgia Republican joined a rally with figures such as Chloe Cole, an activist who has become a right-wing star after de-transitioning, and Tiffany Justice of Moms for Liberty, a group that has organised opposition to mask mandates, gender education, and critical race theory in public schools.

They carried signs with anti-LGBTQ+ slogans like, “Gender ideology does not belong in schools,” and, “There are TWO genders: MALE & FEMALE ‘Trust The Science!’”

The Heritage Foundation, another attendee, wrote on its Twitter that the event was a gathering of people “calling out policies that push for minors to have access to puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and sex-reassignment surgeries.

There aren’t any federal policies “pushing” LGTBQ+ children to get gender affirming healthcare, a branch of medicine endorsed by most major American medical organisations.

A spokesperson for Ms Greene’s office said the event “wasn’t a rally” and those implying it was were spreading “fake news.”

“It was a spontaneous gathering of men and women fighting to end the horror of genital mutilation on children,” the spokesperson said.

Ms Greene has a long record of attacks on LGBTQ+ people.

Last year, echoing QAnon rhetoric, she accused the Democratic Party of being “the party of child abuse” and “the party that represents grooming children” and “genital mutilation of children.”

That same year, she repeated a false claim that was circulating on the right-wing messageboard 4chan, that the Uvalde gunman was transgender, and made the bizarre claim that trans men were the reason for a tampon shortage.

The Georgia Republican has been upfront that she feels “threatened” by trans people.

“As a woman, I feel threatened because biological men are aggressively replacing women,” she tweeted in March in response to a post from conservative activist Charlie Kirk, which has since been deleted by Twitter for violating its terms and conditions.

This hostility towards trans and LGTBQ+ has played out at the legislative level too.

In 2021, Ms Greene put a sign up outside of her Capitol office claiming, “There are TWO genders: MALE & FEMALE ‘Trust The Science!’” an apparent affront to her neighbour, then congresswoman Marie Newman, who put up a trans flag in honour of her daughter.

The gesture came as Congress was considering the Equality Act, which sought to codify federal rulings that discrimination against LGBTQ+ people was illegal sex discrimination under existing law.

Ms Greene opposed the law, claiming it sought to “destroy women’s rights and religious freedoms.”

As The Independent has reported, the constant drumbeat of right-wing rhetoric against LGTBQ+ people has led to real violence and threats on the ground.