LGBTQ groups slam Walker for ad attacking transgender athletes

LGBTQ rights groups on Monday called on Republican Herschel Walker to pull a new campaign ad in Georgia’s Senate runoff that refers to transgender women and girls as “biological males” who should be barred from competing on women’s sports teams.

The release of the ad comes just two days after a deadly shooting at an LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado claimed the lives of 5 people — including at least two who were transgender  — and injured at least 25 others.

“Shame on Herschel Walker — and shame on every politician using LGBTQ lives as political props,” Nadine Bridges, executive director of the nonprofit One Colorado, said Monday in a statement.

Hundreds of bills targeting LGBTQ people, particularly transgender youth, have been introduced in state legislatures across the country this year at the same time that inflammatory rhetoric used to describe LGBTQ people has been embraced by conservative leaders. LGBTQ advocates have blamed these attacks against the community for contributing to the shooting Sunday at Club Q in Colorado Springs.

The suspect in Sunday’s shooting, which occurred on the eve of Transgender Day of Remembrance, has been charged with murder and hate crimes.

“There’s an undeniable nexus between this kind of baseless and hateful rhetoric and the violence leveled against our community this weekend in Colorado Springs and the violence being perpetrated against marginalized communities all across this country,” Bridges said on Monday.

In the 30-second ad, Walker appears alongside former University of Kentucky swimmer Riley Gaines, who has been an outspoken advocate for policies and legislation to keep transgender women and girls out of female sports. At this year’s NCAA championships, Gaines tied with former University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas for fifth place in the women’s 200-meter freestyle finals.

“I worked so hard — 4 a.m. practices to be the best — but my senior year I was forced to compete against a biological male,” Gaines says in the ad, referring to Thomas, who is transgender.

“That’s unfair and wrong,” Walker says directly to the camera as the pair sits side by side.

In March, Thomas became the first transgender woman to win a national title in Division I athletics in the women’s 500-meter freestyle.

“Airing this kind of rubbish under the guise of a political campaign was already deplorable enough—but in the wake of Saturday night’s massacre at Club Q, it’s simply unconscionable,” Sarah Kate Ellis, the president and chief executive of the LGBTQ media advocacy organization GLAAD, said Monday.

“These ads should be pulled immediately from Georgia’s airwaves before more lives are put in danger,” she added.

Walker’s ad accuses incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) of voting to allow transgender women to compete on female sports teams, apparently referring to a GOP measure rejected by Warnock that would have stripped states, school districts and colleges of federal funding if they allowed transgender athletes to participate on sports teams consistent with their gender identity.

“Warnock’s afraid to stand up for female athletes,” Walker says.

Walker, a former professional football player and Heisman Trophy winner, has previously attempted to rally his supporters with statements that question the existence of transgender people and promises to ban transgender women and girls from women’s sports teams if he is elected.

Other high-profile Republicans in Congress funneled millions into television and radio ads this year that accused Democrats of trying to “turn boys into girls” ahead of the midterm elections.

But attacks against the transgender community — and the LGBTQ community, more broadly — likely scared off independent and moderate voters, Republican leaders including Sen. Mitch McConnell (Ky.) have said, costing the party key victories in states like Michigan and Pennsylvania.

Less than 5 percent of voters in a Human Rights Campaign post-election poll last week said gender-affirming care for transgender youth or transgender participation in sports motivated them to vote.