Is transgender ideology third rail of midterm elections? Poll, politicians suggest yes

While inflation and crime are the dominant issues heading into the Nov. 8 midterm elections, political leaders and activists interviewed by Just the News, backed up by recent polling data, suggest there may be a third force moving voters: a palpable sense that liberal transgender ideology seeping into America's schools is a bridge too far for most parents.

"It has been that electrifying third rail that has galvanized this movement to say, 'No more of this foolishness,'" North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson told Just the News on Wednesday. "We need to get back to educating our children and move all the social garbage out of the way."

A whopping 72% of voters interviewed earlier this month declared they do not believe school should teach students they can change their gender, according to a survey conducted by pollster Scott Rasmussen for the America's New Majority Project.

When testing to see if age was a factor, 62% stood firm and said they believed it was inappropriate for schools at any level, including high school, to teach transgender transition.

"You have a cult of transgenderism, which is really a cult in a religious sense," said Newt Gingrich. 

"They just have an absolute passion for maximizing the number of people who go through a transgender process," the former House Speaker said in an interview on the John Solomon Reports podcast. "And I think people are going to conclude that having 9-, 10-, 11-, 12-year-old kids use puberty blockers and having 13-, 14-, 15-year-old girls having double mastectomies for no medical reason is just pure child abuse."

Democrats like President Joe Biden have a different take, arguing preventing children from choosing their own gender and modifying their bodies is wrong. Biden called state bans on transgender treatments for minors "immoral."

"No state should be able to do that in my view," Biden said in an interview over the weekend with a transgender activist. 

Biden's position, however, is rejected by a large majority of American voters.

Rasmussen's poll revealed that 80% of voters believe that if a child is thinking about changing their gender, then parents should be notified, not kept out of the loop. 

Well-known pollster John McLaughlin said that 65% of voters think that the transgender movement has gone too far in regard to encouraging minors to go through a medical gender transition. 

"65% of all voters said the transgender movement has gone too far by encouraging minors to use drugs and surgery to transition to the opposite sex," McLaughlin said on the John Solomon Reports podcast. "Only 21% said no." 

Virginia's Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin made news recently when his administration changed the state Department of Education's policies regarding transgender students. Under the updated policies, a transgender child is defined as "a public school student whose parent has requested in writing, due to their child's persistent and sincere belief that his or her gender differs with his or her sex, that their child be so identified while at school."

FreedomWorks Senior Advisor for Strategic Partnerships Tamra Farah also said that the transgender agenda being pushed on children is an issue that will drive parents to the polls. 

"Bringing that ideology into the classroom is a whole different level," Farah said Wednesday on the "Just the News, No Noise" TV show. "And schools do not have the right to do that. Federal law says that parents are full partners with the school in their child's education, and that they are able to influence it. And so this nonsense that somehow parents don't have rights in the school to influence things and determine what their kids can opt out of, is just wrong."

Farah said she believes kids being taught gender ideology so young can cause them trauma. 

"I would love to see a study done on this," she said. "You know, asking kids what pronouns they want to use, asking kids if they want to be a different gender, if they want to change their clothes in the gender-affirming closet — all of this without talking to parents — I believe that can be traumatizing. And that can cause confusion that can even lead to depression."