CLEVELAND—As Republican Convention delegates gather in Cleveland this week to revise and propose the Republican Party Platform to the full party convention next week, a new poll was just circulated this afternoon to them showing that by more than a two-to-one margin Americans oppose the newest LGBT push regarding forcing businesses and schools to adopt transgender policies.
Sparked by President Barack Obama’s new transgender rules for employers and schools nationwide, delegates engaged in a spirited debate on the topic in two separate subcommittees of the Platform Committee.
During the morning session, several conservative delegates, led by Tony Perkins from Louisiana, the president of the Family Research Council (FRC), sparred in a cordial manner in one subcommittee with Anne Dickerson from New York, whom activists in the room said was representing the views of Paul Singer, the billionaire hedge fund manager who has been pushing LGBT issues among Republicans.
In another room where the Subcommittee on Restoring Constitutional Government was meeting, several outspoken conservatives like lawyer Jim Bopp of Indiana, David Barton of Texas and Tommy Valentine of Virginia (who at age 22 was the youngest delegate present this week) likewise pressed the need to return to the original meaning of the term “sex” to mean biological sex—not gender identity—in sex-discrimination laws like Title VII and Title IX of the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Conservatives then got an unexpected boost during lunch, when the FRC received the results of a new poll, and started sharing it among the delegates before the afternoon session of the full Platform Committee.
The nationwide poll asked, “Do you approve or disapprove of government forcing schools, businesses, and non-profit organizations to open the showers, changing facilities, locker rooms, and bathrooms designed for women and girls, to biological males, and vice versa?
The results were lopsided. Only 28 percent approved of the new push to redefine “sex” to include “gender identity” and transgenderism, while 66 percent—more than double that number—disapproved.
Looking more deeply into the polling data, 15 percent strongly approved the new LGBT-endorsed policy, while 13 percent told pollsters that they somewhat approve. On the other side of the ledger, 14 percent somewhat disapproved, but a full 52 percent—more than half of all respondents—said they strongly disapprove of these new policies.
So the majority appears to be with conservatives on this issue, as those who strongly disapprove of opening private areas to the opposite biological sex outnumber those that support the Obama administration’s new sexual priorities by almost a four-to-one margin.
The poll of 1,012 adults nationwide was conducted by WPA Opinion Research. It was conducted by a live telephone operator July 7-10, and has a margin of error of 3.1 percent.
It should also be noted that registered voters usually tend to poll slightly more conservative and more Republican than all adults. Among registered voters, likely voters tend to be slightly more conservative and Republican than all registered voters.
“After nearly eight years of federal overreach, we are seeing the American people stand up to Barack Obama’s effort to fundamentally transform America,” Perkins exclusively told Breitbart News in reaction to today’s poll.
“President Obama pushed aside the concerns of parents and schools, the privacy and safety of students, and ignored the boundaries of his constitutional power,” Perkins added. “If the White House can dictate the policies for every school locker room, shower, and bathroom in America, what could possibly be beyond its reach?”
Ken Klukowski is senior legal editor for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter @kenklukowski.
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