Hands Across the Aisle Coalition

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Hands Across the Aisle Coalition
Formation2017;8 years ago (2017)
FoundersKaeley Triller Haver, Miriam Ben-Shalom
Affiliations The Heritage Foundation, Women's Liberation Front
Website Official website

The Hands Across the Aisle Coalition (HATAC) is an organization founded in 2017 and operating primarily in the United States, known for its opposition to transgender rights. The organization aims to connect trans-exclusionary radical feminists with conservative Christian anti-LGBT groups, ostensibly "tabling [their] ideological differences" to "oppose gender identity ideology". The organization actively supports anti-LGBT groups in legislation targeting transgender rights. [1] [2] [3] [4]

Contents

Since 2019, HATAC has worked with The Heritage Foundation, holding panel discussion events featuring Republican Party strategists, Christian evangelical advocates, and leaders of anti-trans feminist organizations such as the Women's Liberation Front (WoLF). [5]

Founding

Hands Across the Aisle was co-founded by Kaeley Triller Haver, an anti-abortion conservative, and Miriam Ben-Shalom. Haver is a sexual assault survivor and Ben-Shalom was discharged from the U.S. army for coming out as a lesbian in 1976, causing her to campaign against Don't Ask Don't Tell for decades. In 2016, Ben-Shalom was dis-invited from being grand marshal of the Milwaukee Pride parade because of her support for "bathroom bills" which deny transgender people the right to use bathrooms corresponding to their gender identity. [2] [3]

Before founding HATAC, Haver was the communication director for Just Want Privacy, a campaign to repeal a law in Washington state that allows transgender people to use bathrooms corresponding to their gender identity. Just Want Privacy was criticized by a sexual assault survivor for using her story to fundraise for anti-trans goals. [2] Haver admitted to having sex with a 17-year-old, who had previously been in her care at the YMCA, when she was 23; she was given a strike by Child Protective Services but not charged with a crime. [3] [6]

It is unknown who funds HATAC. [3] The Southern Poverty Law Center wrote: "With little transparency on its website about who and what formed the group, HATAC might simply be a secular-facing iteration of the same anti-LGBT agenda that has driven the Christian Right for decades." [2]

Activism

In February 2017, The Heritage Foundation hosted a panel with 5 members of the Hands Across the Aisle Coalition including members of WoLF. [6]

In May 2017, HATAC cosigned a petition with Michelle Cretella, then president of the anti-LGBT American College of Pediatricians, and leaders of other anti-LGBT groups such as the Family Policy Alliance, Concerned Women for America, and the Texas Eagle Forum, to Ben Carson, then director of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). The petition supported barring transgender women from accessing women's homeless shelters. In 2019, HUD proposed a new rule which would allow federally funded homeless shelters to force trans people to share facilities based on their assigned sex rather than their gender identity, or to deny them entrance altogether. [2] [3] [4]

In September 2017, WoLF and HATAC issued a letter to John Wiesman, then Secretary of Health for the Washington State Department of Health, demanding the state cease changing gender designations on birth certificates. [6]

In 2019, the anti-LGBT group Alliance Defending Freedom helped a client sue his school district in Doe v Boyertown Area School District for allowing transgender boys to use the same locker rooms and bathrooms as him. HATAC and WoLF wrote amicus briefs in support of the client. [4]

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References

  1. ↑ Compton, Julie (22 November 2019). "'Frightening' online transphobia has real-life consequences, advocates say". NBC News. Retrieved 30 November 2022.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 Barthélemy, Hélène (23 October 2017). "Christian Right tips to fight transgender rights: separate the T from the LGB". Southern Poverty Law Center. Retrieved 30 November 2022.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 Burns, Katelyn (5 September 2019). "The rise of anti-trans "radical" feminists, explained". Vox. Retrieved 30 November 2022.
  4. 1 2 3 Peltz, Madeline (26 February 2019). "Right-wing media and think tanks are aligning with fake feminists who dehumanize trans people". Media Matters For America. Retrieved 30 November 2022.
  5. ↑ Wuest, Joanna (2021). "A Conservative Right to Privacy: Legal, Ideological, and Coalitional Transformations in US Social Conservatism". Law & Social Inquiry. 46 (4): 964–992. doi: 10.1017/lsi.2021.1 . ISSN   0897-6546. S2CID   234808832.
  6. 1 2 3 Williams, Cristan (4 November 2017). "Are Misogynist, Homophobe, & TERF slurs?". The Trans Advocate. Retrieved 30 November 2022.
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