Two historic moments of progress for LGBTQ people occurred on Thursday, February 25: The House of Representatives passed broad LGBTQ nondiscrimination protections in the Equality Act, and Dr. Rachel Levine -- the first transgender person nominated to a Senate-confirmed position -- had her Senate confirmation hearing to be assistant secretary of health. 

In the days surrounding those events, however, Media Matters found that the vast majority of the conversation on political Facebook pages around those two topics came from right-leaning pages. Posts about the Equality Act fearmongered that it would destroy women's sports, harm their safety and privacy, and declare “war on reality,” among other harmful rhetoric. Posts attacking Levine lied that she supports “genital mutilation” for kids and claimed that supporting trans youth is "obscene."

Key findings of our analysis from February 22 to March 1 include:

• Posts about the Equality Act from right-leaning pages earned more than 3 million Facebook interactions, or about 65% of total interactions across political pages.
• Posts about the Equality Act from ideologically nonaligned and left-leaning political pages earned about 1.6 million interactions, combined. 
• Right-leaning pages posted more frequently about the Equality Act than other pages, making 669 posts compared to 274 from nonaligned pages and 319 from left-leaning pages. 
• Posts about Levine from right-leaning pages earned more than 2.1 million Facebook interactions, or about 88% of total interactions across political pages.
• Posts about Levine from ideologically nonaligned and left-leaning political pages earned about 298,000 interactions, combined.
• Right-leaning pages posted more frequently about Levine than other pages, making 294 posts compared to 46 from nonaligned pages and 48 from left-leaning pages.
• Nine pages run by right-wing outlet Daily Wire earned a significant share of total interactions on posts about Levine and the Equality Act. The Daily Wire’s network of pages earned about 569,000 interactions on posts about the Equality Act, or about 12% of total interactions across political pages, and about 814,000 interactions on posts about Levine -- roughly one-third of total interactions across political pages.

Between February 22 and March 1, right-leaning political pages earned more than 3 million Facebook interactions on posts that mentioned versions of the phrase “Equality Act” or its bill number, H.R. 5, compared to 578,000 interactions on posts from nonaligned pages and more than 1 million from left-leaning pages. That means right-leaning pages earned about 65% -- or nearly two-thirds -- of the total interactions analyzed on Facebook content about the Equality Act as it was being passed by the House.

Right-leaning political Facebook pages also posted about the Equality Act more than nonaligned and left-leaning pages during this time. Right-leaning pages made 669 posts, while nonaligned pages made 274 and left-leaning pages made 319 posts. 

Additionally, seven of the top 10 posts about the Equality Act earning the most interactions on Facebook during this time were from right-leaning pages. The top two posts were from right-wing evangelical leader Franklin Graham; both fearmongered that the bill would destroy women’s sports and erase their privacy.

Media Matters also analyzed nine pages of The Daily Wire’s network on Facebook: those of Ben Shapiro, Michael Knowles, Andrew Klavan, Matt Walsh, Donald Trump is My President, Conservative News, Restless Patriot, The Angry Patriot, and the official page for the Daily Wire. We found that those pages earned about 569,000 interactions combined across 139 posts about the Equality Act during the time period studied. That is about 12% of the total interactions analyzed across political Facebook pages and about 11% of the total posts.

The Equality Act would prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in broad areas of life including housing, employment, and health care, among others. Right-wing media have obsessively attacked and lied about the bill, falsely claiming it would “destroy” women’s sports, result in young trans children making “irreversible” medical decisions, and endanger women’s privacy and safety.

Between February 22 and March 1, right-leaning political Facebook pages earned about 2.1 million interactions on posts about Levine and her confirmation hearing, compared to about 147,000 interactions on posts on nonaligned pages and roughly 151,000 on left-leaning pages. Right-leaning pages accounted for about 88% of Facebook interactions analyzed.

Right-leaning pages also made 294 posts about Levine compared to 46 from nonaligned pages and 48 from left-leaning pages; that means right-leaning pages made more than 75% of Facebook posts about Levine and her hearing during the studied time period. 

Every single one of the top 10 posts about Levine came from right-leaning pages, and eight of those posts featured Sen. Rand Paul’s (R-KY) anti-trans lies about “genital mutilation” from Levine’s hearing. Additionally, six of the top 10 posts were from Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro; in a comment alongside a video of Daily Wire's Matt Walsh, Shapiro lied that Levine supports “mutilating children who think they are transgender.”

The Daily Wire’s pages that Media Matters analyzed, including Shapiro’s, earned about 814,000 interactions across 73 posts about Levine during the time period studied. That is about one-third of the total interactions analyzed across political Facebook pages and nearly 19% of the total posts.

The right has opposed Levine, who is a pediatrician and former secretary of health in Pennsylvania, since she was first nominated, running an anti-trans smear campaign against her. During her Senate confirmation hearing, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) parroted a series of right-wing media lies about trans youth, including falsely claiming that kids are undergoing “genital mutilation.” In reality, trans kids do not undergo surgery or irreversible treatments. Right-wing media figures such as Fox’s Rachel Campos-Duffy have also used extreme rhetoric to describe Levine, including claiming that she “wants to erase gender in order to destroy notions of the traditional family” and that she does not “care about children.” 

Right-leaning Facebook pages drove the conversation on Facebook about the Equality Act as well as Levine and her confirmation, even though both stories involve major milestones for the LGBTQ community. These pages made a deluge of anti-trans posts that essentially drowned out good coverage of these issues, attempting to sway public opinion in line with a broader strategy by Republicans to put anti-trans attacks front and center.

On February 28, during a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) that largely repeated his usual list of conservative grievances, former President Donald Trump “said something new” by attacking trans athletes. The Washington Post noted that he “rarely talked about transgender rights as a candidate” and “ignored the issue in 2020,” so the CPAC speech signaled a rhetorical shift toward demonizing trans people after right-wing activists have pushed for Trump to more publicly oppose them. Additionally, state legislatures across the country are considering legislation targeted at trans athletes and health care for young trans people.

Right-wing media online, as well as Fox News, have set the stage for these attacks and perpetuated vitriol and misinformation about trans people -- and they have been aided by Facebook, which has long shown a preference for right-wing content on its platform, including posts about trans issues. A July 2020 study by Media Matters found that right-leaning sources earned a total of over 43.33 million interactions -- or more than 65% of total interactions -- on trans-related content that earned more than 100,000 interactions during the time period studied. Despite this, conservatives have repeatedly claimed that Facebook and other social media outlets are biased against them.

Facebook has superficially celebrated LGBTQ Pride and claims it is “dedicated to creating an environment where people can be their authentic selves and share their own diverse backgrounds, experiences, perspectives and ideas.” Yet it is an unsafe platform for LGBTQ people and one of the biggest perpetuators of anti-trans misinformation and hatred anywhere -- making Facebook complicit in creating an environment in which trans people’s lives and well-being are put in danger.

Using CrowdTangle, Media Matters compiled a list of 1,773 Facebook pages that frequently posted about U.S. politics from January 1 to August 25, 2020.

For an explanation of how we compiled pages and identified them as right-leaning, left-leaning, or ideologically nonaligned, see the methodology here.

The resulting list consisted of 771 right-leaning pages, 497 ideologically nonaligned pages, and 505 left-leaning pages.

Using CrowdTangle, Media Matters compiled all posts made on this list of 1,773 Facebook pages that were posted between February 22 and March 1, 2021, related to the Equality Act or Dr. Rachel Levine.

We defined posts as related to the Equality Act if they had any of the following terms in the message or in the included link, article headline, or article description: “Equality Act,” "#equalityact," “equalityact,” “H.R. 5,” or “HR5.”

We defined posts as related to Levine if they had any of the following terms in the message or in the included link, article headline, or article description: “assistant health secretary,” “Dr. Levine,” “Dr. Rachel Levine,” “former PA Health Secretary,” “former Pennsylvania Health Secretary,” “genital mutilation,” “Health and Human Services nominee,” “Health and Human Services pick,” “HHS nominee,” “HHS pick,” “pick for Health and Human Services,” “Rachel Levine,” “secretary of health nominee,” “surgical destruction of a minor’s genitalia,” “transgender medicine,” or “transgender nominee.” We then reviewed the resulting posts and removed those in which Levine was not the primary subject.