Democratic presidential candidate Rep. Tulsi Gabbard sought to clarify her record on, and explain how she evolved to become a supporter of marriage equality, nondiscrimination legislation, and other protections for LGBTQ people during a CNN town hall Sunday night.
During the town hall, which was held at the South by Southwest conference in Austin, Texas, a prospective voter asked Gabbard about her record on LGBTQ rights and specifically about claims that she supported conversion therapy.
CNN previously reported that, in the early 2000s, Gabbard touted working for The Alliance for Traditional Marriage, the political action committee of the nonprofit Stop Promoting Homosexuality America, which was founded by her father, Mike Gabbard, which successfully pushed for a 1998 amendment to Hawaii’s state constitution to give the state legislature “the power to reserve marriage to opposite-sex couples.” The organization also advocated for conversion therapy.
Gabbard has since apologized for her past anti-LGBTQ views, but during Sunday’s town hall,Ā maintained that she had never personally been involved with any of the nonprofit’s campaigns to promote conversion therapy, saying she “she “personally never supported any kind of conversion therapy. I never advocated for conversion therapy. And frankly, I didn’t even know what conversion therapy was until just the last few years.”
With respect to her views on LGBTQ rights, Gabbard said her views were largely shaped by her upbringing, but that when she deployed to Iraq, and later, to Kuwait, as a member of the Hawaii National Guard, she met and served alongside LGBTQ soldiers, and began to reevaluate her views after going through “some soul-searching.”
“I was raised in a very socially conservative home. My father is Catholic, he was a leading voice against gay marriage in Hawaii at that time. Again, I was very young, but these are the values and beliefs that I grew up around,” Gabbard said.
“My own personal journey, as I went out in different experiences in my life, especially going and deploying to the Middle East, where I saw first-hand the negative impact of a government attempting to act as a moral arbiter for their people, dictating in the most personal ways how they must live their lives,” she added. “And so it caused me to confront that contradiction, where, as a soldier standing for freedom for all people, here in this country, but also how that contradicted with some of those values and beliefs that I grew up with.”
She also touted her record in Congress, and particularly her 100% rating from the Human Rights Campaign, as evidence that her shift on LGBTQ rights is genuine, saying her record “is a reflection of what is in my heart, and it is a reflection of my commitment to fight for equality for all people.” She promised to continue that commitment to equality should she be elected president.
The former Kentucky clerk -- and anti-LGBTQ culture warrior -- who went to jail rather than issue licenses to same-sex couples is now targeting the landmark 2015 ruling.
A decade after catapulting to right-wing stardom, Kim Davis -- the former Rowan County, Kentucky county clerk who chose jail over issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples -- has petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn its landmark 2015 decision that legalized marriage equality nationwide.
Represented by the anti-LGBTQ Liberty Counsel, Davis has formally asked the nationās highest court to strip away the right of same-sex couples to marry.
A Mike Huckabee acolyte and four-time married fundamentalist zealot, Davis rose to fame in 2015 when she refused to issue marriage licenses to any couple -- gay or straight -- after the Supreme Courtās Obergefell v. Hodges decision struck down all state-level bans on same-sex marriage, including Kentuckyās. Ordered to comply, she instead spent six days in jail for contempt of court.
The Turning Point USA co-founder, who once declared Pride a āsinā and opposed LGBTQ rights, was killed during a campus event at Utah Valley University.
Conservative activist Charlie Kirk was killed by an assassin's bullet during an event at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah, on Wednesday, Sept. 10.
The 31-year-old was the co-founder of Turning Point USA, an organization advocating for conservative politics and education on high school and college campuses.
At the time of the shooting, Kirk, who appeared on campus as part of his "American Comeback Tour," was taking questions from people in the crowd while seated at a "Prove Me Wrong" table in the Sorensen Center courtyard on campus, according to The Associated Press.
A new Pew Research Center survey finds that 59% of LGBTQ U.S. adults under age 50 who have never been married say they want to marry someday -- nearly the same as the 63% of non-LGBTQ adults who do. About 12% of each group say they never want to marry, while more than one-quarter are unsure of their future marriage plans.
By age, younger Americans who have never been married are more eager to wed than older peers, who are less certain and more doubtful about ever marrying.
Among those aged 18 to 29 who have never married, 67% of LGBTQ adults and 73% of non-LGBTQ adults say they want to marry someday. By contrast, just 48% of LGBTQ adults and 49% of non-LGBTQ adults aged 30 to 49 say the same, with nearly one-third in each group unsure.
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