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, 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.
"I was really into politics at a very young age," says Tim Miller, host of The Bulwark Podcast and an MSNBC political analyst. "I can't remember what they were called, but you'd get those kid magazines about politics that would come to your school, and I remember always really being drawn to them, and reading them and wanting to know more. I always knew lots of weird facts about politics and geography as a little middle school nerd."
Raised in St. Louis until fourth grade, when his family relocated to Littleton, Colorado, Miller became enmeshed in conservative politics at a young age, taking various campaign jobs throughout his career as a former Republican strategist. He jokes that his success at handicapping political races dates back to the 1992 election, when he won a $1 wager after betting his grandmother that then-Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton would unseat sitting president George H.W. Bush.
Authorities in Morocco have arrested Ibtissame "Betty" Lachgar, a prominent feminist and human rights activist, over a T-shirt reading, "Allah is lesbian."
The slogan echoes the phrase "God is a Lesbian," first published in the 2013 book The Perils of Pedagogy: The Works of John Greyson. The phrase has appeared on T-shirts as both satire and religious critique, according to The New Arab, a London-based pan-Arab news outlet.
In an X post sharing a photo of the shirt, Lachgar wrote, "In Morocco, I walk around with T-shirts bearing messages against religions, Islam, etc. You tire us with your sanctimoniousness, your accusations. Yes, Islam, like any religious ideology, is fascist, phallocratic and misogynistic."
Eric and Sara Smith, owners of Born Again Used Books -- a 21-year-old Christian bookstore in Colorado Springs -- are suing state officials over a new law that prohibits discrimination against transgender and gender-nonconforming people based on how they choose to be addressed.
The lawsuit challenges the Kelly Loving Act, named for a transgender woman killed in the 2022 Club Q shooting, which expands the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act and was signed in May by Democratic Gov. Jared Polis.
The law expands the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act to prohibit discrimination in employment, housing, public accommodations, and advertising based on "gender expression," which includes a person’s appearance, manner of dress, behavior, chosen name, and how they choose to be addressed.
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