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.
Salisbury Mayor Randy Taylor is facing backlash after ordering the removal of rainbow Pride and Trans Pride flag-colored crosswalks from a downtown intersection last month.
The Pride flag crosswalks, the first of their kind in Maryland, were painted in 2018 at the intersection of South Division Street and West and East Market Streets, near the Wicomico River and the city's Riverwalk, as a symbol of support for LGBTQ inclusion.
More than 60 volunteers, most affiliated with the Salisbury chapter of PFLAG, came from across Maryland to help paint the designs. In the years since, PFLAG and local volunteers have repainted the crosswalk as part of Salisbury's Pride Month celebrations.
Lucien Bates, a transgender man, says security guards threatened to arrest him after he used the women’s restroom at a Round1 arcade inside the North Riverside Park Mall in suburban Chicago. Bates, an Indiana resident, was visiting the venue on September 28 with his fiancé and a friend to play Dance Dance Revolution.
Bates, who presents as alt-masculine with facial hair and piercings, had just arrived at the arcade when he needed to use the restroom. He chose the women’s restroom, a decision he often makes in public because he feels safer there and is less likely to be harassed.
In what many see as a rebuke of the Trump administration’s agenda, Democratic candidates channeled anti-Trump frustration into a wave of wins -- including key victories for pro-LGBTQ candidates in Tuesday’s bellwether races.
In Virginia, former Democratic Congresswoman and LGBTQ ally Abigail Spanberger cruised to a decisive win over Republican Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, defeating her by nearly 15 points.
Earle-Sears, who narrowly won election on Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s coattails four years ago, tried to replicate Youngkin's formula by emphasizing cultural issues, but failed to find issues that galvanized voters. She devoted much of her campaign to attacking Spanberger over pro-LGBTQ school policies that allow students to use restrooms matching their gender identity, and over the absence of a statewide ban on transgender athletes competing on female-designated sports teams.
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