National
No DOMA repeal next year: Nadler
Rep. Jerrold Nadler said the Respect for Marriage Act, which would overturn the Defense of Marriage Act, won’t pass next year. (DC Agenda photo by Michael Key)
The sponsor of a bill that would overturn the Defense of Marriage Act said repeal won’t happen in this Congress and that efforts next year will instead be focused on building support on the issue.
Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) said in an interview with DC Agenda that lawmakers will work on passing other pro-LGBT bills next year, and could take up legislation to repeal DOMA — known as the Respect for Marriage Act — at the end of the two-year session starting in 2011.
“The Respect for Marriage Act is a bill that we can’t pass right now; we know we can’t pass it right now,” he said.
Nadler said Congress won’t take up the DOMA repeal next year because other LGBT-related bills, including the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, legislation providing partner benefits for LGBT federal workers and a repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” are taking precedence. Supporters hope to pass those measures by the end of 2010.
“The Respect for Marriage Act comes up after that, maybe at the end of the next Congress, maybe afterward,” he said.
Nadler’s legislation would overturn DOMA, allowing the federal government to recognize same-sex marriages. It also has a “certainty provision” that would allow same-sex couples to marry in one state and still receive federal benefits even if they move to another state where gay nuptials aren’t recognized.
In lieu of passage in this Congress, Nadler said the task for supporters is to find more co-sponsors for the bill. As of Tuesday, the bill had 105 co-sponsors. Nadler predicted support would grow.
“And I think if some of these other bills pass, it’ll become more — the idea becomes less avant garde,” he said.
In response to Nadler’s remarks that a DOMA repeal won’t happen next year, Evan Wolfson, executive director of Freedom to Marry, said, “I don’t think we should begin the conversation about when it’s going to happen. I think we should begin the conversation with how do we build support and make it happen.”
“There are two ways to talk about our movement,” he said. “One is to talk about what it’s really about, to actually make the case for inclusion and fairness and freedom, to talk about why marriage matters. … The other is to spend all our time talking about the chess game or the political horse race, and we spend too much time on the latter and not enough time doing the former.”
Wolfson said supporters should begin the conversation “by each one of us calling our senators and member of Congress, asking them to sign on to the bill.”
Strategic decisions
Nadler’s prediction that a DOMA repeal won’t happen by the end of next year comes after other key potential supporters have said other LGBT legislation will be a priority.
At the time the Respect for Marriage Act was introduced in September, Drew Hammill, a spokesperson for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, said the speaker is “focused on legislative items that we can enact into law now,” including ENDA.
And gay Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) hasn’t signed on as a co-sponsor to Nadler’s bill, saying that lawmakers will instead focus on other LGBT issues this Congress and the bill’s certainty provision could cause political problems for House members seeking re-election.
Nadler said he hasn’t “had too many conversations” with Pelosi on the proposed DOMA repeal since it was introduced, but noted that the speaker has privately encouraged House members to co-sponsor the bill.
As for Frank, Nadler also said he hasn’t spoken much with the Massachusetts lawmaker on the issue since the bill’s introduction.
“We have a disagreement on the strategy on this obviously, as we had a disagreement on the strategy over the non-inclusive ENDA last [Congress] where we no longer have that disagreement,” he said. “And, I presume, in the end, we will not have a disagreement on this.”
Although supporters have said other bills will take priority this Congress, advocates for the DOMA repeal have hoped for congressional hearings on marriage by the end of next year.
But Nadler, who chairs a House Judiciary subcommittee with jurisdiction over marriage, said he wouldn’t commit to holding hearings on the issue by the end of next year and would hear only testimony “when we think it’s advantageous to do so.”
“And that’s a strategic decision, a tactical decision you have to make,” he said. “As things go on, we’ll have to see how things go. Right now, the thing is get the idea out there to get pressure built, to get more sponsors — and that’s the way to go.”
Asked whether Democratic leadership requested that he not hold hearings on marriage, Nadler replied, “No, they did not.”
Nadler said he expects a Senate companion to the Respect for Marriage Act would be introduced early next year, noting there are a number of potential sponsors for the Senate legislation.
Advocates have named Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wisc.) as a prime target in talks because he chairs a Senate Judiciary subcommittee with jurisdiction over marriage. Nadler said Feingold would “possibly” champion the Senate legislation.
Nadler said a Senate bill has yet to emerge so many months after the House introduction in September because potential supporters have been occupied with other tasks.
“Some of the people we’re dealing with are very busy with a number of other things,” he said. “There’s not a sense of urgency, the sense that this bill has to have a Senate sponsor right now because it’s going to pass right now, because it’s not, so we’re talking.”
Even without a sense of urgency among lawmakers, Nadler said he thinks DOMA should be repealed because it’s “a stain on the national honor.”
“Even if you didn’t have a lot of practical effects, which obviously it does have, it’s wrong to keep such things on the books,” he said. “The honor of the country demands we repeal it.”
Same-sex marriage is only legal in five states throughout the country, but Nadler predicted that number would grow in coming years, and would include his home state of New York.
The Empire State was seen to be on the precipice of legalizing same-sex marriage, but the hopes of supporters were dashed last week when the state Senate killed a bill that would have granted marriage rights for same-sex couples. Nadler, who served in the New York Assembly for 16 years before being elected to Congress, said same-sex marriage will nonetheless be legalized in the state in a few years.
“I’d be very surprised if New York didn’t pass a gay marriage bill in the next two years, and I’ve been studying New York politics for 40 years,” he said. “And as long as we keep a Democratic governor and state Senate in the next election, we’ll get a gay marriage bill relatively soon in New York.”
As the number of states with same-sex marriage grow, Nadler said support for the Respect for Marriage Act also will build.
“Especially as a number of states have gay marriage, and the sky doesn’t fall in, and nobody comes in and busts up regular marriages — other than what’s busting up anyway — I think the issue will recede in the sense that people will lose their sense of the novelty,” he said.
Rep. Jerrold Nadler said of his home state that ‘as long as we keep a Democratic governor and state Senate in the next election, we’ll get a gay marriage bill relatively soon in New York.’ (DC Agenda photo by Michael Key)
Gay immigration bill could join reform debate
Another bill Nadler is championing in the House is the Uniting American Families Act, which would enable gay Americans to sponsor their foreign partners for residency. With an effort to pass comprehensive immigration reform expected in Congress next year, advocates are trying to include UAFA as a provision in the larger legislation.
Nadler said the White House seems to want to take on immigration reform in the spring and said UAFA supporters will “make a major thrust to make this part of the comprehensive immigration reform debate.”
The lawmakers drafting comprehensive immigration reform legislation are Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.). Nadler said it’s “hard to say” whether those bills would include a UAFA provision upon their introduction.
“There are a lot of cross pressures and we haven’t had those — we’ve started but we haven’t finished those conversations at this point,” he said.
But Steve Ralls, a spokesperson for Immigration Equality, said he’s “optimistic” immigration reform measures will include UAFA at their debut because supporters, including other lawmakers, immigration groups and LGBT groups, have been lobbying for an inclusive bill for some time.
“I don’t know what the final comprehensive immigration reform will look like, but I remain optimistic that it will include lesbian and gay families,” he said.
In the event that comprehensive immigration reform legislation doesn’t include UAFA when it debuts, Nadler said he’s working on making sure there are votes in the House Judiciary Committee to amend the bill to include such a provision.
Nadler said he’s “hopeful” there will be enough votes for an amendment, but added “that’ll be a big fight, if necessary.”
“I haven’t taken any votes or whip counts or done any kind of that work, but certainly it will be something that we’ll have to work at and the gay community and everybody will have to be pressuring the individual members of the committee,” Nadler said. “A lot of the members of the committee, the Democratic members especially, say they’re very great friends with the gay community … and this’ll be an opportunity to show that they are, bar none.”
One major obstacle that UAFA supporters will face is opposition from Catholic leaders. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has urged lawmakers to exclude the provision from immigration reform because church leaders support reform, but oppose the LGBT-specific provision.
Nadler said opposition to UAFA from Catholic leaders will make inclusion of the measure in the bill “a very difficult fight.”
“So, there will be some who will be tempted to say, ‘Wait a minute, let’s not alienate some of our major supporters on this legislation to pass it,’” he said. “There’ll be others of us saying, ‘Hey, no, if you’re doing a comprehensive bill, it’s got to be comprehensive. You can’t just leave certain people out.”
Even with opposition from Catholic leaders, Ralls said the list of religious groups who support the inclusion of UAFA in immigration reform “is very long and diverse,” and includes Quakers and Episcopalians.
“If the Conference of Catholic Bishops decides that they’re willing to throw the immigrant community under the bus because of the inclusion of LGBT couples, I think that would be a shame because, at the end of the day, immigration reform can help millions of families — both gay and straight — and that should be Congress’ priority.”
Asked whether he would support immigration reform legislation that doesn’t include a UAFA provision, Nadler replied, “I hope it doesn’t come to that.”
“All my efforts are designed to make sure it doesn’t come to that, so I’m not going to get into what happens at that point,” he said.
‘We will see a fair amount of action’
During his Agenda interview, Nadler also addressed arguments that the Obama administration and Congress haven’t made sufficient progress on LGBT issues since the start of this year.
The lawmaker said Congress has had a significant workload this year — including the passage of two annual budgets as well as stimulus and relief legislation for financial institutions — and that advocates for LGBT issues would be better to make judgments on Congress’ work at the end of next year.
“I think it would be very fair by the time the election rolls around next October to say we haven’t done enough on these issues,” he said. “I think a lot of things have been fermenting and cooking. I think we will see a fair amount of action on these issues in next year’s session.”
Asked whether President Obama could have spoken more forcefully on LGBT issues since the start of his administration, Nadler replied, “I think he could have been more forthright on some of them.” He declined to elaborate.
In response to recent criticism that lawmakers have been putting off action on ENDA, Nadler said some key supporters of the bill have been occupied with other issues. He noted the sponsor of the bill is Frank, who, as chair of the House Financial Services Committee, is also working on the Troubled Asset Relief Program legislation.
“Why aren’t we doing ENDA right now?” he said. “But what else are some of the key people doing? They’re over their heads with the financial reform, which no one anticipated six months ago. I suspect that once that is out of the way, which it should be soon, these kind of issues can come to the fore again.”
But John Aravosis, a gay blogger who has been leading an LGBT boycott of the Democratic National Committee, criticized the notion that Congress hasn’t acted on LGBT issues because lawmakers have been busy with other issues.
He said the Obama administration has found time to take swipes at the LGBT community by defending DOMA in court and, more recently, saying it couldn’t follow a court order from the Ninth Circuit judge to provide health benefits to the partner of a lesbian federal employee.
“It’s not enough just for them to say, ‘It’s been busy,’” he said. “Well, it hasn’t been busy — or so busy that they couldn’t take swipes at us.”
Aravois commended Nadler for being outspoken on LGBT issues, but questioned whether Nadler would criticize a Democratic Congress as a Democratic lawmaker, and whether Congress would, in fact, take up LGBT issues next year.
“Good luck passing gay rights legislation right before an election,” he said. “Democrats don’t have balls in off years — they certainly don’t have them right before elections, on gay issues especially.”
With regard to the LGBT legislation that Congress would take up next year, Nadler expressed uncertainty about the prediction that Congress would repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” next year as part of the authorization bill for the fiscal year 2011 defense budget. Frank told the media last month that was the way he envisioned repeal.
But Nadler said repeal through the defense budget might not be the best way to overturn “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” With the president calling for escalation of operations in Afghanistan, Nadler said such a provision would put more liberal members of Congress in a quandary over whether to vote for repeal and military operations at the same time.
“You don’t want to put people in the position of saying, ‘You vote against Afghanistan funding, you’re voting against [repealing] “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,”’ or vice-versa,” he said. “So maybe you need a new option or something. These are tactical considerations, which you have to look at as things unfold.”
Nadler said he, for example, didn’t “like this idea of sending more troops to Afghanistan,” although he supports a “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal.
With public approval polls showing support waning for Democrats, Nadler predicted congressional Democrats will lose seats in the 2010 election, but added a hope that the party won’t lose “too many” seats. He noted that the November results would largely depend on how well the economy is faring.
Even with Democrats potentially in danger, Nadler said he didn’t think lawmakers would avoid LGBT issues next year to reduce a perceived risk of alienating voters before the election.
“I think we’re going to face most of these issues this Congress, mostly next year,” he said. “I’m assuming that the gay community is going to keep the pressure on. I mean, don’t go to sleep because I said it as that. If the gay community keeps the pressure on, then I think that, yes, we’ll probably face most of these issues.”
North Carolina
Authorities investigate officer-involved shooting outside Asheville gay bar
Incident took place near Shakey’s on Wednesday
An officer-involved shooting outside of a gay dive bar, Shakey’s, in downtown Asheville, N.C., left one man dead Wednesday.
The bar released a statement the following morning regarding the incident, stating that bar staff had asked a patron to leave earlier in the night citing concerning behavior. The bar said that later the man was spotted with a gun in the parking lot.
The bar proceeded to call 911, locked the doors to the establishment, and followed dispatcher instructions on how to keep patrons of the bar safe while officers arrived. These protocols included getting patrons away from the windows and staying low to the ground.
According to Shakey’s, shots were fired outside of the business. When the Asheville Police Department officers arrived, they fired back. The individual died from their injuries, according to the police.
“Because of everyone’s quick actions, cooperation, and concern for one another, every customer and every employee inside Shakey’s made it home safely. We are incredibly thankful,” Shakey’s said on their Instagram page. They thanked Asheville police, emergency dispatchers, EMS, and all first responders who were on scene.
On Thursday, a spokesperson for the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation, Chad Flowers, stated that the suspect involved in the shooting was Arturo Castillo Palomar.
The Washington Blade reached out to the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation for a comment regarding the possibility of the event being considered a hate crime. They said the issue is currently under investigation and that the findings would be turned over to the district attorney for review.
Pentagon
Hegseth announces testosterone initiative as trans troop ban continues
SPARTA Pride criticized Pentagon policy
The U.S. military will begin testing and treating service members with hormone therapy despite banning similar medical care for transgender service members.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Wednesday that troops ages 30 and older will be subject to annual testosterone screenings, while younger service members will have the option to voluntarily opt in. Some troops may then be recommended for hormone therapy, he explained in a video posted to social media.
“Under the supervision of our world-class medical professionals, warfighters age 30 and older are going to be tested annually as part of their periodic health assessment,” Hegseth said in a video posted to X, captioned “The High-T Department of War.”
This push to test testosterone levels, as the hormone is commonly referred to as “T,” runs counter to current medical guidelines. Physicians are generally advised to discuss testosterone therapy only with men who have symptoms consistent with low testosterone and documented low hormone levels on two separate blood tests.
Testosterone is a vital sex hormone that all humans naturally produce. It helps regulate muscle mass, bone density, and sex drive. In men, it is primarily produced in the testicles, while in women it is produced in the ovaries and adrenal glands.
Natural testosterone levels in men decline with age and have long been associated with issues such as erectile dysfunction, low libido, mood changes, and weight gain. However, experts continue to debate whether these conditions should routinely be treated with testosterone therapy.
Hegseth’s announcement aligns with other actions taken by the Trump-Vance administration — including efforts by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — to make testosterone therapy more accessible for men, particularly those assigned male at birth.
Last month, the Food and Drug Administration proposed easing prescribing restrictions on testosterone gels, pills, patches, and injections following a December advisory panel that recommended reducing regulatory hurdles to expand access to testosterone therapy.
Currently, FDA labeling specifies that these medications are approved only for men with hypogonadism, a medical condition that causes abnormally low testosterone levels.
The announcement came as a shock to many LGBTQ advocates because Hegseth and the Defense Department have cited the use of hormone therapy by trans service members as justification for their dismissal under President Donald Trump’s 2025 executive order, “Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness.“
The Pentagon continues to pursue implementation of the trans military ban as litigation proceeds. As a result, many trans service members have had their gender-affirming medical care halted, even as similar hormone therapy is now being expanded for cisgender service members. Under the executive order, the military currently disqualifies individuals diagnosed with gender dysphoria and has begun formal administrative separation proceedings for trans personnel.
SPARTA Pride, a nonpartisan nonprofit organization made up of trans service members, veterans, and their allies, issued a statement to the Washington Blade following Hegseth’s announcement.
“If hormone therapy helps warfighters perform at their best, then it cannot simultaneously be used as evidence that transgender service members are unfit to serve,” said Kara Corcoran, executive director of SPARTA Pride. “The same class of evidence-based medical treatment cannot be characterized as readiness-enhancing for one group and readiness-destroying for another.”
The legal fight over trans military service remains ongoing.
On June 1, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled that trans service members already serving in the military could continue to do so, while allowing the armed services to continue refusing to enlist new trans recruits.
The Blade reached out to the Pentagon to ask why cisgender service members could receive hormone therapy while trans service members could not, but did not receive a response by the time of publication.
National
Democrats are trying to disqualify trans candidates. Here’s how
Jordan Korgood suspended Mass. Governor’s Council candidacy after opponent questioned residency
Uncloseted Media published this article on July 14.
By HOPE PISONI | Jordan Korgood has come a long way. In 2023, she ran into financial difficulties while studying at Northeastern University in Boston and ended up unhoused. Ordinary shelters are hotbeds of discrimination and mistreatment for transgender women like her, and the only trans shelter was full. So for five months, she slept in her car, in public libraries and anywhere she could find in order to continue her studies and campus activism.
Korgood, now 24, started a bid in March for a seat on Massachusetts Governor’s Council, a state board tasked with approving judicial candidates. Despite running against an incumbent who has been in office for 41 years, she secured key endorsements from local Democrats and racked up more than 7,000 Instagram followers, the equivalent of nearly one-tenth of primary voters during the last election cycle.
But last month, her momentum was ripped away. It started when Ronald Iacobucci, one of her opponents, noticed that she was still registered to vote in the 2024 election with an old New York address. He proceeded to file an objection with the state, alleging that Korgood didn’t meet the five-year residency requirement. While Korgood has lived in Massachusetts since 2019, she didn’t have a valid address to register in the state while she was unhoused. So she used her mother’s address, where she had lived before moving.
In an email to Uncloseted Media, Iacobucci wrote: “Because serious questions have arisen concerning compliance with those requirements, an objection was appropriate so the matter can be reviewed through the lawful process established by the commonwealth. This objection was nothing personal, it was always about the integrity of the process.”
While most residency challenges like this fail in Massachusetts, the State Ballot Law Commission disqualified Korgood on June 18. While she initially attempted to appeal the decision, the financial and logistical burden became too much — she estimates it drained about 40 percent of her campaign funds. So on July 10, Korgood suspended her campaign.
“I am incredibly frustrated that this is what I have to do at this point,” Korgood told Uncloseted Media. “I’ve spent thousands of hours, I’ve sacrificed my own mental health, my social life, friendships, my professional aspirations and advancement to work on this campaign, and this is how they’re ruling.”
“These are cherry-picking remote issues to target specific individuals,” Eliot Tracz, assistant professor of law at New England Law Boston, told Uncloseted Media. “They’re legitimate laws, but what they’re looking for is a selective application.”
Korgood isn’t the only trans candidate facing barriers. While a 2025 report by the LGBTQ+ Victory Institute found that trans representation among elected officials has increased by over 700 percent since 2017, candidates still face major hurdles.
Uncloseted Media found examples of trans candidates running for public office in Ohio and Michigan who have been threatened with disqualification over challenges to their eligibility. Often, the challenges come from their primary opponents: fellow Democrats.
“It should be voters, not political opponents, who decide who represents them,” Daniel Hernandez, vice president of political programs at the LGBTQ+ Victory Fund, a nonprofit supporting queer candidates for public office, told Uncloseted Media. “This is not a legitimate way to fight — if you have a disagreement on policy, that’s one thing, but to try and target trans people just because of who they are is completely unacceptable, especially in a Democratic primary.”
A growing strategy
The first widely publicized eligibility challenge against a trans candidate Uncloseted Media identified took place in Stark County, Ohio, in 2024. The Stark County Board of Elections, which has the same chairman as the county’s Democratic Party, disqualified Vanessa Joy, a trans woman who was running for a seat in the state legislature. The board cited an obscure state law requiring candidates who changed their name in the last five years to list their former name on candidacy petitions — in Joy’s case, her deadname.
“The original spirit of the law I kind of agree with,” Joy told Uncloseted Media. “But there’s hardly any information about this law ever being enforced.”
Days later, Arienne Childrey and Bobbie Arnold, two other trans candidates, had their eligibility challenged based on this law. While both candidates were cleared to run, that wasn’t the case for Joy, who never made it on the ballot.
Tom Sutton, a political science professor at Baldwin Wallace University, told Spectrum News 1 he had never seen this law enforced in his 30 years of study. At the time, the relevant forms didn’t include a space to list former names, an omission that has since been corrected.
“The only way to find out about it was to dig deep into all of the additional documents on their website,” says Joy. “They used this law against me.”
Similar challenges cropped up in Michigan this year. Joanna Whaley, a trans woman running for a seat in the state legislature, faced a legal complaint from her Democratic primary opponent Frank Liberati, who claimed in April that she should have filed campaign paperwork under her deadname.
“Because both the original and amended affidavits of identity filed by ‘Joanna Michelle Whaley’ contain FALSE statements, she/he cannot be certified to appear on the Aug. 4, 2026, primary election ballot,” the complaint argues.
The county clerk denied the challenge, which deadnames Whaley, because she had legally changed her name. Liberati’s complaint was widely condemned, with the Michigan Legislative LGBTQ+ Caucus calling it “meritless” and “transphobic.”
“It completely backfired on him,” Whaley told Uncloseted Media. “We tripled our cash on hand within a week because of the support that we’ve gotten from our community, and actually are in a stronger position now to win this race.”
While Whaley benefited from the challenge, that’s not the norm. Toni Mua, a trans woman running for a seat in the Michigan legislature, received a complaint from political activist Robert Davis in April who alleged that she also should have run under her deadname.
One of Mua’s opponents, Democrat Arthur Harrington, had discussed the challenge with Davis before it was filed, according to DeNiro Jones, Harrington’s former campaign manager. Jones told Uncloseted Media he sat in on a meeting between the two where they discussed the plan.
Jones also sent Uncloseted Media a screenshot of what he says is a text thread that Harrington sent him. In the screenshot, Davis tells Harrington, “The transgender candidate will be eliminated,” and Harrington responds that “Toni also won’t have the money to fight it.” Those texts were from April 22, two days before Davis filed the challenge.
In an email to Uncloseted Media, Davis called this story “baseless and meritless” and referred to Mua as “an illegitimate candidate seeking attention.”
“A candidate who happens to identify as transgender clearly violated Michigan Election Law and should not have been allowed to appear on the ballot,” Davis wrote. “A person’s sexual orientation nor identity played no part in the litigation seeking to have the person who filed a false affidavit of identity properly removed from the ballot.”
Arthur Harrington did not reply to multiple requests for comment. But in a June statement to Michigan Advance, he denied allegations that he was involved in Davis’s challenge.
These legal fights cost a lot. Korgood paid her lawyer $5,000. And while Mua defeated her challenge, she also had to use an estimated 40 percent of her campaign funds, or $10,000, to fight it.
In its opinion rejecting Davis’s challenge of Mua’s candidacy, the state court of appeals wrote, “Plaintiff misreads the statute … The Court of Claims did not err by concluding that Mua complied with the law or that the Wayne County Clerk did not err in rejecting plaintiff’s challenge.”
“I had to leave my job to run for this open seat,” Mua told Uncloseted Media. “It truly pisses me off, because [Democrats] have always said that they were better than this, and it’s showing truly where their support lies.”
Quinn Allred, executive director at Let Us Lead, a youth-focused voting rights nonprofit, finds these eligibility challenges from Democrats “despicable.”
“Instead of saying ‘trans people shouldn’t be running,’ [they’re entering] into this respectability politics and saying ‘oh, it’s actually because the names don’t match up, or it’s because of this residency law,’” Allred told Uncloseted Media. “[It’s a] special brand of cowardice that it takes for a Democrat to target a queer person who is also running for office.”
Uneven enforcement
While challenges to candidates’ residency aren’t uncommon in Massachusetts, they usually fail, according to Western Mass Politics & Insight, a long-running blog by local political and legal analysts.
The blog says most officials with authority over elections have a “great reluctance … to remove an individual from the ballot.” This makes Korgood’s removal unusual.
And while the State Ballot Law Commission says it considers many factors when determining a candidate’s residency and “no factor standing alone can be dispositive,” it largely cited Korgood’s voter registration in its decision despite other evidence that supports her eligibility, including apartment leases and membership in city programs.
“While there’s an undertone of legitimacy to some of those claims, it’s very selective,” Tracz says. “Most of us, when we move to a new state, don’t bother to go through the process of getting rid of our registration to vote in the prior state.”
Throughout history, Massachusetts candidates who faced similar challenges have been left on the ballot. These include former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who received a tax credit in Utah reserved for primary residences, and Brockton, Mass., mayoral candidate Hamilton Rodrigues, who had gotten his voter registration in Brockton removed and hadn’t voted in the city for over 10 years.
Months after Joy’s disqualification in Ohio, the Mahoning County Board of Elections struck down a similar challenge against Republican Tex Fischer, a cisgender man who changed his legal name. They allowed him to stay on the ballot.
Tracz says a judge would likely find selective enforcement like this questionable.
“[That rule is] applicable to any candidate, and the question then becomes ‘Is this only being enforced against a select group of candidates?’” he says. “Why are we only investigating a specific type of candidate? I think that will give some courts pause.”
Making existing challenges worse
Trans candidates face hurdles beyond eligibility challenges. A June report from the LGBTQ+ Victory Institute found that nearly two-thirds of LGBTQ candidates face in-person harassment and nearly 80 percent of them face online harassment.
“Whether it’s threats of violence, coordinated harassment campaigns, attempts to remove people from the ballot, the cumulative effect is the same: public service becoming more difficult and less accessible to the LGBTQ community,” says Hernandez of the Victory Fund.
Whaley says the increased attention from Liberati’s challenge brought even more harassment her way. She says she reports death threats to the police weekly and has a security detail at every public appearance. Security has become her second-largest campaign expense, and for good reason; in October, her team intervened when a man wearing a Make America Great Again hat followed her around with a gun at a No Kings rally.
“At the end of the day, I want to get home to tuck my kids in bed,” Whaley says. “We could be using that money for other things, but we’re having to use it to just keep me alive.”
Eligibility challenges distract from the candidates’ policies. Childrey remembers one woman telling her she couldn’t vote for her because she’s “only about the rainbow people.”
“Most of what [I’m] talking about is affordability, funding for our public schools … bread and butter issues,” Childrey told Uncloseted Media. “There is an assumption, because we’re trans, that that’s all it is.”
Barriers also pile up intersectionally. Nearly one-third of trans people experience homelessness at some point in their lives, a rate eight times higher than the general population. This means barriers for unhoused people disproportionately affect trans candidates.
“Trans youth, trans people of color, students, those who are unhoused like [Korgood] was, or who are disabled or low-income — those barriers only compound,” Allred says.
What could change?
Zein Murib, a political science professor at Fordham University, says these incidents demonstrate the need for more leniency with official documentation, arguing that a candidate’s deadname or legal sex aren’t relevant information. Today, 45 states accept common-law names, or the name a person uses in everyday life regardless of their ID, for other legal procedures, and Whaley says this should apply to campaigns as well.
Besides these policy changes, Allred says LGBTQ advocacy groups should allocate more funds to defend trans candidates from eligibility challenges. And Hernandez says that more people should condemn these tactics and show support for those targeted.
“We need to make sure that we set the expectation that everyone … is rejecting these tactics that are disproportionately burdening our trans candidates,” he says. “We have to call it out when we see it, and we have to make sure that we are not just letting candidates fight these fights themselves.”
Mua says that she doesn’t see a future for herself or other trans people with the Democrats unless the party stands up for them. “I refuse to put myself into a party where I don’t see my safety and protection being vital.”
While Korgood says she is saddened by this outcome, she doesn’t intend for her political career to end.
“I’m incredibly proud of what we were able to accomplish, and while I am beyond disappointed and frustrated that this is how this is ending, I am so grateful that I earned the support and the attention of thousands of people in this race.”
Uncloseted Media also reached out to the Stark and Mahoning County Boards of Elections as well as the office of the Secretary of State in Ohio, and the Elections division of the Secretary of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, under which the State Ballot Law Commission serves. None replied.
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Rehoboth Beach4 days agoCelebrate Pride in Rehoboth Beach this weekend
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India4 days ago
Expected India Supreme Court ruling could shape future LGBTQ rights cases
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Maryland4 days ago
Christa Tichy hopes to preserve LGBTQ representation in Md. House of Delegates
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Venezuela4 days ago
Advocacy groups join Venezuela earthquake relief efforts
