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Santorum drops out of 2012 race

Advocates happy to see anti-gay candidate go

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Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum has dropped his bid for the White House(photo via Iowapolitics.com via wikimedia)

Rick Santorum announced on Tuesday he would no longer pursue the Republican nomination for the White House, ending the campaign of one of the most anti-gay candidates seeking the presidency.

During a speech in Gettysburg, Pa., the former U.S. senator announced he decided to suspend his campaign after taking a break to care for his three-year-old daughter who was hospitalized over the weekend.

“We made a decision to get into this race at our kitchen table against all the odds, and we made a decision over the weekend that while this presidential race, for us, is over for me, and we will suspend our campaign effective today, we are not done fighting,” Santorum said.

The departing candidate took no questions after he gave his exit speech, nor did he endorse another candidate.

Santorum, who represented Pennsylvania in the U.S. Senate from 1995 to 2006, won 11 states and earned 285 delegates, the second highest of all the presidential candidates behind Mitt Romney.

The candidate’s exit comes before the primary took place in his home state of Pennsylvania on April 24. Polls showed Santorum was narrowly ahead in the race. According to a Rasmussen poll published on Thursday, 42 percent of likely voters are supporting Santorum, while 38 percent of likely voters support Romney.

Many observers had already declared the primary season over. Romney appeared to be the frontrunner for the GOP nomination after winning three primaries in Wisconsin, D.C. and Maryland. Romney had also amassed 661 delegates, which is more than the other Republican candidates combined.

Dan Pinello, who’s gay and a government professor at City University of New York, said he doesn’t think Santorum’s departure “seriously affects the race” and the candidate exited because his money dried up.

“Romney was spending $2 million in the Pennsylvania primary alone, and Santorum had nothing to fight back with,” Pinello said. “Plus, all the endorsements of party insiders were going to Romney. Better to bow out than be humiliated in your own home state.”

In the past couple weeks, Romney secured endorsements from Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and House Budget Committee Chair Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) — both seen as rising stars within the Republican Party.

Santorum had taken many anti-gay positions over the course of his campaign and backed a Federal Marriage Amendment barring same-sex marriage throughout the country.

Last year, Santorum was among the GOP hopefuls who signed a pledge from the anti-gay National Organization for Marriage committing himself to backing a Federal Marriage Amendment, defending the Defense of Marriage Act in court, and establishing a commission on “religious liberty” to investigate the alleged harassment of same-sex marriage opponents.

Santorum also said he would reinstate “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” if elected to the White House, pledging in a public forum to the anti-gay Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins in March to reverse repeal of the military’s gay ban.

“I don’t believe [open service is] in the best interest of our men and women in uniform,” Santorum said. “That doesn’t mean that people who are gay and lesbian can’t serve, it’s just that they can serve in the context of what, I think, everybody in the military does — keep their own private matters to themselves and serve this country accordingly.”

When “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was in effect from 1994 to 2011, an estimated 14,346 service members were expelled from the military. Many of those troops were expelled even though they made no declaration about their sexual orientation.

FRC’s Perkins praised Santorum upon his exit from the race, saying he carried a “message of faith, family and freedom” over the course of the campaign.

“Millions of voters flocked to Rick not because he was a Republican, but because he passionately articulated the connection between America’s financial greatness and its moral and cultural wholeness,” Perkins said. “He realizes that real problem-solving starts with an understanding that the economy and the family are indivisible.”

Perkins and other evangelicals were among the nearly 170 anti-gay leaders who rallied behind Santorum in January at a conference in Brenham, Texas, to discuss the GOP primary race and top policy goals for a Republican administration.

Santorum became notorious for vocalizing his opposition to same-sex marriage throughout his campaign.

On the day Washington State legalized same-sex marriage on Feb. 13, Santorum traveled to the state and derided the news in a speech, urging opponents of the law to bring the law to a referendum before voters in November.

“There are ebbs and flows in every battle, and this is not the final word,” Santorum said before supporters in Olympia, Wash.

In the past year of campaigning, Santorum went as far as saying “our country will fail” as a result of same-sex marriage and raised eyebrows in August when he said same-sex marriage is like “saying this glass of water is a glass of beer.”

In January, Santorum drew fire for vocalizing his opposition to same-sex marriage when campaigning in the libertarian state of New Hampshire, which has legalized same-sex marriage.

“Marriage is a privilege,” Santorum said. “It is not a right. It is privilege given by society, held up by society, for purposes that it provides some societal good, and I would make the argument, some extraordinary societal good.”

Prior to his final campaign appearance in New Hampshire on Jan. 10, protesters from the Occupy movement jeered Santorum, chanting “Bi-got! Bi-got! Bi-got!”

After the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on Feb. 8 ruled against California’s Proposition 8, Santorum railed against the decision.

“The Ninth Circuit decision yesterday said that marriage, if you believe in traditional marriage, between a man and a woman and exclusively that, you are in fact, the only reason you could possibly believe that, is because you are a bigot,” Santorum said. “Your belief of marriage between a man and a woman is purely irrational based on hatred and bigotry.”

It’s this kind of anti-gay rhetoric that made LGBT advocates happy to see Santorum exit the race.

Jerame Davis, executive director of the National Stonewall Democrats, said the anti-gay positions that Santorum staked out during his campaign made him “a stain on the Republican Party,” but predicted the candidate wouldn’t vanish from public view now that he’s departed the race.

“It was always clear that Santorum was not going to be the GOP nominee, but unfortunately we haven’t seen the last of him,” Davis said. “His brand of ultra-conservatism and rank piety appealed to a particular slice of the Republican electorate.”

R. Clarke Cooper, executive director of the Log Cabin Republicans, had a more positive spin on Santorum’s departure, saying the end of his anti-gay rhetoric would enable the GOP to appeal to a broader constituency as Election Day draws closer.

“The departure of Rick Santorum’s divisive social politics from the race puts moderate, independent and younger conservative voters in play,” Cooper said. “The time is now for the Republican Party to capitalize by presenting an inclusive, united front focused on economic growth, exploration of natural resources and defending national interests abroad.”

Advocates said Santorum’s exit reinforces the notion that LGBT people should be prepared for Romney to become the Republican presidential nominee — whether they support his candidacy or not.

Jimmy LaSalvia, executive director of GOProud, said Romney had already sealed the nomination even before Santorum dropped out of the race. LaSalvia has personally endorsed Romney’s candidacy.

“Rick Santorum has recognized the political reality that most in the party have acknowledged for weeks now – Mitt Romney will be the nominee of the Republican Party,” LaSalvia said.

Michael Cole-Schwartz, a spokesperson for the Human Rights Campaign, said Santorum’s exit means the LGBT community needs only to focus on Romney’s anti-gay positions.

“We now go from two leading candidates that would take LGBT rights completely backward in this country to one candidate who’d do the same,” Cole-Schwartz said. “While we might not be faced with Sen. Santorum’s extreme rhetoric anymore, we’re left with Gov. Romney whose anti-LGBT positions aren’t substantively much different.”

Romney has signed the same anti-gay pledge from NOM and has criticized Obama for dropping the government’s defense of the Defense of Marriage Act in court. Still, the GOP frontrunner has said he doesn’t think the political wherewithal will be present in Congress to pass a Federal Marriage Amendment, and he has no plans to return to “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”

Santorum’s departure means that only two Republican candidates other than Romney remain in the race: Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) and former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich. But Paul hasn’t won any states in the primaries, and Gingrich’s campaign has all but run out of gas.

Obama appears to be leading Romney as the primary season comes to an end. According to a Washington Post-ABC News poll published Tuesday, registered voters favored Obama by 51 percent, while 44 percent were behind Romney.

NOTE: This post has been updated.

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Federal Government

Treasury Department has a gay secretary but LGBTQ staff are under siege

Agency reverses course on LGBTQ inclusion under out Secretary Scott Bessent

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U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

A former Treasury Department employee who led the agency’s LGBTQ employee resource group says the removal of sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) from its discrimination complaint forms was merely a formalization of existing policy shifts that had already taken hold following the second inauguration of President Donald Trump and his appointment of Scott Bessent — who is gay — to lead the agency. 

Christen Boas Hayes, who served on the policy team at Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) from 2020 until March of this year, told the Washington Blade during a phone interview last week that the agency had already stopped processing internal Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) complaints on the basis of anti-LGBTQ discrimination. 

“So the way that the forms are changing is a procedural recognition of something that’s already happening,” said Hayes. “Internally, from speaking to two EEO staff members, the changes are already taking place from an EEO perspective on what kind of cases will be found to have the basis for a complaint.”

The move, they said, comes amid the deterioration of support structures for LGBTQ workers at the agency since the administration’s early rollout of anti-LGBTQ executive orders, which led to “a trickle down effect of how each agency implements those and on what timeline,” decisions “typically made by the assistant secretary of management’s office and then implemented by the appropriate offices.”

At the end of June, a group of U.S. House Democrats including several out LGBTQ members raised alarms after a Federal Register notice disclosed Treasury’s plans to revise its complaint procedures. Through the agency’s Office of Civil Rights and EEO, the agency would eliminate SOGI as protected categories on the forms used by employees to initiate claims of workplace discrimination.

But Hayes’s account reveals that the paperwork change followed months of internal practice, pursuant to a wave of layoffs targeting DEI personnel and a chilling effect on LGBTQ organizing, including through ERGs. 

Hayes joined Treasury’s FinCEN in 2020 as the agency transitioned into the Biden-Harris administration, working primarily on cryptocurrency regulation and emerging technologies until they accepted a “deferred resignation” offer, which was extended to civil servants this year amid drastic staffing cuts. 

“It was two things,” Hayes said. “One was the fact that the policy work that I was very excited about doing was going to change in nature significantly. The second part was that the environment for LGBTQ staff members was increasingly negative after the release of the executive orders,” especially for trans and nonbinary or gender diverse employees. 

“At the same time,” Hayes added, “having been on the job for four years, I also knew this year was the year that I would leave Treasury. I was a good candidate for [deferred resignation], because I was already planning on leaving, but the pressures that emerged following the change in administration really pushed me to accelerate that timeline.”

Some ERGs die by formal edict, others by a thousand cuts 

Hayes became involved with the Treasury LGBTQ ERG shortly after joining the agency in 2020, when they reached out to the group’s then-president — “who also recently took the deferred resignation.”

“She said that because of the pressure that ERGs had faced under the first Trump administration, the group was rebuilding, and I became the president of the group pretty quickly,” Hayes said. “Those pressures have increased in the second Trump administration.”

One of the previous ERG board members had left the agency after encountering what Hayes described as “explicitly transphobic” treatment from supervisors during his gender transition. “His supervisors denied him a promotion,” and, “importantly, he did not have faith in the EEO complaint process” to see the issues with discrimination resolved, Hayes said. “And so he decided to just leave, which was, of course, such a loss for Treasury and our Employee Resource Group and all of our employees at Treasury.”

The umbrella LGBTQ ERG that Hayes led included hundreds of members across the agency, they said, and was complemented by smaller ERGs at sub-agencies like the IRS and FinCEN — several of which, Hayes said, were explicitly told to cease operations under the new administration.

Hayes did not receive any formal directive to shutter Treasury’s ERG, but described an “implicit” messaging campaign meant to shut down the group’s activities without issuing anything in writing.

“The suggestion was to stop emailing about anything related to the employee resource group, to have meetings outside of work hours, to meet off of Treasury’s campus, and things like that,” they said. “So obviously that contributes to essentially not existing functionally. Because whereas we could have previously emailed our members comfortably to announce a happy hour or a training or something like that, now they have to text each other personally to gather, which essentially makes it a defunct group.”

Internal directories scrubbed, gender-neutral restrooms removed

Hayes said the dismantling of DEI staff began almost immediately after the executive orders. Employees whose position descriptions included the terms “diversity, equity, and inclusion” were “on the chopping block,” they said. “That may differ from more statutorily mandated positions in the OMWI office or the EEO office.”

With those staff gone, so went the infrastructure that enabled ERG programming and community-building. “The people that made our employee resource group events possible were DEI staff that were fired. And so, it created an immediate chilling effect on our employee resource group, and it also, of course, put fear into a lot of our members’ hearts over whether or not we would be able to continue gathering as a community or supporting employees in a more practical way going forward. And it was just, really — it was really sad.”

Hayes described efforts to erase the ERGs from internal communication channels and databases. “They also took our information off internal websites so nobody could find us as lawyers went through the agency’s internal systems to scrub DEI language and programs,” they said.

Within a week, Hayes said, the administration had removed gender-neutral restrooms from Main Treasury, removed third-gender markers from internal databases and forms, and made it more difficult for employees with nonbinary IDs to access government buildings.

“[They] made it challenging for people with X gender markers on identification documents to access Treasury or the White House by not recognizing their gender marker on the TWAVES and WAVES forms.”

LGBTQ staff lack support and work amid a climate of isolation 

The changes have left many LGBTQ staff feeling vulnerable — not only because of diminished workplace inclusion, but due to concerns about job security amid the administration’s reductions in force (RIFs).

“Plenty of people are feeling very stressed, not only about retaining their jobs because of the layoffs and pending questions around RIFs, but then also wondering if they will be included in RIF lists because they’re being penalized somehow for being out at work,” Hayes said. “People wonder if their name will be given, not because they’re in a tranche of billets being laid off, but because of their gender identity or sexual orientation.”

In the absence of functional ERGs, Hayes said, LGBTQ employees have been cut off from even informal networks of support.

“Employees [are] feeling like it’s harder to find members of their own community because there’s no email anymore to ask when the next event is or to ask about navigating healthcare or other questions,” they said. “If there is no ERG to go to to ask for support for their specific issue, that contributes to isolation, which contributes to a worse work environment.”

Hayes said they had not interacted directly with Secretary Bessent, but they and others observed a shift from the previous administration. “It is stark to see that our first ‘out’ secretary did not host a Pride event this year,” they said. “For the last three years we’ve flown the rainbow Pride flag above Treasury during Pride. And it was such a celebration among staff and Secretary Yellen and the executive secretary’s office were super supportive.”

“Employees notice changes like that,” they added. “Things like the fact that the Secretary’s official bio says ‘spouse’ instead of ‘husband.’ It makes employees wonder if they too should be fearful of being their full selves at work.”

The Blade contacted the Treasury Department with a request for comment outlining Hayes’s allegations, including the removal of inclusive infrastructure, the discouragement of ERG activity, the pre-formalization of EEO policy changes, and the targeting of DEI personnel. As of publication, the agency has not responded.

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U.S. Supreme Court

Supreme Court to consider bans on trans athletes in school sports

27 states have passed laws limiting participation in athletics programs

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U.S. Supreme Court (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday agreed to hear two cases involving transgender youth challenging bans prohibiting them from participating in school sports.

In Little v. Hecox, plaintiffs represented by the ACLU, Legal Voice, and the law firm Cooley are challenging Idaho’s 2020 ban, which requires sex testing to adjudicate questions of an athlete’s eligibility.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals described the process in a 2023 decision halting the policy’s enforcement pending an outcome in the litigation. The “sex dispute verification process, whereby any individual can ‘dispute’ the sex of any female student athlete in the state of Idaho,” the court wrote, would “require her to undergo intrusive medical procedures to verify her sex, including gynecological exams.”

In West Virginia v. B.P.J., Lambda Legal, the ACLU, the ACLU of West Virginia, and Cooley are representing a trans middle school student challenging the Mountain State’s 2021 ban on trans athletes.

The plaintiff was participating in cross country when the law was passed, taking puberty blockers that would have significantly reduced the chances that she could have a physiological advantage over cisgender peers.

“Like any other educational program, school athletic programs should be accessible for everyone regardless of their sex or transgender status,” said Joshua Block, senior counsel for the ACLU’s LGBTQ and HIV Project. “Trans kids play sports for the same reasons their peers do — to learn perseverance, dedication, teamwork, and to simply have fun with their friends,” Block said.

He added, “Categorically excluding kids from school sports just because they are transgender will only make our schools less safe and more hurtful places for all youth. We believe the lower courts were right to block these discriminatory laws, and we will continue to defend the freedom of all kids to play.”

“Our client just wants to play sports with her friends and peers,” said Lambda Legal Senior Counsel Tara Borelli. “Everyone understands the value of participating in team athletics, for fitness, leadership, socialization, and myriad other benefits.”

Borelli continued, “The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit last April issued a thoughtful and thorough ruling allowing B.P.J. to continue participating in track events. That well-reasoned decision should stand the test of time, and we stand ready to defend it.”

Shortly after taking control of both legislative chambers, Republican members of Congress tried — unsuccessfully — to pass a national ban like those now enforced in 27 states since 2020.

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Federal Government

UPenn erases Lia Thomas’s records as part of settlement with White House

University agreed to ban trans women from women’s sports teams

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U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon (Screen capture: C-SPAN)

In a settlement with the Trump-Vance administration announced on Tuesday, the University of Pennsylvania will ban transgender athletes from competing and erase swimming records set by transgender former student Lia Thomas.

The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights found the university in violation of Title IX, the federal rights law barring sex based discrimination in educational institutions, by “permitting males to compete in women’s intercollegiate athletics and to occupy women-only intimate facilities.”

The statement issued by University of Pennsylvania President J. Larry Jameson highlighted how the law’s interpretation was changed substantially under President Donald Trump’s second term.

“The Department of Education OCR investigated the participation of one transgender athlete on the women’s swimming team three years ago, during the 2021-2022 swim season,” he wrote. “At that time, Penn was in compliance with NCAA eligibility rules and Title IX as then interpreted.”

Jameson continued, “Penn has always followed — and continues to follow — Title IX and the applicable policy of the NCAA regarding transgender athletes. NCAA eligibility rules changed in February 2025 with Executive Orders 14168 and 14201 and Penn will continue to adhere to these new rules.”

Writing that “we acknowledge that some student-athletes were disadvantaged by these rules” in place while Thomas was allowed to compete, the university president added, “We recognize this and will apologize to those who experienced a competitive disadvantage or experienced anxiety because of the policies in effect at the time.”

“Today’s resolution agreement with UPenn is yet another example of the Trump effect in action,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a statement. “Thanks to the leadership of President Trump, UPenn has agreed both to apologize for its past Title IX violations and to ensure that women’s sports are protected at the university for future generations of female athletes.”

Under former President Joe Biden, the department’s Office of Civil Rights sought to protect against anti-LGBTQ discrimination in education, bringing investigations and enforcement actions in cases where school officials might, for example, require trans students to use restrooms and facilities consistent with their birth sex or fail to respond to peer harassment over their gender identity.

Much of the legal reasoning behind the Biden-Harris administration’s positions extended from the 2020 U.S. Supreme Court case Bostock v. Clayton County, which found that sex-based discrimination includes that which is based on sexual orientation or gender identity under Title VII rules covering employment practices.

The Trump-Vance administration last week put the state of California on notice that its trans athlete policies were, or once were, in violation of Title IX, which comes amid the ongoing battle with Maine over the same issue.

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