National
Romney’s veep options, from bad to worse
Five potential candidates have records hostile to LGBT rights
Amid the media frenzy over who Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney will select as his running mate, one thing is clear: the leading candidates’ positions on LGBT issues range from bad to downright hostile.
The Washington Blade examined the records of five prospective vice presidential candidates to see where they stand on LGBT issues: former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, U.S. Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio), U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal. Each of the potential choices has views on LGBT rights similar to Romney’s, who says he opposes marriage rights for gay couples, but also opposes discrimination — without backing any particular measure to protect LGBT people from discrimination.
One pick that is receiving considerable media attention is Pawlenty, who was a Republican presidential contender early on before he dropped out of the race after his poor showing in the Iowa Ames straw poll. There is media speculation that he tops the list for running mates being vetted by the Romney campaign, although Sunday on CBS’ “Face the Nation” he dismissed the rumors, saying he’s “encouraged people who asked this question in the campaign to look at other prospects.”
Pawlenty took a hardline on marriage over the course of his presidential campaign, signing — albeit belatedly — an anti-gay pledge from the National Organization for Marriage to back a Federal Marriage Amendment, defend the Defense of Marriage Act in court and establish a presidential commission on “religious liberty” to investigate the alleged harassment of opponents of same-sex marriage.
“I don’t think all domestic relationships are the same as traditional marriage,” Pawlenty said on CNN in July. “Marriage between a man and a woman is something that should remain elevated socially, culturally, and practically, legally, morally in our society.”
Another possibility for Romney who is receiving considerable attention is Portman, who’s served for two decades as a public official as a member of Congress, the U.S. Trade Representative and director of the Office of Management & Budget. On Tuesday, Portman appeared to be cozying up to Romney, telling the Washington Reuters Summit the candidate would be “willing to risk being a one-term president in order to make the tough decisions that are going to be required.”
The Ohio senator made headlines when he suggested that he opposes the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, after telling ThinkProgress that he has concerns about litigation that could follow if the legislation were passed.
“What I’m concerned about in Paycheck Fairness and other legislation like that is the fact that it will spawn a lot of litigation the way the legislation is written,” Portman said. “So you don’t want it to be a boon to lawyers, you want it to actually help people. But no one should discriminate.”
Tico Almeida, president of Freedom to Work, said the perception that Portman is opposed to ENDA is inconsistent with what he’s heard based on meetings with the senator’s staff and said Portman — along with “a significant number” of Republican senators — may vote “yes” on the bill.
“Based on Freedom to Work’s conversations with the office of Sen. Portman, we believe he might vote ‘yes’ on ENDA if Sen. Harry Reid brings it to the floor of the Senate for a vote,” Almeida said. “The only way to know for sure is for Reid to fulfill a promise he made three years ago by finally bringing ENDA to the Senate floor.”
Portman’s office didn’t immediately respond to a request to clarify the senator’s position on ENDA. Any such vote in favor of ENDA would represent a change of heart for Portman based on his anti-gay votes while serving as a member of the U.S. House from 1993 to 2005. Portman voted in favor of the Defense of Marriage Act and the Federal Marriage Amendment. In 1999, Portman voted in favor of barring D.C. same-sex couples from adopting children.
Chris Seelbach, a gay Cincinnati City Council member, said he doubts Portman would support LGBT issues if he were elected as vice president based on those votes.
“Based on Sen. Portman’s consistent votes against LGBT families, it seems very clear that he would be no friend to the gay community if elected vice president,” Seelbach said.
Romney is expected to name his running mate prior to the Republican National Convention, which will take place this year during the week of Aug. 27 in Tampa, Fla. Andrea Saul, a Romney campaign spokesperson, declined to comment on any possible selection saying, “We don’t discuss the VP process, sorry.”
The No. 2 person on the Republican presidential ticket could have bearing on how gay Americans who lean conservative may vote in November. Christian Berle, deputy executive director of the Log Cabin Republicans, said the selection will impact whether the organization endorses Romney this fall.
“As Log Cabin Republicans considers many factors in making a potential endorsement, we’ll of course take into account whom will be in such a critical position,” Berle said. “If Gov. Romney and Republicans want to be successful in November, they must improve their position among moderates, women and younger voters with a message entirely focused around jobs and the economy.”
It’s for this reason that Berle praised Ryan, who was among the 159 Republicans who voted for a gay-only version of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act when it came to the House floor in 2007. Ryan later said he took criticism for his vote, but acknowledged he has gay friends, saying, “They didn’t roll out of bed one morning and choose to be gay. That’s who they are.”
Berle said Ryan’s vote for the non-inclusive ENDA in 2007 demonstrates that he recognizes “like all Americans that the workplace needs to be about meritocracy and productivity.”
But besides this vote, Ryan’s record on LGBT issues has hardly been stellar. Ryan voted in the subsequent Congress against hate crimes protection legislation and “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal. The lawmaker also expressed opposition to same-sex marriage, saying on NBC’s “Meet the Press” last year, “I support the Wisconsin Amendment to define marriage between a man and a woman.”
Katie Belanger, executive director of Fair Wisconsin, dismissed the notion that a Vice President Ryan would be a champion for LGBT equality upon taking the oath of office.
“Rep. Ryan has maintained a consistently anti-fairness voting record on issues of importance to our community, during the last five congressional sessions, including voting in 2002 against a policy that members of Congress voluntarily adopted to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation in their own congressional offices,” she said.
U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio (photo by Gage Skidmore via wikimedia)
Many pundits have speculated that Rubio is on the list of names Romney is considering for his running mate. Romney said earlier this month the senator was being “thoroughly vetted” for a position as No. 2 on his ticket.
New to federal office, Rubio hasn’t been called on to vote on LGBT issues yet, although he’s been closely aligned with the conservative Tea Party movement. Among his “no” votes were against an LGBT-inclusive reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act.
Rubio has expressed differing views from Romney on the Federal Marriage Amendment, saying “ultimately marriage is regulated by states,” but has expressed opposition to same-sex marriage based on his religious beliefs.
“I believe marriage is a unique and specific institution that is the result of thousands of years of wisdom, which concluded that the ideal — not the only way but certainly the ideal — situation to raise children to become productive and healthy humans is in a home with a father and mother married to each other,” Rubio said.
Nadine Smith, executive director of Equality Florida, said the LGBT community wouldn’t be able to trust Rubio if he were vice president during a Romney administration.
“I don’t think he believes the foolishness he says, he’s pandering as fast as he can, and in that sense, he and Romney are made for each other,” Smith said. “They’re both weather vanes.”
Another potential running mate is Jindal, who was considered a potential candidate for president prior to his widely panned response to President Obama’s State of the Union address in 2009. Last month, Americans for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist praised Jindal in an op-ed for Politico, later reportedly saying “Jindal is a leading option” for vice president.
But Jindal is known for having anti-gay views and maintaining close ties with anti-gay figures. Jindal campaigned for governor on rescinding an order put in place by Democratic Gov. Kathleen Blanco protecting gay state workers from discrimination — a pledge he fulfilled upon taking office.
Once elected, Jindal established a Louisiana Commission on Marriage & Family, appointing to the body anti-gay activists such as the Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins and the Alliance Defense Fund’s Michael Johnson.
SarahJane Brady, managing director of the Forum For Equality Louisiana, said Jindal has “continuously repressed and ignored the needs” of LGBT people in Louisiana.
“Bobby Jindal has proven himself repeatedly to be an enemy of fairness and equality,” Brady said. “Should Gov. Romney choose Bobby Jindal to be his running mate, that would send a message of open hostility to the LGBT community.”
The White House
Trump tells Fox News he won the ‘gay vote’ — but polls tell a different story
Trump falsely claims LGBTQ support on Fox despite polling showing overwhelming opposition.
President Donald Trump claimed he won the “gay vote” in 2024, despite evidence showing otherwise.
While appearing by phone on Fox News’s panel show “The Five” on Thursday, Trump falsely claimed he performed particularly well among gay voters while discussing the ongoing war in Iran — a conflict he initiated without formal congressional approval.
“Now I think I did very well with the gay vote, OK? I even played the gay national anthem as my walk-off, OK?” Trump said on air.
“And I think it probably helped me. But I did great. No Republican’s ever gotten the gay vote like I did and I’m very proud of it, I think it’s great. Perhaps it’s because I’m from New York City, I don’t know…”
His claim contradicts 2024 polling from NBC News, which found that the GOP presidential ticket captured fewer than 1 in 5 LGBTQ male voters — a figure that may also include bisexual and transgender men. Trump’s support among LGBTQ female voters was even lower, at just 8%.
White LGBTQ voters favored Vice President Kamala Harris over Trump by a margin of 82% to 16%, while LGBTQ voters of color backed Harris by an even wider 91% to 5%.
Trump also used the appearance to criticize “Gays for Palestine,” saying: “Look at ‘Gays for Palestine’… they kill gays, they kill them instantly, they throw them off buildings, and I’m saying, ‘Who are the gays for Palestine?’”
He further pointed to his campaign’s use of the song “Y.M.C.A.” by the Village People — which he has repeatedly described as a “gay national anthem” — noting that it was frequently used as a walk-off song at rallies, as an indication that he and his campaign were supported by the gay community. The track, long associated with camp and hyper-masculine gay imagery, became a staple of Trump campaign events.
The Village People were later booked to perform at Turning Point USA’s inaugural ball celebrating Trump’s second inauguration. Lead singer Victor Willis previously criticized Trump’s use of the song dating back to 2020 and considered legal action to block it, but ultimately said there was “not much he can do about it.” He later acknowledged the renewed exposure was “beneficial” and “good for business,” boosting the song’s popularity and chart performance.
Despite Trump’s claims of strong support from gay voters, polling has consistently shown otherwise — even as several prominent gay men have held roles in or around his orbit, sometimes dubbed the “A-gays.” These include Richard Grenell, former executive director of the Kennedy Center and Special Presidential Envoy for Special Missions; Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent; Under Secretary of State Jacob Helberg; Department of Energy official Charles T. Moran; and longtime supporter Peter Thiel, co-founder and CEO of Palantir.
His efforts to portray himself as aligned with the gay community stand in conflict with policies advanced under his leadership. These include removing LGBTQ-related data from State Department reports, attempting to narrowly redefine gender identity in federal policy, restricting access to gender-affirming health care, and rolling back anti-discrimination protections. His administration also rescinded initiatives focused on LGBTQ health equity, data collection, and nondiscrimination in health care and education — moves advocates say contribute to stigma and worsen mental health outcomes.
Additionally, some HIV programs and community health centers have lost funding from the federal government after supporting initiatives inclusive of transgender people as a direct result of Trump-Vance policies.
National
Anti-trans visa ruling echoes Nazi regime destroying trans documents
Trump administration escalates attacks on queer community
The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention and Human Security earlier this month released its third Red Flag Alert for the United States about the Trump administration’s anti-trans legislation. As the Lemkin Institute shared in the press release, “the Administration has moved from identifying transgender people as as threat to the family and to the nation’s military prowess to claiming that transgender people constitute a cosmic threat to the spiritual health of the nation and the great direct threat to the US national security in the world.”
The news came the same day that the State Department issued a new rule, “Enhancing Vetting and Combatting Fraud in the Immigrant Visa Program.” Under this new guidance, all visa applicants are required to disclose their “biological sex at birth” during all stages of the process, “even if that differs from the sex listed on the applicant’s foreign passport or identifying documentation.”
This rule also orders that applicants to the green card lottery program share their passport information, so in knowingly collecting passport information that the agency knows will not match a person’s biological sex at birth, it’s creating grounds to deny trans peoples’ biases on the basis of “fraud,” Aleksandra Vaca of Transitics explains.
As is written in the new ruling, “the Department is replacing ‘gender’ with ‘sex’ in accordance with E.O. 14168, Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government, which provides that the term ‘sex’ shall refer to an individual’s sex at birth. Only male and female sex options are available for entrants completing the Diversity Visa entry form.”
Along with outright denying the existence of nonbinary, genderqueer and gender expansive people, this policy creates a precedence for trans people to be stripped of their visas and deported because under 8 U.S.C. § 1182(a)(6)(C)(i), any foreigner found to have obtained or possess a visa “by fraud or willfully misrepresenting a material fact” will have their visa revoked and face deportation.
By requesting information on “biological sex at birth,” the State Department is forcing a mismatch between documents and enabling officials to accuse trans, nonbinary, and gender expansive immigrants of fraud. Thus, trans and nonbinary immigrants can have their visas revoked and can be deported, and information gathered from immigrants during the visa request process can be added to federal databases and used by immigration authorities, including ICE agents.
With the Supreme Court’s decision this past year allowing ICE officers to use racial profiling, Vaca argues that “now, The Trump administration has given ICE the reason it needs. Under this rule, ICE agents now have the enforcement rationale to assert that trans people–especially those belonging to racial minority groups–are more likely than cis people to have ‘misrepresented’ themselves during the visa process, and therefore, are more likely to enter the country ‘unlawfully.’”
This would enable ICE agents to target trans individuals specifically for being trans. If the goal of this were unclear, a day later the Trump administration released its statement for Women’s History Month 2026, writing that “we are keeping men out of women’s sports, enforcing Title IX as it was originally written and ensuring colleges preserve–and, where possible, expand–scholarships and roster opportunities for female athletes. We are restoring public safety and upholding the rule of law in every city so women, children, and families can feel safe and secure.”
And this is not the first time that ICE has targeted and harmed trans and nonbinary immigrants. Last June, Vera reported that ICE is not including trans people in detection in their public reports, and back in 2020, AFSC reported that trans people held in ICE detention faced “dreadful, ugly” conditions.
While it seems like a new development in Trump’s anti-trans escalation, it echoes a deeply upsetting history of denying and destroying transgender people’s documents following members of the Nazi party seizing power in 1933.
In the early 20th century, Weimar, Germany was an epicenter for gender affirming care with Maganus Hirschfeld’s Institute for Sexual Science. One of the first book burnings of the rising Nazi regime destroyed the Institute’s extensive clinical records and library on trans health and history by Nazi students and stormtroopers. In doing so, the Nazis effectively destroyed the world’s first trans health clinic and one of the richest and most comprehensive collective of information about trans healthcare.
Similarly, the Nazi government invalidated or refused to recognize what was called “transvestite passes,” or passing certificates that allowed trans people to avoid arrest under Paragraph 175 which prohibited cross-dressing. During the Weimar Republic — the regime that preceded the Third Reich — recognized and affirmed the identities of trans people (in limited ways) with specific documentation that helped prevent them from arrest. Invalidating and disregarding these passes allowed police and Nazi officials to target trans people and harass, extort and arrest them, and the record of passes themselves helped officials target trans people.
The changes to visa guidelines — alongside Kansas’s move to revoke trans drivers’ licenses last month — is reflective of this escalation of violence against trans people during the Nazi’s rise to power, which scholars like Dr. Laurie Marhoefer is just beginning to uncover. And along with the revocation of identification documents this past week, a recent Fourth Circuit Court ruled that states can deny Medicaid coverage for gender-affirming surgery.
The Fourth Circuit Court decision affirmed the Supreme Court’s decision in Skrmetti, which ruled that bans on gender affirming healthcare for young people are constitutional. This ruling extends this ban to include adult healthcare bans, allowing West Virginia’s exclusion of Medicaid coverage for adult gender affirming healthcare to take full effect. Even more upsetting was what the ruling itself said, calling gender affirming healthcare “dangerous.”
As was written in the Fourth Circuit Opinion, “it’s not irrational for a legislature to encourage citizens ‘to appreciate their sex’ and not ‘become disdainful of their sex’ by refusing to fund experimental procedures that may have the opposite effect.”
In reality, what this ruling and the opinion reflect, is the next step in government regulation and oversight over marginalized peoples’ bodies. From the overturn of Roe v. Wade, which removed federal protection of access to abortion, this next step represents the denial of people’s access to vital, lifesaving care–and to be clear, gender affirming care is not just for trans, nonbinary, and intersex people. It’s a dangerous escalation and one that echoes previous violence against trans people under fascist regimes; the Lemkin Institute is right to raise concern.
Pennsylvania
Pa. House passes bill to codify marriage equality in state law
Governor supports gay state Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta’s measure
The Pennsylvania House of Representatives on Wednesday passed a bill that would codify marriage equality in state law.
House Bill 1800 passed by a 127-72 vote margin. Twenty-six Republicans voted for the measure.
The Republican-controlled Pennsylvania Senate will now consider the bill that state Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta (D-Philadelphia), who is the first openly gay person of color elected to the state’s General Assembly, introduced. Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro supports the measure.
“Here in Pennsylvania, we believe in your freedom to marry who you love,” said Shapiro on Wednesday. “Today, the House has stepped up to protect that right.”
BREAKING: The Pennsylvania House just passed @RepKenyatta's bill to codify marriage equality into law in PA — and they did it with broad bipartisan support.
— Governor Josh Shapiro (@GovernorShapiro) March 25, 2026
Here in Pennsylvania, we believe in your freedom to marry who you love. Today, the House has stepped up to protect that…
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