Politics
Meet Gisele Fetterman, bisexual wife of Pennsylvania’s incoming freshman senator
An exclusive interview with the Blade after her husband’s hard-won Senate bid
When the Washington Blade caught up with Gisele Barreto Fetterman this month, she was looking forward to some upcoming travel plans.
First up is a trip to Washington in January to witness the swearing-in ceremony for her husband, Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, who was just elected to represent the Keystone State in the U.S. Senate after one of the year’s most hard-fought midterm races.
Then, in March, she plans to visit family in Brazil for the first time since travel to her native country was restricted in the early days of the pandemic, and just in time to celebrate another electoral victory as Brazilian voters have ousted their far-right President Jair Bolsonaro.
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (“Lula”) will assume office on Jan. 1.
Travel of the more rote and routine variety also lies ahead for Fetterman and the senator-elect, who will be dividing their time between Washington and the couple’s home with their three children in Braddock, Pa.
Gisele Fetterman is eager for the opportunity to better acquaint herself with the nation’s capital. Having already met some very nice people in the city, she told the Blade, “I’m so excited to make some more fun memories and get to know D.C. better.”
It is difficult to imagine she will have trouble making friends. Even over the phone, she is disarmingly funny, sensitive, and kind; unflinchingly sincere in her dedication to service on behalf of those in need.
At the same time, because the breathless and exhaustive press coverage of her husband’s race against Republican opponent Dr. Oz sometimes included unwarranted scrutiny and criticism of the Democratic candidate’s wife, some folks who were not previously familiar with her might have been left with an incomplete or distorted picture.
Gisele Fetterman was under the microscope as much for her sartorial choices (almost all thrifted), as for her stalwart presence as one of the Fetterman campaign’s most effective surrogates.
Regarding the right-wing attacks that were focused on her identity as a bisexual woman and immigrant from Latin America, she jokes, “they made me sound like a superhero.”
Still, this type of partisan rancor, mean spiritedness, cynicism, and guilefulness are so anathema to Gisele Fetterman’s character and core values that you are left with the impression that she would probably prefer to keep politics at an arm’s length but for her marriage to an incoming U.S. senator.
Leading by example with love and unconditional acceptance
Children are a comforting reminder that human beings are not predestined to fear or harbor prejudice against each other, she said, recalling a memorable exchange that happened as her family was hosting a wedding for a gay couple.
She had rushed to Costco to pick up a big rainbow cake and was fastidiously preparing their home for the ceremony when one of her boys asked what the fuss was about. “Daddy marries people all the time,” he said. “What’s the big deal?”
“This time it’s two boys who are getting married,” Gisele Fetterman said. For her son, it was still just another wedding. “Oh my God, it was just such a sweet and normal and beautiful reaction,” she said, “but that’s all he knows.”
John Fetterman has married same-sex couples for years, including when such unions were illegal under Pennsylvania law during his tenure as mayor of Braddock. Raising children to be “loving and accepting and non-judgmental is really easy if we live that example for them,” Gisele Fetterman said.
She would know, having grown up around LGBTQ people who were embraced unconditionally. After moving with her family to New York at the age of eight, a gay couple who lived nearby stepped in to help care for Gisele and her brother when their mom had to work long hours, she said. The neighbors “became like uncles.”
“My best friend in middle school was gay, my best friend in high school was gay, and I consider myself a member of the community, too, so it’s always just felt very natural” to enjoy the company of other LGBTQ people, she said. “I always choose them.”
More broadly, she said she has always felt closest to “those who have been underrepresented, or historically ignored,” a personal ethos that has informed her work as an activist, philanthropist, and founder-director of mission-driven nonprofit organizations.
A nutritionist by trade, 10 years ago she launched a program to cut down on food waste while helping people who are experiencing hunger. More than 24 million pounds of good, safe-to-eat food from retailers, wholesalers, and grocers has since been rescued from landfills and rerouted to help feed people who are food-insecure.
Gisele Fetterman also leads initiatives to provide those in need with other essential items, support services, and emergency funds, including through the organizations that she founded or co-founded, Free Store 15104, For Good PGH, and 412 Food Rescue.
Along with her nonprofit work, she said the way in which she has approached her role as a politician’s wife has also been influenced by her memories of and experiences with financial hardship in both Brazil and the United States.
For instance, in 2019 when her husband was elected to become Pennsylvania’s lieutenant governor after 13 years as Mayor Fetterman, the new house that came with his new job, complete with a swimming pool, made her uncomfortable. “I would never want to live in a mansion that taxpayers are paying for,” she said. “It just felt wrong.”
Ultimately, the family opted not to live in the lieutenant governor’s mansion. The pool, however, was a different story.
She knew that generations of Black people in America have been denied access to swimming pools through segregation, redlining, and other racist policies, suffering consequences like higher rates of accidental drowning as a result. So she decided to open the pool for public use.
“I really believe you have to see yourself in places to know that you belong in them,” she said. Welcoming historically excluded people to learn about water safety and enjoy themselves in a space that otherwise would be reserved for the couple and their three children made for some “amazing summers,” she said.
In October, a Fox News columnist characterized as “bizarre” Gisele Fetterman’s rationale for opening the swimming pool for public use, writing that Pennsylvania’s second lady had called the act of swimming itself “racist.”
Was it possible that the author had not understood her words rather than deliberately mischaracterizing them and the context in which they were delivered to make a bad-faith attack with Election Day less than two weeks ahead?
Gisele Fetterman appears to think so, as she did not entertain the notion that perhaps the columnist should be tossed into an outdoor pool in December. Instead, she suggested a history book, adding that America’s record of racism and segregation is “really painful, and it can be ugly, but it’s really important to know.”
Asked how she might advise her husband on the challenge of dealing with difficult colleagues in Congress, particularly the senator from Texas whom former GOP House Speaker John Boehner memorably called “lucifer in the flesh,” she again urged patience and understanding.
“The way I work with difficult or unkind people,” she said, is to make up a narrative, a story about something or someone that may have caused the poor behavior because imagining there is an underlying reason can help lower the temperature.
At the same time, she said, while it’s true that hurt people hurt people, everyone is capable of reflecting, consulting a therapist, and otherwise doing whatever it takes to forge a different path.
There may be a dearth of kindness and empathy in Washington’s political circles, but there is certainly no shortage of self-aggrandizement or inflated egos.
Here, too, she may be able to offer some guidance, given her habit of never taking herself too seriously or missing the opportunity for a self-deprecating joke (often directed at her husband).
For instance, after becoming the second lady of Pennsylvania, she shortened her title to its acronym, preferring instead to call herself and be known by others as “the SLOP.”
She also shares photos on social media with her 6-foot-8 husband’s head partially cropped out so that her shoes are visible in the frame, and insists that their marriage operates with the unspoken understanding that Gisele is always right when there are differences of opinion.
On that latter point, should anyone long for the same dynamic with their spouse or significant other, Gisele Fetterman offers the following advice: “You just have to be really confident in your truth,” she said, adding, “then you just, like, ignore him when he’s speaking.”
Congress
McBride, other US lawmakers travel to Denmark
Trump’s demand for Greenland’s annexation overshadowed trip
Delaware Congresswoman Sarah McBride is among the 11 members of Congress who traveled to Denmark over the past weekend amid President Donald Trump’s continued calls for the U.S. to take control of Greenland.
McBride, the first openly transgender person elected to Congress, traveled to Copenhagen, the Danish capital, with U.S. Sens. Chris Coons (D-Del.), Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and U.S. Reps. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.), Madeleine Dean (D-Pa.), Don Bacon (R-Neb.), and Sarah Jacobs (D-Calif.). The lawmakers met with Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and Greenlandic MP Pipaluk Lynge, among others.
“I’m grateful to Sen. Coons for his leadership in bringing together a bipartisan, bicameral delegation to reaffirm our support in Congress for our NATO ally, Denmark,” said McBride in a press release that detailed the trip. “Delaware understands that our security and prosperity depend on strong partnerships rooted in mutual respect, sovereignty, and self-determination. At a time of growing global instability, this trip could not be more poignant.”
Greenland is a self-governing territory of Denmark with a population of less than 60,000 people. Trump maintains the U.S. needs to control the mineral-rich island in the Arctic Ocean between Europe and North America because of national security.
The Associated Press notes thousands of people on Saturday in Nuuk, the Greenlandic capital, protested against Trump. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is among those who have criticized Trump over his suggestion the U.S. would impose tariffs against countries that do not support U.S. annexation of Greenland.
A poll that Sermitsiaq, a Greenlandic newspaper, and Berlingske, a Danish newspaper, commissioned last January indicates 85 percent do not want Greenland to become part of the U.S. The pro-independence Demokraatit party won parliamentary elections that took place on March 12, 2025.
“At this critical juncture for our countries, our message was clear as members of Congress: we value the U.S.-Denmark partnership, the NATO alliance, and the right of Greenlanders to self-determination,” said McBride on Sunday in a Facebook post that contained pictures of her and her fellow lawmakers meeting with their Danish and Greenlandic counterparts.
Congress
Van Hollen speaks at ‘ICE Out for Good’ protest in D.C.
ICE agent killed Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis on Jan. 7
U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) is among those who spoke at an “ICE Out for Good” protest that took place outside U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s headquarters in D.C. on Tuesday.
The protest took place six days after a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shot and killed Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old woman in Minneapolis.
Good left behind her wife and three children.
(Video by Michael K. Lavers)
Congress
Advocates say MTG bill threatens trans youth, families, and doctors
The “Protect Children’s Innocence” Act passed in the House
Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene has a long history of targeting the transgender community as part of her political agenda. Now, after announcing her resignation from the U.S. House of Representatives, attempting to take away trans rights may be the last thing she does in her official capacity.
The proposed legislation, dubbed “Protect Children’s Innocence Act” is among the most extreme anti-trans measures to move through Congress. It would put doctors in jail for up to 10 years if they provide gender-affirming care to minors — including prescribing hormone replacement therapy to adolescents or puberty blockers to younger children. The bill also aims to halt gender-affirming surgeries for minors, though those procedures are rare.
Greene herself described the bill on X, saying if passed, “it would make it a Class C felony to trans a child under 18.”
According to KFF, a nonpartisan source for health policy research, polling, and journalism, 27 states have enacted policies limiting youth access to gender-affirming care. Roughly half of all trans youth ages 13–17 live in a state with such restrictions, and 24 states impose professional or legal penalties on health care practitioners who provide that care.
Greene has repeatedly introduced the bill since 2021, the year she entered Congress, but it failed to advance. Now, in exchange for her support for the National Defense Authorization Act, the legislation reached the House floor for the first time.
According to the 19th, U.S. Rep. Sarah McBride (D-Del.), the first trans member of Congress, rebuked Republicans on the Capitol steps Wednesday for advancing anti-trans legislation while allowing Affordable Care Act tax credits to expire — a move expected to raise health care costs for millions of Americans.
“They would rather have us focus in and debate a misunderstood and vulnerable one percent of the population, instead of focusing in on the fact that they are raiding everyone’s health care,” McBride said. “They are obsessed with trans people … they are consumed with this.”
Polling suggests the public largely opposes criminalizing gender-affirming care.
A recent survey by the Human Rights Campaign and Global Strategy Group found that 73 percent of voters in U.S. House battleground districts oppose laws that would jail doctors or parents for providing transition-related care. Additionally, 77 percent oppose forcing trans people off medically recommended medication. Nearly seven in 10 Americans said politicians are not informed enough to make decisions about medical care for trans youth.
The bill passed the House and now heads to the U.S. Senate for further consideration.
According to reporting by Erin Reed of Erin In The Morning, three Democrats — U.S. Reps. Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez of Texas and Don Davis of North Carolina — crossed party lines to vote in favor of the felony ban, joining 213 Republicans. A total of 207 Democrats voted against the bill, while three lawmakers from both parties abstained.
Advocates and lawmakers warned the bill is dangerous and unprecedented during a multi-organizational press call Tuesday. Leaders from the Human Rights Campaign and the Trevor Project joined U.S. Rep. Becca Balint (D-Vt.), Dr. Kenneth Haller, and parents of trans youth to discuss the potential impact of restrictive policies like Greene’s — particularly in contrast to President Donald Trump’s leniency toward certain criminals, with more than 1,500 pardons issued this year.
“Our MAGA GOP government has pardoned drug traffickers. They’ve pardoned people who tried to overthrow the government on January 6, but now they want to put pediatricians and parents into a jail cell for caring for their kids,” said Human Rights Campaign President Kelley Robinson. “No one asked for Marjorie Taylor Greene or Dan Crenshaw or any politician to be in their doctor’s office, and they should mind their own business.”
Balint, co-chair of the Congressional Equality Caucus, questioned why medical decisions are being made by lawmakers with no clinical expertise.
“Parents and doctors already have to worry about state laws banning care for their kids, and this bill would introduce the risk of federal criminal prosecution,” Balint said. “We’re talking about jail time. We’re talking about locking people up for basic medical care, care that is evidence-based, age-appropriate and life-saving.”
“These are decisions that should be made by doctors and parents and those kids that need this gender-affirming care, not certainly by Marjorie Taylor Greene.”
Haller, an emeritus professor of pediatrics at St. Louis University School of Medicine, described the legislation as rooted in ideology rather than medicine.
“It is not science, it is just blind ideology,” Haller said.
“The doctor tells you that as parents, as well as the doctor themselves, could be convicted of a felony and be sentenced up to 10 years in prison just for pursuing a course of action that will give your child their only chance for a happy and healthy future,” he added. “It is not in the state’s best interests, and certainly not in the interests of us, the citizens of this country, to interfere with medical decisions that people make about their own bodies and their own lives.”
Haller’s sentiment is echoed by doctors across the country.
The American Medical Association, the nation’s largest organization that represents doctors across the country in various parts of medicine has a longstanding support for gender-affirming care.
“The AMA supports public and private health insurance coverage for treatment of gender dysphoria and opposes the denial of health insurance based on sexual orientation or gender identity,” their website reads.
Rodrigo Heng-Lehtinen, senior vice president of public engagement campaigns at the Trevor Project, agreed.
“In Marjorie Taylor Greene’s bill [it] even goes so far as to criminalize and throw a parent in jail for this,” Heng-Lehtinen said. “Medical decisions should be between patients, families, and their doctors.”
Rachel Gonzalez, a parent of a transgender teen and LGBTQ advocate, said the bill would harm families trying to act in their children’s best interests.
“No politician should be in any doctor’s office or in our living room making private health care decisions — especially not Marjorie Taylor Greene,” Gonzalez said. “My daughter and no trans youth should ever be used as a political pawn.”
Other LGBTQ rights activists also condemned the legislation.
Tyler Hack, executive director of the Christopher Street Project, called the bill “an abominable attack on the transgender community.”
“Marjorie Taylor Greene’s last-ditch effort to bring her 3-times failed bill to a vote is an abominable attack on the transgender community and further cements a Congressional career defined by hate and bigotry,” they said. “We are counting down the days until she’s off Capitol Hill — but as the bill goes to the floor this week, our leaders must stand up one last time to her BS and protect the safety of queer kids and medical providers. Full stop.”
Hack added that “healthcare is a right, not a privilege” in the U.S., and this attack on trans healthcare is an attack on queer rights altogether.
“Marjorie Taylor Greene has no place in deciding what care is necessary,” Hack added. “This is another attempt to legislate trans and queer people out of existence while peddling an agenda rooted in pseudoscience and extremism.”
U.S. Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif.), chair of the Congressional Equality Caucus, also denounced the legislation.
“This bill is the most extreme anti-transgender legislation to ever pass through the House of Representatives and a direct attack on the rights of parents to work with their children and their doctors to provide them with the medical care they need,” Takano said. “This bill is beyond cruel and its passage will forever be a stain on the institution of the United States Congress.”
The bill is unlikely to advance in the Senate, where it would need 60 votes to pass.
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