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.”
Politics
After Biden signs TikTok ban its CEO vows federal court battle
“Rest assured, we aren’t going anywhere,” CEO said
President Joe Biden signed an appropriations bill into law on Wednesday that provides multi-billion dollar funding and military aid for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan after months of delay and Congressional infighting.
A separate bill Biden signed within the aid package contained a bipartisan provision that will ban the popular social media app TikTok from the United States if its Chinese parent company ByteDance does not sell off the American subsidiary.
Reacting, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew said Wednesday that the Culver City, Calif.-based company would go to court to try to remain online in the United States.
In a video posted on the company’s social media accounts, Chew denounced the potential ban: “Make no mistake, this is a ban, a ban of TikTok and a ban on you and your voice,” Chew said. “Rest assured, we aren’t going anywhere. We are confident and we will keep fighting for your rights in the courts. The facts and the Constitution are on our side, and we expect to prevail,” he added.
Our response to the TikTok Ban Bill in the US: https://t.co/LpoE67sxHo
— TikTokComms (@TikTokComms) April 24, 2024
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre adamantly denied during a press briefing on Wednesday that the bill constitutes a ban, reiterating the administration’s hope that TikTok will be purchased by a third-party buyer and referencing media reports about the many firms that are interested.
Chew has repeatedly testified in both the House and Senate regarding ByteDance’s ability to mine personal data of its 170 million plus American subscribers, maintaining that user data is secure and not shared with either ByteDance nor agencies of the Chinese government. The testimony failed to assuage lawmakers’ doubts.
In an email, the former chair of the House Intelligence Committee, California Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff, who doesn’t support a blanket ban of the app, told the Blade:
“As the former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, I have long worked to safeguard Americans’ freedoms and security both at home and abroad. The Chinese Communist Party’s ability to exploit private user data and to manipulate public opinion through TikTok present serious national security concerns. For that reason, I believe that divestiture presents the best option to preserve access to the platform, while ameliorating these risks. I do not support a ban on TikTok while there are other less restrictive means available, and this legislation will give the administration the leverage and authority to require divestiture.”
A spokesperson for California U.S. Senator Alex Padilla told the Blade: “Senator Padilla believes we can support speech and creativity while also protecting data privacy and security. TikTok’s relationship to the Chinese Communist Party poses significant data privacy concerns. He will continue working with the Biden-Harris administration and his colleagues in Congress to safeguard Americans’ data privacy and foster continued innovation.”
The law, which gives ByteDance 270 days to divest TikTok’s U.S. assets, expires with a January 19, 2025 deadline for a sale. The date is one day before President Biden’s term is set to expire, although he could extend the deadline by three months if he determines ByteDance is making progress or the transaction faces uncertainty in a federal court.
Former President Donald Trump’s executive order in 2020, which sought to to ban TikTok and Chinese-owned WeChat, a unit of Beijing, China-based Tencent, in the U.S., was blocked by federal courts.
TikTok has previously fought efforts to ban its widely popular app by the State of Montana last year, in a case that saw a U.S. District Court judge in Helena block that state ban, citing free-speech grounds.
The South China Morning Post reported this week that the four-year battle over TikTok is a significant front in a war over the internet and technology between Washington and Beijing. Last week, Apple said China had ordered it to remove Meta Platforms’ WhatsApp and Threads from its App Store in China over Chinese national security concerns.
A spokesperson for the ACLU told the Blade in a statement that “banning or requiring divestiture of TikTok would set an alarming global precedent for excessive government control over social media platforms.”
LGBTQ+ TikToker users are alarmed, fearing that a ban will represent the disruption of networks of support and activism. However, queer social media influencers who operate on multiple platforms expressed some doubts as to long term impact.
Los Angeles Blade contributor Chris Stanley told the Blade:
“It might affect us slightly, because TikTok is so easy to go viral on. Which obviously means more brand deals, etc. However they also suppress and shadow ban LGBTQ+ creators frequently. But we will definitely be focusing our energy more on other platforms with this uncertainty going forward. Lucky for us, we aren’t one trick ponies and have multiple other platforms built.”
Brooklyn, New York-based Gay social media creator and influencer Artem Bezrukavenko told the Blade:
“For smart creators it won’t because they have multiple platforms. For people who put all their livelihood yes. Like people who do livestreams,” he said adding: “Personally I’m happy it gets banned or American company will own it so they will be less homophobic to us.”
TikTok’s LGBTQ+ following has generally positive experiences although there have been widely reported instances of users, notably transgender users, seemingly targeted by the platform’s algorithms and having their accounts banned or repeatedly suspended.
Of greater concern is the staggering rise in anti-LGBTQ+ violence and threats on the platform prompting LGBTQ+ advocacy group GLAAD, in its annual Social Media Safety Index, to give TikTok a failing score on LGBTQ+ safety.
Additional reporting by Christopher Kane
Politics
Smithsonian staff concerned about future of LGBTQ programming amid GOP scrutiny
Secretary Lonnie Bunch says ‘LGBTQ+ content is welcome’
Staff at the Smithsonian Institution are concerned about the future of LGBTQ programming as several events featuring a drag performer were cancelled or postponed following scrutiny by House Republicans, according to emails reviewed by the Washington Post.
In December, Secretary Lonnie G. Bunch III appeared before a hearing led by GOP members of the Committee on House Administration, who flagged concerns about the Smithsonian’s involvement in “the Left’s indoctrination of our children.”
Under questioning from U.S. Rep. Stephanie Bice (R-Okla.), Bunch said he was “surprised” to learn the Smithsonian had hosted six drag events over the past three years, telling the lawmakers “It’s not appropriate to expose children” to these performances.
Collaborations with drag artist Pattie Gonia in December, January, and March were subsequently postponed or cancelled, the Post reported on Saturday, adding that a Smithsonian spokesperson blamed “budgetary constraints and other resource issues” and the museums are still developing programming for Pride month in June.
“I, along with all senior leaders, take seriously the concerns expressed by staff and will continue to do so,” Bunch said in a statement to the paper. “As we have reiterated, LGBTQ+ content is welcome at the Smithsonian.”
The secretary sent an email on Friday expressing plans to meet with leaders of the Smithsonian Pride Alliance, one of the two groups that detailed their concerns to him following December’s hearing.
Bunch told the Pride Alliance in January that with his response to Bice’s question, his intention was to “immediately stress that the Smithsonian does not expose children to inappropriate content.”
“A hearing setting does not give you ample time to expand,” he said, adding that with more time he would have spoken “more broadly about the merits and goals of our programming and content development and how we equip parents to make choices about what content their children experience.”
Politics
Survey finds support for Biden among LGBTQ adults persists despite misgivings
Data for Progress previewed the results exclusively with the Blade
A new survey by Data for Progress found LGBTQ adults overwhelmingly favor President Joe Biden and Democrats over his 2024 rival former President Donald Trump and Republicans, but responses to other questions may signal potential headwinds for Biden’s reelection campaign.
The organization shared the findings of its poll, which included 873 respondents from across the country including an oversample of transgender adults, exclusively with the Washington Blade on Thursday.
Despite the clear margin of support for the president, with only 22 percent of respondents reporting that they have a very favorable or somewhat favorable opinion of Trump, answers were more mixed when it came to assessments of Biden’s performance over the past four years and his party’s record of protecting queer and trans Americans.
Forty-five percent of respondents said the Biden-Harris administration has performed better than they expected, while 47 percent said the administration’s record has been worse than they anticipated. A greater margin of trans adults in the survey — 52 vs. 37 percent — said their expectations were not met.
Seventy precent of all LGBTQ respondents and 81 percent of those who identify as trans said the Democratic Party should be doing more for queer and trans folks, while just 24 percent of all survey participants and 17 percent of trans participants agreed the party is already doing enough.
With respect to the issues respondents care about the most when deciding between the candidates on their ballots, LGBTQ issues were second only to the economy, eclipsing other considerations like abortion and threats to democracy.
These answers may reflect heightened fear and anxiety among LGBTQ adults as a consequence of the dramatic uptick over the past few years in rhetorical, legislative, and violent bias-motivated attacks against the community, especially targeting queer and trans folks.
The survey found that while LGBTQ adults are highly motivated to vote in November, there are signs of ennui. For example, enthusiasm was substantially lower among those aged 18 to 24 and 25 to 39 compared with adults 40 and older. And a plurality of younger LGBTQ respondents said they believe that neither of the country’s two major political parties care about them.
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