National
Jimmy Carter, beloved humanitarian and human rights advocate, was supporter of LGBTQ rights
Historic, first-ever meeting with gay activists held at Carter White House in 1977
Former President Jimmy Carter, who died Sunday at the age of 100, is being remembered by both admirers and political observers as a progressive southern Democrat and former Georgia governor who pushed for an end to racial injustice in the U.S., and as a beloved humanitarian who worked hard as president and during his post-presidential years to improve the lives of people in need throughout the world.
Carter’s death comes over a year after the passing on Nov. 19, 2023, of former First Lady Rosalynn Carter, his wife and devoted partner of 77 years. Carter also had the distinction of becoming the oldest living former U.S. president after the death at the age of 94 of former President George H.W. Bush on Nov. 30, 2018.
The former president’s passing also follows his decision in February 2023 to receive hospice care at his family home in Plains, Ga., at the age of 98 after declining additional medical intervention to continue treatment of several ailments that required hospitalization over the previous several months.
Modest beginnings
Jimmy Carter was born Oct. 1, 1924, at a hospital in his hometown of Plains, Ga., where he was raised on his parents’ peanut farm. His decades of public service took place after he graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1946 and he began his service as a submariner.
He left the Navy after the death of his father in 1953, taking over the Carter family business in what was then a segregated Georgia with strong lines between Blacks and Whites. He was an early supporter of the nascent civil rights movement and became an activist within the Democratic Party and a leading voice for the change needed to end racial segregation.
Carter was first elected to public office in 1963 as a state senator, for which he served until 1967. He successfully ran for governor in 1970 and served as Georgia governor until 1975, when he turned his attention to a possible run for U.S. president as a progressive southern Democrat.
Many political observers have said although he was relatively unknown outside of Georgia and within the leadership of the Democratic Party, Carter was able to parlay voter fatigue and the public’s response to the Nixon Watergate scandal and the growing opposition to the Vietnam War to establish himself as an outsider candidate removed from scandal and bad policies.
Appearing to answer the nation’s needs at that time, Carter’s slogan at the start of his presidential campaign was, “A Leader, For A Change.” He came out ahead of nine other Democrats, most of them better known than him, to win the 1976 Democratic nomination for president.
The thirty-ninth President of the United States, Carter served from 1977 to 1981 at a time when support for LGBTQ people was in its early stages, with many elected officials remaining cautious about the potential political risk for outwardly embracing “gay rights.”
Yet during his 1976 presidential campaign, Carter surprised some political observers when he stated at a press conference during a campaign trip to San Francisco in May of that year that he would sign the Equality Act, the gay civil rights bill introduced by then U.S. Rep. Bella Abzug (D-N.Y.) if it reached his desk as president.
“I will certainly sign it, because I don’t think it’s right to single out homosexuals for abuse or special harassment,” he said.
While Carter did not back away from that statement, gay activists were disappointed at the time of the Democratic National Convention in New York City in July 1976, when they said convention officials at the request of the Carter campaign refused to include a gay rights plank as part of the Democratic Party’s platform approved at the convention.
Some LGBT Democratic activists attending the convention said they agreed with the contention of Carter supporters that Carter should not be hampered by a controversial issue that could hurt his chances of defeating Republican President Gerald Ford in the November 1976 presidential election.
Carter narrowly defeated Ford in the election. Some political observers said Ford might have won except for the negative fallout from his decision to pardon former President Richard Nixon, who resigned from office in the midst of the Watergate scandal and allegations that Nixon engaged in illegal activity by playing some role in the break-in at the Democratic Party headquarters in D.C.’s Watergate office building that triggered the scandal.
In March of 1977, just over two months after Carter was inaugurated as president, the White House hosted an historic, first-of-its-kind meeting with fourteen prominent gay rights leaders from throughout the country. Carter did not attend the meeting and was staying at the presidential retreat at Camp David, Md., at the time of the meeting, which was organized by presidential assistant for public liaison Margaret “Midge” Costanza. But White House officials said Carter was aware of the meeting and supported efforts by Costanza and other White House staffers to interact with the gay leaders.
“The meeting was a happy milestone on the road to full equality under the law for gay women and men, and we are highly optimistic that it will soon lead to complete fulfilment of President Carter’s pledge to end all forms of Federal discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation,” said Jean O’Leary, then co-executive director of the National Gay Task Force, which helped select the gay activists who attended the meeting. Among those attending was D.C. pioneer gay rights advocate Frank Kameny.
But about one year later in 1978, some LGBT leaders joined famed gay San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk in criticizing Carter for being slow to speak out against California’s Proposition 6, also known as the Briggs Initiative, a ballot measure asking voters to approve a law to ban gay and lesbian individuals from working in California public schools as teachers or staff members.
In a June 28, 1978, letter to Carter, Milk called on the president to take a stand against Proposition 6 and speak out more forcefully in support of LGBT rights. “As the President of a nation which includes 15-20 million lesbians and gay men, your leadership is vital and necessary,” Milk wrote.
About four months later, in a Nov. 4, 1978, campaign speech in support of California Democratic candidates in Sacramento, three days before the Nov. 7 election, Carter spoke out against Proposition 6 and urged voters to defeat it. Others who spoke out against it earlier were former President Ford and then former California GOP Governor Ronald Reagan as well as California’s then Democratic Governor Edmund Jerry Brown.
Voters defeated the proposition by a margin of 58.4 percent to 41.5 percent, with opponents of the anti-gay measure thanking Carter for speaking out against it.
During his presidency Carter helped put in place two new federal cabinet-level agencies – the Department of Energy and the Department of Education. One of the highlights of his presidential years was his role in bringing about the historic Camp David Accords, the peace agreements between Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat.
The initial agreement, signed in September 1978, which led to the first-ever peace treaty between Israel and Egypt one year later in 1979, came about after Carter invited the two Middle East leaders to meet together with him and to begin negotiations at the U.S. presidential retreat at Camp David, Md. Sadat and Begin were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1978 for their contributions to the historic agreements that were brokered by President Carter.
Despite this and other important achievements, Carter faced multiple setbacks the following year in 1979 related to international developments that political observers say Carter and his advisors failed to address properly. Among them was the revolution in Iran that toppled the reign of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and installed the fundamentalist Islamic regime headed by Ayatollah Khomeini that led to a dramatic drop in Iran’s production and sale of oil. That quickly led to a dramatic rise in the cost of gasoline for American consumers along with a shortage of gas at fuel pumps leading to long lines as filling stations.
If that were not enough, Carter was hit with the take-over of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran on Nov. 4, 1979, by militant Iranian youths supported and encouraged by Khomeini who held as hostages 52 U.S. diplomats and American citizens with no sign that they would be released any time soon. As Carter’s poll ratings declined, then U.S. Senator Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) announced his candidacy for the 1980 Democratic presidential nomination in a rare challenge to an incumbent president.
With all that as a backdrop, gay Democratic activists launched a campaign to elect far more openly gay and lesbian delegates to the 1980 Democratic National Convention than they had in 1976. A record number of just over 100 gay and lesbian delegates emerged from this effort, with many of them pledged to Kennedy. And this time around, the Democratic Party leaders backing Carter at the convention, as well as Carter himself, according to some reports, expressed support for including a “gay” plank in the party’s platform, which the convention adopted in an historic first.
But when it became clear that Kennedy and California Governor Jerry Brown, who also challenged Carter for the 1980 Democratic nomination, did not have enough delegates to wrest the nomination from Carter, gay activists expressed concern that the Carter campaign was backing away from taking a stronger position in support of gay rights.
Their main concern was that the response by the Carter campaign to a “gay” questionnaire the National Gay Task Force sent to all the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates seeking their party’s nomination in 1980 was significantly less specific than the response by Kennedy and Brown.
Among other things, the activists said the Carter campaign’s response, which was prepared by Carter Campaign Chairperson Robert Strauss, did not make a commitment for Carter to sign an executive order ending the longstanding discrimination against gays and lesbians in federal government agencies, including the military. The Carter campaign response also did not express support for the national gay rights bill, even though Carter had expressed support for it back in 1976.
Carter supporters, including many in the then gay and lesbian community, pointed out that Straus’s response to the questionnaire expressed overall support for the rights of the gay and lesbian community and a commitment to follow up on that support over the next four years. Gay Carter supporters also pointed out that Carter would be far more supportive than Ronald Regan, who had captured the 1980 Republican presidential nomination.
Some historians have said that the final straw in dooming Carter’s chances for a second term, in addition to his seeming inability to gain the release of the American hostages held in Iran, was the final televised debate between Carter and Reagan. With most political observers saying Reagan was an infinitely superior television candidate, those observations appeared to be confirmed when Carter’s poll numbers dropped significantly following the final debate.
Although Reagan captured 51.8 percent of the popular vote, with Carter receiving 41.0 percent and independent candidate John Anderson receiving 6.6 percent, Reagan won an Electoral College landslide, with 489 electoral votes compared to 49 for Carter. Reagon won in 44 states, with Carter winning in just 6 states and the District of Columbia.
Carter Center and post-presidential career
Both Carter supporters as well as critics and independent political observers agree that Jimmy Carter’s years after leaving the White House have been filled with years of work dedicated to his passion for the advancement of human rights, peace negotiations, advancing worldwide democracy, and advancing disease prevention and eradication in developing nations.
Most of that work was accomplished through The Carter Center, an Atlanta based nonprofit organization that Carter and wife Rosalynn founded in 1982. Twenty years after its founding, Jimmy Carter was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002. The Nobel Committee, among other things, stated it selected Carter for the Nobel Peace Prize “for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development.”
In the years following his presidency Carter also continued to lend support as an ally to the LGBTQ community. During a book tour promoting his book, “A Full Life: Reflections at Ninety,” Carter stated in a July 2018 interview with Huff Post Live, that he supported same-sex marriage.
As a long-time self-described born-again Christian, Carter said in the interview, “I think Jesus would approve gay marriage,” adding, “I think Jesus would encourage any love affair if it was honest and sincere and was not damaging to anyone else, and I don’t see that gay marriage damages anyone else.”
His expression of support for same-sex marriage came four years after he responded to a question about his thoughts about LGBTQ rights and religion during an appearance at Michigan’s Grand Rapids Community College in 2014.
“I never knew of any word or action of Jesus Christ that discriminated against anyone,” he said. “Discrimination against anyone and depriving them of actual equal rights in the United States is a violation of the basic principles of the Constitution that all of us revere in this country,” Carter stated at the event.
Former U.S. Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), who served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1981 until his retirement in 2013 and who became the first member of Congress to voluntarily come out as gay in 1987, died on May 19, at the age of 86, at his home in Ogunquit, Maine.
His passing came less than a month after he announced he had entered home hospice care due to terminal congestive heart failure under the care of his husband, Jim Ready, and shortly after finishing writing a new book entitled, “The Hard Path to Unity: Why We Must Reform the Left to Rescue Democracy.”
Despite his frail health, during the last few weeks of his life, Frank agreed to do interviews with multiple news media outlets, including the Washington Blade, where he reflected on his sometimes-controversial positions on issues such as transgender rights.
He told the Blade he had been living with his husband in their shared home in Maine since the time of his retirement in 2013 and called his husband a “saint” for caring for him during his illness. In 2012, at the age of 72, Frank married Ready, becoming the first sitting member of Congress to marry someone of the same sex.
News of his passing prompted an outpouring of praise and reflection on his life as a groundbreaking out gay lawmaker by current and former members of Congress and LGBTQ rights leaders.
Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey announced on May 20 that she had ordered the U.S. flag and the state flag to be lowered to half-staff at all state buildings in honor of Frank’s life and legacy and the recognition of his passing.
“Barney Frank was nothing short of a trailblazer,” said Kelley Robinson, president of the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBTQ advocacy organization, in a statement. “At a time when being openly gay in public service could cost you everything, he chose visibility,” Robinson said.
Robinson and other LGBTQ advocates also pointed to Frank’s role in speaking out in Congress for stronger efforts to address the AIDS epidemic during the early years of HIV/AIDS, his push for the repeal of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy to initially allow gays to serve openly in the military, the enactment of marriage equality for same-sex couples, and broader anti-discrimination protections.
Frank has also been credited with helping to pass the federal Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Protection Act of 2009.
In addition to his longstanding support for LGBTQ rights, political observers have said one of his most important achievements in Congress was his role, as chair of the House Financial Services Committee, in becoming co-author of what became known as the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010.
Coming at the time of a nationwide banking crisis, the New York Times has called the Frank bill that he and then-U.S. Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) wrote “the most significant overhaul of the nation’s financial regulations since the Great Depression.”
Frank was born and raised in Bayonne, N.J., and graduated from Bayonne High School.
He graduated from Harvard College in Massachusetts in 1962 and worked in various places, including as an assistant to then-Boston Mayor Kevin White, before winning election to the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1972, where he served for eight years representing a Boston area district. During that time he attended and graduated from Harvard Law School and became a member of the Massachusetts bar in 1979 after passing the bar exam.
In 1980, Frank became a candidate for the U.S. House in the Massachusetts 4th Congressional District, which he won with 52 percent of the vote in a four-candidate race, taking office in January 1981. He won re-election decisively over the next 30 years until announcing in 2012 his plans to retire and he would not run for re-election that year.
The New York Times is among the publications that have reported this week since Frank’s passing that his record as an esteemed and admired lawmaker helped him survive a sex scandal that surfaced in 1990 linking him to male prostitute Stephen Gobie.
Media reports at the time said Frank had patronized Gobie as one of his customers and for a time had Gobie as a roommate in Frank’s D.C. residence in the Capitol Hill neighborhood. In its article this week, the New York Times says Gobie “claimed that in the mid-1980s he had run a prostitution ring out of Mr. Frank’s home.”
Like other media accounts, the Times report adds that following an investigation, “The House Ethics Committee did not substantiate that claim, but it did find that Mr. Frank had fixed 33 parking tickets for Mr. Gobie and sought to shorten his probation on drug and sex-offense convictions by writing a misleading memorandum on congressional stationery to an official involved in supervising Mr. Gobie’s probation.”
The full House voted 408-18 to reprimand Frank for misuse of his office, but it rejected calls by some to censure or expel him.
“I should have known better,” Frank said in a speech on the House floor at that time, according to the New York Times. “There was in my life a central element of dishonesty,” the Times quoted him as saying. “Three years ago, I decided concealment wouldn’t work. I wish I decided that long ago,” he said referring to his 1987 decision to come out publicly as gay.
Despite all of this, Frank was re-elected that year with 66 percent of the vote, a development that his friends and supporters attribute to his reputation as a beloved and highly regarded public figure.
PFLAG, the national advocacy group for parents and friends of LGBTQ people, is among the groups that issued statements this week reflecting on Frank’s positive impact on the LGBTQ community.
“Frank was not only the first openly gay member of Congress, but he was also co-author of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 as chair of the House Financial Services Committee, which helped enshrine housing access for LGBTQ+ people,” PFLAG says in a statement.
“He was also a leading advocate on laws to combat HIV/AIDS,” the statement says, adding that PFLAG’s national office honored Frank with its Champion of Justice Award in 2018.
“Barney was candid, outspoken, quick-witted and downright funny, and he always had his eye on making progress,” said U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), the first openly lesbian woman elected to the U.S. Senate, in a statement. “He was willing to take on anyone who was in his way, regardless of who they were — I should know, I was one of the many who on occasion got an earful from him,” Baldwin said.
‘But I, and anyone else who spent time with him, were lucky to watch him in action and learn from him,” her statement continues. “Barney was a masterful legislator, savvy and strategic, and always thinking of the long game,” she said. “Our country is a better, more just, more equal place because of him, and he will be sorely missed.”
U.S. Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif.), who serves as chair of the Congressional Equality Caucus, which represents LGBTQ members of Congress and their congressional allies, issued his own statement on behalf of the caucus pointing out that Frank was one of the two founding members of the caucus.
“I was honored that he came to campaign for me during my run for Congress just a few years after he co-founded the Congressional Equality Caucus, which I now have the distinct honor of leading,” Takano said.
He was referring to Frank and then-Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin’s action in 2008 to found the House LGBT Equality Caucus as the only two openly gay members of Congress, which evolved into the Congressional Equality Caucus.
“Barney proved that what mattered most was the work you did for others,” Takano says in his statement. “I truly believe that we are closer to a more equal world because of Barney Frank,” he said, adding, “Congressman Frank’s legacy touches every part of our fight for LGBTQI+ equality: from his work advocating for HIV and AIDS research to helping pass major pro-equality legislation like the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Repeal Act and the Hate Crimes Prevention Act into law.”
In his May 5 interview with the Blade, Frank responded to criticism he received during his tenure in Congress from some LGBTQ rights advocates, especially trans activists, who claimed he had not provided sufficient support for trans rights legislation.
He said he fully supported ongoing efforts to advance trans rights but said those efforts could be jeopardized by pushing issues for which many voters have yet to accept, such as “male to female transgender people playing in women’s sports.”
Among those praising Frank’s life and legacy at the time of his passing is longtime trans activist Diego Sanchez, who became the first openly trans congressional staffer when Frank hired Sanchez as his office’s Senior Policy Advisor. Sanchez remained on Frank’s staff until Frank’s retirement in 2013.
“Barney was a revered statesman for our country at the local, state, and federal levels and a treasured friend to me,” Sanchez told the Blade in a statement. “His belief that prejudice comes from ignorance and is only stricken by visibility explains how he came out openly and how he brought me to his staff, with intent and without apology,” Sanchez said.
He added, “I miss him terribly and am glad I got to spend a week with his husband Jim and him this month. Barney made sure that members of Congress could not say they had never met a trans person. I was honored to be a groomsman in their wedding and will miss Barney’s brilliance, counsel, friendship, and wit.”
Sanchez said celebration of life events are expected to take place in Boston and D.C. and details of those events will be announced soon.
Wyoming
U.S. attorney nominee confirmed despite anti-LGBTQ history, no trial experience
Nine felony grand jury indictments tied to Darin Smith dismissed last week
Republicans confirmed Darin Smith as U.S. Attorney for the District of Wyoming on Monday, regardless of his history as interim U.S. Attorney for Wyoming and a state senator.
While serving as interim U.S. Attorney for Wyoming — after being appointed by President Donald Trump last July despite never trying a case outside of his time as a law student intern — former state Sen. Darin Smith likely prejudiced jurors during grand jury proceedings.
Nine felony grand jury indictments tied to Smith’s tenure were dismissed last week.
Judges dismissed felony indictments against Cheyenne Swett, Richard Allen, Michael Scott Hopper, Brian Joseph Johnson, Dennison Jay Antelope, Matthew Christopher Jacoby, Matthew Miller Jr., Wolf Elkins Duran, and Jose Benito Ocon. The now-dismissed charges included felony firearm possession, drug distribution, and possession of child pornography, among other allegations.
Smith allegedly told the grand jury that the defendants were “bad guys,” described them as “murderers,” and said deliberations “won’t take long.”
Even the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Wyoming acknowledged that Smith’s comments were “ill-advised.”
Smith has a history of aligning with Trump over the Constitution and supporting anti-LGBTQ legislation.
In 2025, Smith co-sponsored House Bill 0194, titled “Obscenity amendments,” which, among other provisions, would have criminalized drag shows. The bill also would have repealed exemptions for public and school librarians from the crime of “promoting obscenity” to minors. The wording of the bill was so vague that Republican state Rep. Lee Filer said, “We will end up having to arrest somebody for allowing a child to read the Holy Bible.”
Smith also co-sponsored SF0062, a bill requiring public school students to use restrooms, sex-designated changing facilities, and sleeping quarters that align with their sex assigned at birth. In March 2025, the Wyoming governor signed the bill into law, along with its House companion.
He also attended the Jan. 6 Capitol riot alongside thousands of other Trump supporters.
“Smith was on the Capitol grounds on Jan. 6 … and made the reprehensible claim … that the hundreds of Capitol Police officers who risked their lives that day were guilty of ‘massive incompetence.’ Smith blames the police for what happened on Jan. 6. Without evidence, he claimed that rioters who breached the Capitol were victims of entrapment,” U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said. “Moreover, Smith is not remotely qualified to be a U.S. Attorney. He’s going to be in the package — take it or leave it. Prior to becoming the interim U.S. Attorney, he had no courtroom or litigation experience whatsoever. None. And Smith’s lack of experience has had real-world consequences.”
Prior to his work in the Wyoming state legislature, Smith worked as Director of Planned Giving for the Family Research Council, an organization that describes homosexuality as “harmful” to society with “negative physical and psychological health effects.”
The organization also believes that sexual orientation “should [not] be included as a protected category in nondiscrimination laws or policies, as it is not comparable to inborn, immutable characteristics such as race or sex.”
During questioning before the U.S. Senate, he denied that his work with the organization shows he has loss of impartiality when it comes to matters of LGBTQ rights.
Also questioning, Smith was asked about a now-deleted Facebook post in which he appeared to express support for Kim Davis, the Kentucky county clerk who was found to be unconstitutional in her refusal to issue same-sex marriage licenses, despite Obergefell v. Hodges.
“Perhaps Hillary and Obama can share the cell with Kim Davis for refusing to uphold the Defense of Marriage Act,” the post said.
When asked why he posted it, Smith told Durbin: “I do not recall.”
Josh Sorbe, spokesperson for the Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats and Durbin, said:
“Anti-LGBTQ+ extremist Darin Smith has no business serving as a top law enforcement officer in any state — let alone a state with as much history of queer importance as Wyoming. He’s an unqualified insurrectionist with no experience litigating criminal or federal matters, and his bigotry puts into serious question his commitment to upholding the law for all Americans.”
Human Rights Campaign Vice President of Government Affairs David Stacy also condemned Smith’s confirmation to the U.S. Attorney’s office.
“The justice system in America is supposed to be about ensuring the law is applied fairly and equally. But Darin Smith has spent his career obsessed with making life worse for LGBTQ+ people, opposing marriage equality, cosponsoring state legislation targeting transgender youth, and smearing LGBTQ+ people in public statements,” Stacy said. “Just over two decades after Matthew Shepard was brutally murdered in that same state, Wyoming deserves better than tired anti-LGBTQ+ hate at the helm of federal law enforcement. The Senate should reject Darin Smith and demand a nominee who will put the people — and justice — first.”
Vermont
Vt. lawmaker equates transgender identity with bestiality
Vermont Democrats condemned comments, demanded apology
State Sen. Steven Heffernan (R-Addison) equated transgender people to bestiality on the Vermont Senate floor on May 15 while debating an animal cruelty bill.
Heffernan, who was elected in 2024 to the state Senate, constructed a scenario in which a trans person is indistinguishable from someone committing bestiality.
“In these crazy times, what happens if the individual identifies as an animal having intercourse with an animal? How is the courts going to handle that?” the former member of the Vermont Air National Guard said while debating House Bill 578. “Being that we voted through Prop Four, and if it does make it through this state, and I have a gender identity that I identify as a dog and had sex with my dog, is this law going to affect me?”
State Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky (D-Chittenden Central), who presented H. 578 responded professionally.
“The bill that we are putting forward in the current law is quite clear that any act between a person and an animal that involves contact with the mouth, sex organ, or anus of the person, and the mouth, sex organ, or anus of the animal, without a bona fide veterinary purpose, will be a crime.”
In the video, Heffernan continued to ask inappropriate questions — questions that Vyhovsky answered.
“If I identify as that animal, will this be able to … It says a person. I’m not a person. I’m identifying as this animal I’m having intercourse with,” he said. “We are identifying genders, of whatever gender we decide we want to be, and I think I like this bill. I’m going to vote for this bill, but I want to make this chamber aware of what’s coming.”
Vyhovsky made a statement saying this was a planned move in an attempt to “other” trans Vermonters instead of protecting them.
“Senator Heffernan knew exactly what he was doing,” said Vyhovsky. “Sen. Heffernan is using the same dehumanizing playbook that has been used against LGBTQ+ people for generations — the false, ugly suggestion that queer and trans identity is synonymous with deviance and harm. It was wrong then and it is wrong now.”
This derogatory action at the expense of trans people appears to be part of a pattern of behavior from Heffernan in his official capacity.
In March, Heffernan left the floor right before lawmakers voted on Proposal 4, conveniently missing the bill vote. PR 4, if passed by the state’s voters in the fall, would amend the state constitution to enshrine protections against unjust treatment, including discrimination based on a “person’s race, ethnicity, sex, religion, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, or national origin.”
Heffernan told VTDigger at the time that he left because his stomach was feeling “agitated” and he needed to use the restroom. He said he had not made up his mind on how to vote on the amendment, largely because he’d heard from constituents urging him both to vote for and against it.
“My pizza hit at the right time, I guess,” he said, calling the timing “convenient.”
Despite his leaving — and being the only lawmaker to do so — the state Senate voted to pass it 29-0, with Heffernan marked “absent.” This came after the state House of Representatives voted to pass it 128-14 last week.
Vermont Senate Democrats condemned the statement and used the opportunity to emphasize the need for the state to pass PR 4 on Nov. 4.
“In the wake of Sen. Heffernan’s comments, the stakes of this election couldn’t be more clear,” the statement provided to the Washington Blade read. “Transgender and nonbinary Vermonters are our neighbors, our friends, and our family members. On Friday, Sen. Heffernan used his platform as an elected official representing the people of Vermont to dehumanize them. Senate Democrats will never stop fighting for dignity for all Vermonters. We demand Senator Heffernan apologize to those he has harmed with his words and actions.”
State Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (D-Chittenden Southeast), speaking in her capacity as chair of the Senate Ethics Panel, responded to similar transphobic comments made by President Donald Trump in a White House counterterrorism strategy document last week, in which he said those with “extreme transgender ideologies” should know “we will find you and we will kill you,” stating:
“A lot of people are living in fear in this country because of what somebody with the power of the pen and the power of the military is saying every day,” Hinsdale said. “Just because [speech] is protected does not mean it is worthy of this institution, and does not mean it is worthy of the office we hold and the power that we wield in the lives of Vermonters.”
The Blade reached out to Heffernan for comment but has not heard back.
‘How to Survive a Plague’ screens June 5
‘Queer Love’ campaign launched to address domestic violence
Ken Paxton wins Texas Republican primary runoff
China’s top court acknowledges anti-LGBTQ discrimination
