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Here’s what Seth Moulton had to say when confronted about trans comments at town hall event
Rep. Seth Moulton said he wants Democrats to stop avoiding debates around "contentious issues" in order to better protect the rights of transgender people.
Rep. Seth Moulton continued to face pointed questions and criticism from North Shore residents during a town hall in Peabody on Tuesday over his past comments about transgender issues.
Politics:
In the wake of President Donald Trump’s victory in November, Moulton told The New York Times that Democrats need to rethink their messaging around topics like the participation of transgender athletes in school sports. He called on his fellow Democrats to be “brutally honest” about the things people are concerned about, rather than being afraid to offend anyone.
“I have two little girls, I don’t want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete, but as a Democrat I’m supposed to be afraid to say that,” Moulton told the Times.
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His comments ignited fierce backlash and protests from LGBTQ+ advocates and other constituents. One of the first questions posed to Moulton inside a packed Peabody City Hall was about his stance on transgender rights generally.
Moulton said some of his comments had been mischaracterized, and that a lot of people tried to “cancel” him for even bringing up the topic of transgender athletes in girls’ sports. Democrats are unable to even have debates about “contentious issues,” said Moulton, and he brought up transgender athletes with the Times to illustrate that point.
“The Olympics has that conversation, I don’t know if these same people want to cancel the Olympics or the NCAA, for example,” he said. “As a political party in the United States, we should welcome debate, we should entertain it. I don’t know what the exact right answer is on these contentious issues, but we should at least have the debate.”
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Moulton said that his record on LGBTQ+ rights is “unimpeachable,” citing consistently perfect scores from the Human Rights Campaign and his recent vocal opposition to Rep. Nancy Mace’s efforts to ban transgender women from women’s bathrooms on federal property. When House lawmakers passed legislation earlier this month banning transgender athletes from competing in girls’ and women’s sports, Moulton voted no and criticized the bill for being “too extreme.”
Moulton said that the new Trump administration is engaging in “hateful” attacks on “the basic right for trans people to exist.” Trump signed an executive order Tuesday that tries to end gender-affirming medical treatments for children and teenagers under the age of 19 and is looking to ban transgender people from serving in the military.
All signs indicate that the Trump administration and GOP lawmakers will continue to attack the rights of all LGBTQ+ people, he said.
“You’re going to need allies like me in the days ahead, because this is going to be tough and it’s going to get tougher,” Moulton said. “We’ve got to get our act together now. It’s going to get worse down the road.”
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Democrats, Moulton said, should be able to protect the civil rights of transgender people. But the party’s unwillingness to discuss the issue allows Republicans to dominate public discourse on the topic.
“They just carry the day on their terms because we can’t even debate it,” he said.
Many are still skeptical about Moulton’s commitment to LGBTQ+ rights. Salem City Councilor Kyle Davis organized a protest outside the town hall event, writing on social media that Moulton’s comments were “reprehensible.”
The protest was not meant to change Moulton’s mind, but to show support for transgender community members and to make sure potential challengers to Moulton know they have a base of support, Davis told The Boston Globe. In November, Salem Democrats said they were in contact with unnamed people about potentially running against Moulton next year.
“To see him be that dismissive was disheartening,” an attendee named Melissa, who works with LGBTQ+ students and asked to have their last name excluded, told the Globe Tuesday. “I felt like he was telling the LGBTQ community, who has been fighting for our rights for centuries, how we should feel about things, and that he somehow knows more about this fight than people who have been fighting it all their lives.”
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