Show Dissenting Democrats Some Love

They have a lot to lose, including their jobs

In the wake of the Supreme Court's decision that states are allowed to separate sports by sex, not gender identity, many a Democrat cried foul. "We have already seen the harms of these categorical bans on all girls," according to a press release from Congressional Equality Caucus Chair Rep. Mark Takano, "and this ruling will continue those harms in all of the states that have enacted these categorical bans."

At first, it seemed like either Democrats reacted this way, or that they kept mum.

But that’s not true. We’ve seen a few defectors—largely centrist Reps from rural areas, and people of color—who’ve made the case that these battles over gender-identity-based policies aren’t as simple as left versus right and good versus bad.

Take, for instance, the mild assertions of Washington’s Marie Gluesenkamp Perez:

Aaron Rupar@atrupar

Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez: "At those town halls, what I saw was that the people who were the most upset, a lot of them had spent the last 12 years driving their girls to sports practice and they view their best shot of their student getting a college education as an athletic

3:25 PM · Jul 1, 2026 · 377K Views

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150 Replies · 49 Reposts · 376 Likes

MGP, who was one of the 8 Dems who voted against allowing schools to withhold students’ gender identities from their parents, suggested we shouldn’t “rush to moralize” on the issue. She’s actually not alone. This not-all-that-admonishing article in an “LGBTQ” publication notes that Pete Buttigieg has spoken, on NPR no less, about parents’ concerns about their girls playing with and against boys (or “boys,” as they write), and has questioned “some of the past orthodoxies in my party.”

It is a huge risk for Democrats to speak this way, to inject even the tiniest bit of nuance (or reality) into their language, and many retreat after facing the wrath of the very loud and very online minority of extremists. Just look at Seth Moulton, who famously said the very obvious—he wouldn’t want his daughters playing against boys—and then voted the opposite of his conscience. Yes, he catered to the mob, but he was also trying to keep his job. He’s a politician.

Whenever a politician moves toward reality, toward sanity, toward truth, toward fairness, let’s welcome them. Let’s stand at the bottom of the off-ramp with a gift basket and show them that there’s love and support—and numbers!—when they reject the party orthodoxy.

There’s an opportunity with Ohio Democratic gubernatorial candidate Amy Acton, who dared to say, “I do not support boys playing in girls sports. This is already settled law in Ohio, and as governor I will enforce and uphold the law.”

“Progressives” took offense, and an uproar ensued, including from a group ironically called “Ohioans Against Extremism,” who somehow don’t realize that policies allowing people to declare their own sex are actually quite extreme.

We are living in a world in which it requires courage and bravery to state the obviously true, so I think it’s important to support those who do—to write to them, donate to their campaigns, campaign for them, and show them that there’s a soft landing for them should they be rejected by the extremist wings of their own party, who claim to be anti-extremist.

Months ago, I wrote a piece about what I think Democrats need to be able to say when asked simple questions like “What is a woman?” It was turned down by the NYT, but I was heartened to see Thomas Edsall’s piece offering similar advice this week. I think his suggestions are great, though perhaps I’d tweak a bit:

There are two sexes: men and women.

A man can claim an identify as a woman, and the same in reverse for a woman. They have every right to do so. Their claim should be respected and They should be protected from any form of discrimination in housing and employment for their choice, as the Supreme Court’s Bostock decision allows.

Their claim does not, however, alter their biological sex.

Consequently, it is legitimate in areas such as sports where a transgender person male identifying as a woman or girl would have a competitive advantage over non-trans people to bar such participation. Similarly, a claim to a sexual gender identity does not give a trans woman the right to incarceration in a woman’s prison.

Finally, the debate over gender affirming surgery and hormone treatments is fraught with contradictory assertions. For now, because there are credible scientific claims of irreversible harms, such treatments for those under 18 should be barred pending comprehensive follow-up with those already treated further study.

If you read the Edsall article, and see the edits various advocacy group members offered him, you’ll see how hard it is to make or take his suggestions. That’s not just because speaking the truth causes backlash among those who disagree, but because it sometimes inspires vitriol from those who do, and are furious that it took a politician so long to do it.

As an example from across the pond, see the reaction to UK Labour Health Secretary James Murray.

J Stewart@triffic_stuff_

🤯 Listen to this extraordinary exchange between Camilla Tominey and Labour’s Health Secretary James Murray. It is genuinely jaw-dropping. Camilla: “You’re quite pro-trans, aren’t you? Do you think a woman can have a penis? Because you did previously?” Murray: “No, I don’t.”

5:32 PM · Jul 5, 2026 · 2.74M Views

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1.2K Replies · 7.04K Reposts · 29.7K Likes

When asked if he thinks a woman can have a penis, he says, “No, I don’t.” He’s thinking about the issues differently, and “I wouldn’t now say that, for instance, trans women are women.” Sex and gender, he says, are different.

The interviewer, Camilla Tominey, isn’t having it. He’s a well-educated man, she says; how on earth could he have previously thought a woman could have a penis? Many in the pile-on concurred, accusing him of lying or grifting and calling for his firing or cancellation.

Well, millions of well-educated people came to believe that, or, if they didn’t, tamped down their skepticism. It wasn’t that hard for it to happen. We were in the era of “own voices” and “lived experience,” told that if we didn’t belong to a group then we couldn’t empathize with them, and we deferred. We learned that sex in fact could be at times more complicated than “men have penises and girls have vaginas,” as the media paid attention to intersex conditions.

Many of us have been counseled or pressured out of our instincts, because the most human instinct of all is to do whatever you need to do to belong. Maybe he was lying. Most likely, he was self-justifying.

Murray’s main sin, as I see it, was when he dodged Tominey’s question about whether he and others owe the gender-critical women, who raised their voices and paid dearly for it, an apology. Yes, he should have said, “We created conditions in which speaking basic truths became impossible, and my party was central to that. From now on, we need to look at how these issues affect all constituents, not just trans people.” Also, yeah, apologize! But politicians tend not to do that.

So how do we create better conditions now? Not by calling for this guy to be fired (though I very much understand why parents whose kids have been harmed would do so, and I exempt them from this request). Rather, we create better conditions by calling on him to work hard at making better policy, and ensuring he has our support when he does.