Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) just announced her entrance into the already crowded field of 2020 Democratic presidential hopefuls — and she’s already apologizing.
Gabbard is something of a maverick within the Democratic party. The Hawaii congresswoman and former Marine checks the boxes that ought to make her an appealing candidate in a party that has become obsessed with identity politics, but Gabbard’s 2020 candidacy has instead been met with pushback from Democrats and progressives over her past statements on gay marriage and LGBT issues in general.
Early Catholic influence
Gabbard’s father, former Hawaii Sen. Mike Gabbard, was a conservative Catholic who advocated traditional marriage. Rep. Gabbard worked for his PAC, the Alliance for Traditional Marriage, which promoted gay “conversion therapy” and an amendment to the Hawaii constitution banning gay marriage. She touted her work on her father’s PAC as recently as the 2000s and opposed civil unions for gay couples in 2004.
Gabbard also opposed a resolution to prevent anti-gay bullying in public schools and predicted upon Massachusetts’ legalization of gay marriage that “federal judges will soon be tearing apart our U.S. Constitution in order to force same-sex marriage down the throats of the people of Hawaii and America.”
“To try to act as if there is a difference between ‘civil unions’ and same-sex marriage is dishonest, cowardly and extremely disrespectful to the people of Hawaii,” Gabbard said in 2004. “As Democrats we should be representing the views of the people, not a small number of homosexual extremists.”
Falling in line
Gabbard has since shifted to adopt the Democrat party line and she apologized to her party in 2012, but they haven’t forgiven her. Under renewed scrutiny, she recently released a video once again denouncing her past views, which she blamed on the socially conservative, Catholic upbringing she received from her father, and said that she has “evolved” on the issue.
But Washington Examiner writer Tiana Lowe thinks the Democrats are being too hard on Gabbard. Lowe notes that unlike fellow Democrats who realized more than midway through life that they were wrong about gay marriage, Gabbard’s “evolution” was comparatively swift, and her transition seems all the more genuine because of the vehemence of her past anti-gay views.
Hillary Clinton didn’t change her position to support gay marriage until 2013 — after she left the Obama administration — and Barack Obama didn’t back it until his second term in office; Gabbard went from being a conservative Catholic denouncing “homosexual extremists” to an LGBT advocate by her 20s.
Constantly evolving standards
The Iraq War vet has also attracted controversy for meeting with Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad last year to discuss the country’s civil war and being one of the first lawmakers to meet with President Donald Trump after he was elected. While meeting with Assad is understandably controversial, it says a lot about the new, globalist, Russia-obsessed Democratic party that they are attacking a fellow Democrat for having the kind of anti-war views that used to be the bread-and-butter of the left.
Gabbard has also raised eyebrows on the left for using the term “radical Islamic terrorism” to accurately describe that threat. So it’s not surprising that her presidential candidacy announcement was met with a slew of hit pieces and disavowals from liberals who questioned whether her “evolution” on LGBT issues was authentic and speculated that she was an Assad “sympathizer” because of her anti-war views, which place her closer in alignment on foreign policy with the Trump base than the Putin-fixated Democratic party.
Gabbard was as unpredictable as ever when she attacked the anti-religious bigotry of her fellow Hawaiian Democrat Sen. Mazie Hirono and Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) over their inquisition of a Catholic judge nominated by Trump. The senators characterized the Knights of Columbus, of which he is a member, as “extreme” and questioned whether he was aware that the group opposed gay marriage and abortion.
But in 2008, California — the most progressive state in the country — voted to outlaw gay marriage, and of course, many Democrats did not come to embrace same-sex marriage until the 2010s. Gabbard seems to be the victim of her own party’s constantly evolving moral standards. Until recently, many Democrats were against gay marriage and most Democrats opposed foreign wars.
More anti-religious bigotry was on display in the left’s shameless attack on Covington High School this week.
Gabbard may find that supporting LGBT rights and standing up against anti-Christian bigotry at the same time is quickly becoming an untenable position to hold for a Democrat. The left isn’t going to forgive Gabbard — at least, not without a good amount of groveling.
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