Moulton doubles down on transgender athletes comments: 'Backlash … proves my point'

Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.) doubled down on his recent comments about transgender athletes, saying the response to them proves his point.

“I was just speaking authentically as a dad about one of many issues where I think we’re just out of touch with the majority of voters, and I stand by my position,” Moulton said Sunday during an MSNBC appearance. “The backlash I’ve received proves my point that we can’t even have these discussions as a party.”

“And we’ve got to be able to have these debates,” he added. “But, instead, we have a wing of our party that shames us, that tries to cancel people who try to even bring up these difficult topics, and, frankly, shames voters.”

Moulton was recently quoted in a story from The New York Times about Democratic finger-pointing after Vice President Harris lost the 2024 election, saying his party had leaned too heavily into identity politics, forging a path for President-elect Trump and Republicans to a decisive victory.

“Democrats spend way too much time trying not to offend anyone rather than being brutally honest about the challenges many Americans face,” he told the newspaper. “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.”

He has faced backlash from his party, with Massachusetts Democratic Party Chair Steve Kerrigan, for example, telling the Boston Globe that Moulton’s comments “do not represent the broad view of our party.”

Moulton was first elected to Congress in 2015 and is a member of the Congressional Equality Caucus. The caucus promotes LGBTQ equality in the House and has strongly opposed efforts to bar trans athletes from sports teams that best align with their gender identity. His 2024 reelection campaign was endorsed by the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBTQ advocacy group.

Twice in the past, Moulton cosponsored House Democrats’ Transgender Bill of Rights, which included protections for transgender athletes to participate on sports teams that match their gender identity. Even last spring, Moulton voted against passing a Republican-backed bill to bar transgender student-athletes from sports.

“I stand firmly in my belief for the need for competitive women’s sports to put limits on the participation of those with the unfair physical advantages that come with being born male,” Moulton said in a statement to NBC10 Boston late last week. “I am also a strong supporter of the civil rights of all Americans, including transgender rights. I will fight, as I always have, for the rights and safety of all citizens. These two ideas are not mutually exclusive, and we can even disagree on them.”

“Yet there are many who, shouting from the extreme left corners of social media, believe I have failed the unspoken Democratic Party purity test,” he added. “We did not lose the 2024 election because of any trans person or issue. We lost, in part, because we shame and belittle too many opinions held by too many voters and that needs to stop. Let’s have these debates now, determine a new strategy for our party since our existing one failed, and then unite to oppose the Trump agenda wherever it imperils American values.”