Representative Seth Moulton, Democrat of Massachusetts, is facing a barrage of criticism and protest in his deep-blue state for suggesting that his party’s struggles in this month’s election could be traced to its support for allowing transgender girls to play in girls’ sports.
Mr. Moulton’s campaign manager resigned in protest. The Democratic governor of Massachusetts rebuked him. And the chair of the political science department at Tufts University threatened to block his students from interning in Mr. Moulton’s office.
A rally has been scheduled for Sunday in Salem, Mass., Mr. Moulton’s hometown, aimed at standing with the transgender community, said Kyle Davis, a Democrat and a Salem city councilor who has called on the congressman to resign.
“We’re certainly rejecting the narrative that trans people are to be scapegoated or fear-mongered against,” Mr. Davis said.
In the interview that touched off the furor, given recently to The New York Times, Mr. Moulton said Democrats had spent “too much time trying not 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,” he said. “But as a Democrat, I’m supposed to be afraid to say that.”
Mr. Moulton has since defended his remarks, arguing that he is giving voice to a popular but rarely expressed view among elected Democrats.
“I’ve never had more people, parents and, by the way, a lot of L.G.B.T.Q. community members, reach out to me and say, ‘Thank you for saying this,’” he said in an interview on Friday. “Some of them are just speaking authentically as parents. Some of them believe the trans movement has gone too far. It is imperiling the progress we’ve made.”
Mr. Moulton specifically said Gov. Maura Healey, Democrat of Massachusetts, was “out of step” with most Americans.
Ms. Healey, a former athlete at Harvard and one of the country’s first openly lesbian governors, had told reporters on Tuesday that she was disappointed to see people “pick on particularly vulnerable children,” adding that Mr. Moulton was “playing politics with people.”
Mr. Moulton responded on Friday that “playing politics with vulnerable people is refusing to even debate their issues.”
The congressman has repeatedly played the role of party agitator: He unseated an incumbent Democrat a decade ago, tried to topple Representative Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, from the House speakership and mounted a quixotic run for president in 2019, which arguably gained less attention than his recent comments.
His district, solidly Democratic, runs from north of Boston to the New Hampshire border, encompassing wealthy suburbs and onetime industrial towns that have become magnets for young professionals. (Mr. Moulton easily won re-election this fall, running unopposed.)
President-elect Donald J. Trump made Vice President Kamala Harris’s support for transgender rights a core part of his argument that she was outside the political mainstream. His campaign used video of Ms. Harris expressing support for taxpayer-funded transition surgeries for transgender inmates in a torrent of ads that declared: “Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you.”
The Harris campaign largely did not answer those ads, but, internally, the Democratic Party was roiled by them. Former President Bill Clinton was said to have urged the Harris campaign to respond to them, and to have been told that they were not making an obvious dent in the race.
Now the Democratic Party is wrestling with how to retool its message after Republicans won the White House and control of Congress. And the question of transgender rights is emerging as a prickly topic even in Massachusetts — a state that Ms. Harris won by more than 20 percentage points.
Asked for comment on Mr. Moulton’s remarks, each of the 10 other members of the state’s congressional delegation, all Democrats, declined to comment or did not immediately respond.
About two-thirds of Americans say transgender athletes should be allowed to play only on teams that match their sex at birth, according to a Gallup poll conducted last year.
In Mr. Moulton’s hometown, the Salem School Committee responded to his comments by telling local L.G.B.T.Q. students in a statement, “Neither fear nor political whim will shake our commitment to you.” Transgender girls may play on girls’ teams in Salem public schools.
At Tufts, a private university near Boston, Prof. David Art left a voice mail message last week with Mr. Moulton’s office expressing “unwillingness” to have his students intern there, citing the congressman’s position on transgender athletes, according to a recording provided by the congressman’s office.
The university later disavowed that message. And its president, Sunil Kumar, reached Mr. Moulton by phone to make clear that Professor Art was not speaking for the school, Patrick Collins, a Tufts spokesman, said on Friday. Mr. Art did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Mr. Davis, the Salem city councilor, said Mr. Moulton’s description of transgender girls as “formerly male” was particularly offensive. “If you know anything about the trans community, they don’t see themselves as men,” he said. “They don’t see themselves as former men.”
In Mr. Moulton’s immediate political circle, his campaign manager, Matt Chilliak, resigned over the congressman’s stance. Mr. Chilliak said in a brief interview on Friday that he had laid out a fuller explanation for his resignation in a letter to Mr. Moulton, but he declined to describe it or comment further. Mr. Moulton also declined to comment on Mr. Chilliak.
Mr. Moulton said in the interview on Friday that the Republican “agenda for trans people and other minorities is dangerous,” and added that he believed transgender girls’ participation in girls’ sports should be restricted only at the high-school level and above. He declined to describe those restrictions, saying he was “not a trans expert or an athletics expert.” He was simply speaking “as a dad.”
The congressman has at least one backer within his party: Representative Tom Suozzi, a moderate New York Democrat who won re-election this year in a Long Island district where Ms. Harris struggled. In an interview on Friday, Mr. Suozzi said Mr. Moulton’s critics had taken an unfair position.
“If we allow tested leaders with proven records to get shut down because they have the temerity to discuss what should be a legitimate topic for conversation — a topic that is currently undermining faith in our party — we will continue losing races,” Mr. Suozzi said.
Other Democrats argued that Mr. Moulton was training his attention on the wrong issue, and allowing Republicans to control the narrative at a moment when L.G.B.T.Q. Americans are fearful about Mr. Trump’s impending presidency.
Representative-elect Sarah McBride, a Delaware Democrat who this month became the first openly transgender person to win a seat in Congress, told CNN on Monday that voters were focused on economic challenges, not on an “issue that impacts a handful of people in a handful of places.”
“Donald Trump was trying to divide and distract,” Ms. McBride told the network, adding, “I don’t believe these were the issues that were deciding factors for voters.”
The post The Democrat Picking a Fight With His Party Over Transgender Rights appeared first on New York Times.
