Out trans Rep. Sarah McBride (D-DE) was a key player whipping Republican votes against Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R-GA) bill criminalizing gender-affirming care for minors, according to her colleague, out lesbian Rep. Becca Balint (D-VT).

The bill passed the House on Wednesday with four Republicans voting no.

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“Sarah McBride takes her work very seriously. She will talk to anyone,” Balint told NOTUS.

As Democrats worked to keep members united — three ultimately broke ranks and sided with Republicans – a “core group” of House Democrats, including Equality Caucus members and House Democratic Whip Katherine Clark’s team, was “figuring out who had relationships with whom, and then each of us had separate conversations and then we would huddle back up and share information,” Balint said.

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“We’re most interested in the caucus, right? But we also suspected we might lose some Democrats, which is why Sarah was like, ‘Look, I’ll pick up votes wherever I can.’”

McBride, the first openly transgender member of Congress, went after some of those Republicans who ultimately voted “no,” according to sources.  

Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA), Mike Lawler (R-NY), Mike Kennedy (R-UT), and Gabe Evans (R-CO) bucked their party with votes against Greene’s “Protect Children’s Innocence Act.”

McBride has made an effort to avoid discussions of her trans identity since joining Congress in January, concentrating on economic issues, despite attacks that started even before she was sworn in, including Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) dictating what bathrooms McBride could use, and transphobic Rep. Nancy Mace’s (R-SC) barrage of social media insults.

McBride has been repeatedly misgendered by other members in session, as well.

But Greene’s latest assault on trans minors inspired McBride to reach across the aisle to Republicans who had expressed reservations about the sweeping bill. Sources said that while their conversations were brief, some Republicans expressed openness to opposing the legislation with McBride.

While hopeful about some Republican votes, Democrats were surprised when the final tally came in.

Fitzpatrick, a Republican from swing state Pennsylvania, cited parental rights as a reason for rejecting the bill, saying he was concerned about “the precedent this sets about parental decision-making.”

“The same theory could be used to say that if parents don’t vaccinate their kids, that they could be committing a crime, right? So the parent-child relationship, doctor-physician relationship, we have to always presume that these are sacred,” Fitzpatrick said.

Lawler seconded that reasoning.

“I voted no because this bill is unconstitutional and a clear overreach of federal authority. Criminalizing parents and doctors is a dangerous slippery slope that puts Washington in the middle of deeply personal medical decisions,” the congressman said in a statement.

What role McBride’s discussions had in those votes is unclear, but the reps’ reasons echoed the same argument McBride made on the steps of the Capitol before the vote.

“People are going to have to make their own individual decisions,” she said, “but what is clear is that the bill that is on the floor today is the most extreme anti-LGBTQ bill that has likely ever come before a Congress.”

“If I had come out four or five years before I did, if I had had the courage to come out a little bit earlier, my parents would have done the exact same thing that they did when I came out to them at 21: they would have gone and talked, first, to their pastor and, second, to a health care professional,” she said.

“They would have supported me, which means that this bill would have imprisoned my parents.”

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