Former U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard has been nominated by President-elect Donald Trump to serve as the Director of National Intelligence, a position that would oversee 18 spy agencies. While she’s a former lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve, her appointment has concerned some pundits, considering her seeming support of dictators.

Gabbard, who left the Democratic Party in October 2022 and later became a pro-Trump Republican, has a mixed record on LGBTQ+ issues. She once worked for an anti-gay activist group and has made numerous statements against LGBTQ+ content in schools and supporting trans youth.

Related

Gay lawmaker sums up what everyone is thinking about Tulsi Gabbard in just 6 words
With Democrats like Gabbard, who needs Republicans?

Insights for the LGBTQ+ community

Subscribe to our briefing for insights into how politics impacts the LGBTQ+ community and more.
Subscribe to our Newsletter today

Tulsi Gabbard at a glance

• Location: Leander, Texas
• Party Affiliation: Republican
• Race/Ethnicity: European/Samoan-American
• Gender Identity: Female
• Orientation: Heterosexual
• Pronouns: She/her/hers
• LGBTQ+ Ally: Mixed

Social media

• Facebook: TulsiGabbard
• X: @TulsiGabbard
• Instagram: tulsigabbard
• YouTube: TulsiGabbard
• TikTok: TulsiGabbard
• Website: TulsiGabbard.com

Tulsi Gabbard’s stance on LGBTQ+ issues

As a legislator, Gabbard received high scores on the Human Rights Campaign’s Congressional Scorecard, including a perfect 100 score in one term. But during her 2020 presidential campaign, Gabbard refused to respond to an HRC questionnaire on LGBTQ+ issues.

She has a history of anti-LGBTQ+ activism and is an outspoken opponent of gender-affirming care for children. In 2022, she announced she was leaving the Democratic party, citing perennial rightwing complaints like “wokeness” and “anti-white racism.”

Same-sex marriage

Gabbard worked with her father’s anti-gay organization, the Alliance for Traditional Marriage, in the late 1990s and early 2000s to successfully pass a constitutional amendment in Hawaii banning same-sex marriage. The group called homosexuality a “unhealthy, abnormal behavior that should not be promoted or accepted in society.”

Her father was the director of Stop Promoting Homosexuality and served on the steering committees of the National Campaign to Protect Marriage and Save Traditional Marriage.

In 2004, she testified at a hearing against a civil unions bill, saying, “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, As Democrats, we should be representing the views of the people, not a small number of homosexual extremists.”

However, she apologized for her anti-LGBTQ+ views during her 2012 campaign for Congress. In 2013, she and 211 other Congress members filed a Supreme Court amicus brief against the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), a 1996 law that forbade the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages.

“I grew up in socially conservative household where I was raised to believe that marriage should only be between a man and a woman,” Gabbard explained in a January 2019 video apologizing for her past anti-LGBTQ+ views, adding, “In my past, I said and believed things that were wrong, and worse, they were very hurtful to people in the LGBTQ community and their loved ones.” 

Trans children in sports

In 2020, she co-sponsored the anti-trans “Protect Women’s Sports Act,” a bill that would ban transgender girls and women from participating in sports as their gender. The bill would amend Title IX of the Education Amendment of 1972 to make it illegal for sports programs “to permit a person whose biological sex is male to participate in an athletic program or activity that is designated for women or girls.”

Her bill didn’t define “biological sex” or say how it will be determined — whether by DNA tests, genital exams, or other possible measures — leaving it up to state and local sports governing bodies to develop their own systems to ensure that they are in compliance with federal legislation.

“Title IX is being weakened by some states who are misinterpreting Title IX, creating uncertainty, undue hardship, and lost opportunities for female athletes,” Gabbard said in a statement. “Our legislation protects Title IX’s original intent which was based on the general biological distinction between men and women athletes based on sex.”

Transgender access to public bathrooms

In 2019, Gabbard supported the Equality Act, a law which would update federal civil rights laws to prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity in education, employment, housing, credit, federal jury service, the use of federal funds, and public accommodations, which includes public bathroom access.

Don’t say gay/LGBTQ+ discussions in schools

Gabbard supports Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law, a law that forbids instruction on LGBTQ+ issues in K-12 schools.

In April 2022, she posted a social media video message saying the law didn’t go far enough and that it stops “indoctrinating woke sexual values in our schools to a captive audience … that is by law required to attend.” She then said it’s not the government’s job to instill moral values in its citizens and that public schools are “failing.”

“Parental rights are under attack all across the country as the government tries to usurp parents’ rights and responsibility to raise their own children,” she said in the video, echoing rhetoric from the so-called parents’ rights movement that has supported banning LGBTQ+ content and queer-inclusive policies from schools.