Tulsi Gabbard Responds to CNN’s LGBTQ+ Article

She’s Proven Change with a 100% pro-LGBTQ+ Voting Record.

Tulsi said to CNN, “First, let me say I regret the positions I took in the past and the things I said. I’m grateful for those in the LGBTQ+ community who have shared their aloha with me throughout my personal journey.

Over the past six years in Congress, I have been fortunate to have had the opportunity to help work toward passing legislation that ensures equal rights and protections on LGBTQ+ issues, such as the Equality Act, the repeal of DOMA, Restore Honor to Servicemembers Act, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, the Safe Schools Improvement Act and the Equality for All Resolution. Much work remains to ensure equality and civil rights protections for LGBTQ+ Americans and if elected President, I will continue to fight for equal rights for all.”

Since joining Congress in 2013, Gabbard has supported efforts to promote LGBT equality, including co-sponsoring pro-LGBT legislation like The Equality Act, a bill to amend the 1964 Civil Rights Act to protect LGBT individuals.

In 2012, when running for Congress, Gabbard apologized to LGBT activists in Hawaii for her past comments.

“I want to apologize for statements that I have made in the past that have been very divisive and even disrespectful to those within the LGBT community,” Gabbard said. “I know that those comments have been hurtful and I sincerely offer my apology to you and hope that you will accept it.”

“I grew up in a very kind of conservative household. A multi-ethnic, multi-racial, multi-faith home,” Gabbard said in New Hampshire in December, speaking to her shift. “Diverse in our makeup and diverse in our views. And I held views growing up that I no longer hold.”

Citing her time deployed overseas, Gabbard said she saw “the destructive effect of having governments who act as moral arbiters for their people.”

“That caused me to really deeply reflect and be introspective on the values and beliefs that I had grown up with what I was experiencing there,” she said. “And then coming back and eventually running for office again. And the conflict that I saw there, in standing for, believing strongly in, and fighting for these ideals of freedom and liberty that we hold dear in this country. It means that equality, that our laws, our government must apply that respect for every single individual. For people who choose to love or marry someone — whether they be of the same gender or not, that respect, and that freedom for every woman to be able to make her own choice about her body and her family and her future. So it was a process that I went through that changed my views in many ways and in many big ways to the views that I hold today.”

Read more about Tulsi’s record at https://www.tulsigabbard.org/tulsi-gabbard-on-lgbt