With apologies to Shakespeare’s Queen Gertrude in “Hamlet”: The congressman doth protest too much, methinks.
Rep. Seth Moulton is none too happy about coming under fire from his fellow Massachusetts Democrats for his candid postelection assessment of the electoral problems his party faces because of its unbending embrace of identity politics, especially the transgender agenda.
Moulton suggested in an interview with The New York Times shortly after the Nov. 5 elections—which saw Republicans win the presidency and both houses of Congress—that Democrats would benefit from a course correction on transgender issues.
“Democrats spend way too much time trying not to offend anyone, rather than being brutally honest about the challenges many Americans face,” he said. “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.”
Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., speaks at a Veterans Day event in Marblehead, Mass., on Nov. 11, a few days after making remarks critical of Democrats’ support of transgenderism, and being criticized for doing so. (Danielle Parhizkaran/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)
Not wanting his young daughters having their rights trampled by delusional faux females is the totally understandable response of a protective parent. But Moulton’s remarks drew immediate fire from many of his fellow Bay State Democrats, including the mayor of Salem, Massachusetts, where he lives.
In today’s political equivalent of the Salem witch trials, the city’s Democratic Committee even vowed to recruit someone to challenge him for his 6th Congressional District seat in a party primary in 2026.
In an MSNBC interview, the five-term lawmaker—who had just won a sixth term, unopposed—contended that the backlash only served to prove his point. He subsequently insisted that Democrats were “out of touch” on transgender issues.
A man holds a Pride flag in front of Rep. Seth Moulton’s office in Salem, Mass., on Nov. 8. (Matthew J. Lee/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)
Still, it’s not schadenfreude to note that Moulton would have more of a leg to stand on, morally and politically, if his position on the issue weren’t so equivocal.
This, after all, is the same Seth Moulton who voted for the radical Equality Act, which would have broadened the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to outlaw discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. He also twice cosponsored, in 2022 and 2023, a Transgender Bill of Rights.
Moulton also voted against the Republican-backed Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act, which would have made it a violation of Title IX to permit a person whose sex is male to participate in an athletic program or activity designated for girls or women, wherein sex is determined solely by a person’s reproductive biology and genetics at birth.
In other words, Moulton now appears to be trying to have it both ways on an issue on which there’s little or no common ground to be found—especially not when SheWon.org has documented a staggering 717 XX-chromosome female athletes who have been cheated out of 1,055 medals across 518 competitions in 35 different sports as a result of cowardly secondary school districts, colleges, and athletic associations unwilling to just say “no” to transgender athletic interlopers.
Those 717 girls and women are not Moulton’s daughters, but they are someone’s daughters—or sisters, mothers, or wives—and they shouldn’t be placed in the untenable position of having to compete against rivals with undeniable biological and physiological advantages. (As an aside, it’s likely because of that that the Left conspicuously no longer labels those who don’t share their climate alarmism as “science deniers.”)
Assuming Moulton had had a genuine change of heart and mind on the issue, he would face a daunting challenge getting his party to come around and see the light.
Democrats have willfully painted themselves into an untenable electoral corner by pandering to a minuscule but militant minority estimated at .003 of 1% of the population that is transgender, putting the latter’s selfish interests ahead of those of the 51% of Americans who don’t have to pretend to be female. (Strictly speaking, it’s even less than .003 of 1%, because that number includes transgender men, most of whom don’t try to force society to indulge their delusions.)
Disappointingly, however, it appears Moulton is backpedaling faster than a circus clown unicyclist in the face of the withering intraparty criticism.
In a late November interview with the leftist Rolling Stone, he insisted that he still supports transgender rights, but just wants Democrats to be more open to talking about the issue.
“Republicans are trying to take away civil rights from trans people, and they’re getting away with it because Democrats refuse to even engage in the debate,” the Massachusetts lawmaker said, suggesting his party just needs to improve its messaging on transgender rights. Perhaps most tellingly, Moulton maintained he wasn’t proposing that Democrats should ban transgender women from girls and women’s sports, but instead just “wanted [Democrats] to have a message to fight back against attacks.”
That sounds like Moulton is falling back on Democrats’ shopworn excuse, “We didn’t get our message out.”
But Donald Trump did that for them, with his devastating campaign ads attacking rival Kamala Harris on the issue, using the vice president’s own words against her.
Harris was unable to answer—much less refute—the ads attacking her extreme position on transgenderism, which went far beyond just athletics to supporting taxpayer-funded sex-change drugs and surgeries, even for illegal-alien prison inmates.
Trump’s ads may be the single-biggest reason he, and not Harris, won and will be moving into the White House in January, and no amount of backfilling by Moulton can fill the hole Democrats have dug themselves into on this issue.
They fail to heed the adage “When you’re in a hole, stop digging” at their own electoral peril.
