Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, who last week announced she was running for president, apologized Thursday for her record of anti-gay rhetoric and her past work for an anti-gay advocacy group issues that have emerged as an early obstacle as she pursues a long-shot bid for the Democratic Party\u2019s nomination.<\/p>\n
Gabbard, 37, has come under fire from lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender advocates in the days since she announced her presidential ambitions, which drew renewed focus to her past work for the Alliance for Traditional Marriage.<\/p>\n
The group, which was run by her father, state Sen. Mike Gabbard, fought against gay rights in Hawaii and helped pass an amendment to the state constitution that gave the Legislature the power to ban same-sex marriage.<\/p>\n
Democrats have been hitting the campaign trail hard before next week’s 2018 congressional elections, but some of them are also looking ahead to the 2020 presidential race.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn my past I said and believed things that were wrong, and worse, they were very hurtful to people in the LGBTQ community and to their loved ones,\u201d Gabbard said in a video posted to YouTube and shared on Twitter.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy views have changed significantly since then,\u201d she added, \u201cand my record in Congress over the last six years reflects what is in my heart: a strong and ongoing commitment to fighting for LGBTQ rights.\u201d<\/p>\n
As a member of Congress, she has voted in favor of LGBT rights and has received praise from the Human Rights Campaign, an advocacy group. Advocates welcomed her apology but were underwhelmed.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe would hope that people have lifelong values of equality and inclusion that have been demonstrated over their lifetime,\u201d said Stephanie Sandberg, president of LPAC, an advocacy group for LGBT women. \u201cFrom my point of view, this does not make good presidential material, especially from a progressive perspective.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mike Gabbard, who has been a state lawmaker since 2006, has been an outspoken anti-gay activist. In addition to the Alliance for Traditional Marriage, he also ran a group called Stop Promoting Homosexuality America and hosted an anti-gay radio show called \u201cLet\u2019s Talk Straight Hawaii,\u201d according to Honolulu Civil Beat, a news organization.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, who last week announced she was running for president, apologized Thursday for her record of anti-gay rhetoric and her past work for an anti-gay advocacy group issues that have emerged as an early obstacle as she pursues a long-shot bid for the Democratic Party\u2019s nomination. Gabbard, 37, has come under fire […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":52981,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-52980","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52980","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52980"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52980\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52982,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52980\/revisions\/52982"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52981"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}