- George Santos is ready to develop into the one overtly homosexual sitting Republican member of Congress.
- He received after competing in a historic election in opposition to one other homosexual candidate, Democrat Robert Zimmerman.
- Santos, who has ties to the occasions of Jan 6, will be part of a caucus that is nonetheless largely against LGBTQ rights.
George Santos is ready to develop into the one overtly homosexual Republican in Congress after defeating Democratic candidate Robert Zimmerman in a closely-watched race in New York’s third congressional district.
The Lengthy Island election itself was historic, because it was the primary time two overtly LGBTQ candidates nominated by main events competed in a normal election for federal workplace.
Santos may also be solely the third overtly homosexual Republican member of Congress, following former Reps. Jim Kolbe of Arizona and Steve Gunderson of Illinois. He’s the primary Republican to be overtly homosexual on the time of his election.
However Santos, a 34-year-old funding banker, is not precisely a average.
After dropping a congressional bid in 2020, he traveled to Washington, DC on January 6, 2021, to attend President Donald Trump’s speech, throughout which Trump claimed he’d received the 2020 election “by a landslide” and instructed his loyalists to “battle like hell” to overturn the outcomes.
“I used to be on the Ellipse on January 6,” mentioned Santos throughout a February 2021 look on “The Proper View” hosted by Lara Trump. “That was probably the most superb crowd, and the president was at his full awesomeness that day.”
Santos went on to call January 6 a “unhappy and darkish day,” and has said he was “by no means on Capitol grounds” that day. However he was later caught on camera by a Democratic activist saying that he had minimize a “good test to a legislation agency” to get folks arrested in DC on January 6 out of jail.
“Do not wish to publicize it, however fairly adamant about that,” he mentioned through the video. “Think about breaking into your individual home and being charged for trespassing.”
His election additionally comes throughout a 12 months that is seen a marked rise in anti-LGBTQ sentiment on the fitting.
That is included the passage of the Parental Rights in Training Act in Florida — dubbed “Do not Say Homosexual” by critics — in addition to the declaration by the Texas GOP that homosexuality represents an “irregular way of life alternative,” the rise of “groomer” as an insult on the right, and a number of state-level laws taking goal at transgender youth.
On the identical time, Republicans have proven an growing openness to same-sex marriage. 47 House Republicans voted to codify same-sex marriage into law in July, and several other Senate Republicans have come out in help of it as effectively.
Nonetheless, most members of the Home Republican Convention voted in opposition to enshrining the fitting to same-sex marriage into legislation. However he is shrugged off the notion that same-sex marriage must be codified in any respect, minimizing the importance of Supreme Courtroom Justice Clarence Thomas’s concurring opinion within the Dobbs case, by which the conservative justice instructed the ruling that legalized same-sex marriage nationwide ought to be reconsidered.
“He had an unlucky second in a dissenting opinion that almost all didn’t signal on,” Santos told the Washington Blade. “Clearly, that is why it has no authorized worth. It is nothing greater than a authorized essay. A authorized essay written by a Supreme Courtroom justice with — I am simply going to exit on a limb and say not the brightest second in his profession.”
And Santos has outright defended anti-LGBTQ measures pushed by Republicans.
“As a homosexual man, I stand proudly behind not instructing our kids intercourse or sexual orientation,” he mentioned in a Fb video in April, referring to the Florida legislation. “That is incumbent on the mother and father, not educators.”
Florida’s Parental Rights in Training Act forbids classroom instruction about sexual orientation and gender id for third graders and youthful; critics say the legislation is meant to focus on LGBTQ folks, chilling their potential to specific themselves.
“DeSantis, you could have my full-blown help, and I help your determination to guard our kids’s innocence,” he mentioned. “I stand proudly behind the Florida legislature for placing an honest invoice that may defend values.”
