Rep. Nancy Mace’s place on LGBTQ neighborhood seems to have modified

Rep. Nancy Mace has lately made headlines and confronted protests for her rhetoric across the transgender neighborhood, notably for her efforts to ban transgender ladies from utilizing ladies’s restrooms on the U.S. Capitol simply as the primary transgender consultant has been elected to Congress.

This month, Mace, R-S.C., used a slur in opposition to the transgender neighborhood in a video on social media. She used the time period in reference to protesters who demonstrated within the halls of Congress in opposition to the trans toilet ban.

Now Mace is again within the headlines for accusing foster youth advocate James McIntyre of assault. Based on courtroom paperwork obtained by ABC Information, McIntyre allegedly approached Mace to shake her hand after she spoke at an occasion to rejoice the twenty fifth anniversary of laws benefiting foster youth.

Mace claimed to officers that “the topic started to aggressively and in an exaggerated method shake her arm up and down in a hand shaking movement. The impact of the movement was described as her arm flailing for about 3-5 seconds.”

McIntryre is alleged to have acknowledged “trans youth deserve advocacy” through the interplay. Mace instructed police she had ache in her wrists, arm and armpits because of the incident, however refused help from paramedics. McIntyre was arrested and has pleaded not responsible to prices of assaulting a authorities official.

In a submit on X following the incident, Mace known as McIntyre “a pro-tr*ns man.”

Mace’s latest remarks seem like a shift from her feedback in years previous, when she had referred to herself as “pro-transgender” and “pro-LGBTQ.”

ABC Information has reached out to Mace’s workplace for remark.

Previous to the laws to ban transgender ladies from Capitol loos, Mace supported the “Equity for All Act,” expressed help for socially transitioning youth and confronted backlash for what critics known as her pro-transgender help.

2021: Mace says she helps ‘LGBTQ rights and equality’

In an interview with the Washington Examiner in 2021, Mace instructed a reporter: “I strongly help LGBTQ rights and equality … nobody ought to be discriminated in opposition to.”

Within the interview, she mentioned her opposition to the Equality Act, which might broaden federal civil rights legal guidelines to ban discrimination primarily based on sexual orientation and gender identification. She as an alternative supported the “Equity for All Act,” which was aimed toward banning discrimination primarily based on sexual orientation and gender identification however permitting sure exceptions for spiritual organizations.

Based on the outlet, Mace agreed that, for instance, secular firms shouldn’t be capable of discriminate primarily based on sexual orientation or gender identification – however that spiritual organizations shouldn’t have to “violate their ethical or spiritual conscience,” the outlet wrote.

“It isn’t a black-and-white problem,” Mace stated within the interview. “I do imagine that spiritual liberty, the First Modification, homosexual rights, and transgender equality can all coexist. I’m additionally a constitutionalist, and we’ve to make sure anti-discrimination legal guidelines don’t violate First Modification rights or spiritual freedom.”

She instructed the outlet she has “family and friends that determine as LGBTQ … Understanding how they really feel and the way they’ve been handled is vital. Having been round homosexual, lesbian, and transgender folks has knowledgeable my opinion over my lifetime.”

On the time, she stated youthful conservatives had been changing into extra supportive of LGBTQ rights: “Folks don’t need the federal government of their bedrooms or their board rooms.”

2022: Mace faces assault advertisements for her views

Within the 2022 main race, Mace was the topic of political assault advertisements from the conservative American Ideas PAC concentrating on her for her pro-transgender help.

The advert claimed Mace supported “males in ladies’ locker rooms, males in ladies’s prisons, and even males in battered ladies’s shelters,” referring to transgender ladies as males.

2023: Mace seems to help social transitioning for minors

In a 2023 interview with CBS Information, Mace stated: “I am pro-transgender rights. I am pro-LGBTQ. Simply do not go to the intense with our children.”

She spoke about her help for bans on gender-affirming take care of transgender youth, stating that “intercourse change surgical procedure, the hormone blockers that sterilize our youngsters. We should not be doing that.” Medical consultants have stated puberty blockers are reversible and don’t completely sterilize sufferers.

Nevertheless, Mace appeared to precise help for youth who’re socially transitioning: “In the event that they wanna tackle a distinct pronoun or a distinct gender identification or develop their hair out, or put on a costume or put on pants, or do these issues as a minor—these are all issues that I believe most individuals would help. Be who you wish to be, however don’t make everlasting modifications as a toddler,” Mace stated.

2024: Mace introduces toilet ban amid rise in anti-LGBTQ sentiment

In November, Mace launched a measure to ban transgender ladies from utilizing ladies’s restrooms on the U.S. Capitol, concentrating on Rep.-elect Sarah McBride, the primary transgender particular person elected to Congress.

“Sure, and completely. After which some,” Mace instructed reporters on the Capitol when requested about whether or not the laws was in response to McBride’s election.

“I am not going to face for a person, you realize, somebody with a penis, within the ladies’s locker room,” she stated.

Mace invoked her personal experiences as a sufferer of rape as a part of the rationale she launched the measure.

“That is not OK. And I am a sufferer of abuse myself. I am a rape survivor,” Mace stated. “I’ve PTSD from the abuse I’ve suffered by the hands of a person, and I understand how susceptible ladies and ladies are in non-public areas, so I am completely 100% going to face in the best way of any man who desires to be in a ladies’s restroom, in our locker rooms, in our altering rooms. I can be there combating you each step of the best way,” she stated.

McBride responded to the invoice on X: “It is a blatant try from far right-wing extremists to distract from the actual fact they don’t have any actual options to what Individuals are going through.”

After Home Speaker Mike Johnson stated transgender ladies can not use ladies’s restrooms within the Capitol and Home workplace buildings, McBride responded to imposed guidelines: “I’m not right here to combat about loos. I’m right here to combat for Delawareans and to convey down prices going through households. Like all members, I’ll observe the foundations as outlined by Speaker Johnson, even when I disagree with them.”

Every consultant’s workplace has a non-public restroom and unisex restrooms are additionally obtainable all through the Capitol.

Opponents of the ban say that the narrative round “worry” and “private security” regarding transgender use of loos is rooted in discrimination. They argue transgender folks aren’t inherently harmful and are literally extra more likely to be victims of violence than cisgender folks.

Mace stated she needed to broaden her efforts and push a measure that will ban transgender ladies from utilizing ladies’s loos on all federal property: “This should not be occurring any federal property. When you’re a faculty or an establishment that will get authorities funding, this type of factor ought to be banned,” she stated.

Transgender folks — who make up lower than 1% of Individuals over the age of 13, in line with UCLA’s analysis group, the Williams Institute — have been the topics of a whole lot of Republican-backed payments throughout the nation in recent times.

When protesters entered the Capitol to protest efforts to limit transgender toilet use in early December, Mace responded with a video on X, the place she known as protesters a derogatory slur for transgender folks.

ABC Information’ Arthur Jones II and Beatrice Peterson contributed to this report.