Trump Nominee Thinks Trans People Are a ‘Delusion’
Matthew Kacsmaryk is up for a lifetime seat as a federal judge, but his record long record of homophobic and transphobic beliefs should disqualify him
By Harper Jean Tobin
Last year, you helped us defeat Jeff Mateer, a Trump nominee for a lifetime appointment on a federal court. Mateer had defended laws promoting hate against transgender people, and even went so far as to call transgender children part of “Satan’s plan.”
Mateer’s nomination collapsed under the pressure of proud advocates like you. You called your Senators with a clear message: No one who literally demonized children should be allowed to interpret the laws that should keep those children safe.
Now, the Trump administration is once again trying to stock the courts with anti-transgender judges.
Matthew Kacsmaryk, a radical anti-LGBTQ activist and former co-worker of Jeff Mateer, is now up for his own chance to serve as a federal judge. Kacsmaryk serves as deputy general counsel at First Liberty Institute, where he formerly worked alongside Mateer promoting lies and hate against LGBTQ people. His history of targeting those who do not live according to his particular social and religious views calls into doubt his ability to administer fair and impartial justice.
Matthew Kacsmaryk on non-discrimination protections
Kacsmaryk has consistently opposed any form of non-discrimination protection for LGBTQ people. He has fought against protections in employment, housing, health care, and even in services for runaway and homeless youth. He even called including protections for LGBTQ people in the 2013 Violence Against Women Act “a grave mistake.”
Kacsmaryk spoke out against the nondiscrimination protections passed in Utah in 2015, calling the law “a bad idea” because it might suggest that discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity is a problem that should be taken as seriously as other forms of discrimination.
Matthew Kacsmaryk on LGBTQ equality
Kacsmaryk’s views on LGBTQ people range from the hateful and prejudiced to the simply bizarre. In a 2015 interview, he said the movement for LGBTQ equality was “typified by lawlessness.” And in an article titled “The Long War Ahead,” he describes advocates for equality as promoting “the lie that the human person is an autonomous blob of Silly Putty unconstrained by nature or biology, and that marriage, sexuality, gender identity, and even the unborn child must yield to the erotic desires of liberated adults.”
Matthew Kacsmaryk on transgender people
Kacsmaryk denigrates any recognition that transgender people exist as “problematic.” He has even called being transgender a “confusion” and a “delusion.”
Matthew Kacsmaryk on health care for transgender people
Kacsmaryk completely denies the consensus of the medical world that transition-related medical care is proven, necessary, and sometimes life-saving. Instead, he says these treatments, which have been supported by every major medical association based on decades of research, “are not properly viewed as health care” but instead as “bad medicine” that “mutilates the body.” He quotes quack “experts” saying that providing medical treatment to transgender people is “to collaborate with and promote a mental disorder.” Kacsmaryk’s public statements virtually endorse the debunked and dangerous practice of conversion therapy.
Matthew Kacsmaryk won’t be fair and impartial
Kacsmaryk has made his career as an anti-LGBTQ ideologue. He has shown such bias and disdain that there is no way transgender people could expect fairness in any case, on any issue, in a Kacsmaryk courtroom.
Parents urge Senators to reject the Kacsmaryk nomination
The Kacsmaryk nomination will be voted on in the Senate in a matter of days. Like Jeff Mateer’s before it, it should be rejected by Senators of both parties. Several months ago, more than 300 parents of transgender children spoke out against the Kacsmaryk nomination, saying:
Claiming that our children don’t exist is scarcely better than calling them part of “Satan’s plan.” Our children are not a delusion, and neither is our love and support for them. We believe our children are miracles, like every child. …
Hundreds of thousands of children and adolescents throughout this country are transgender, like our kids. So are well over a million adults. They deserve to be treated with respect and dignity — and to trust that when they walk into a courtroom they will be treated fairly. Confirming [Kacsmaryk] would send a damaging and dangerous message that the dignity of children like ours does not count in the courts, or in the U.S. Senate.
Please, stand up for our children.
We know nominees like Kacsmaryk can be beaten — we’ve done it before. But we need you to speak out. Call (202) 224–3121 and to reach your Senators’ offices and tell them to oppose this nomination.
