Insert LinkIllinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, a Democrat who is one of the strongest voices against Donald Trump, stood up for LGBTQ+ and particularly transgender people in a fiery speech Saturday at the Human Rights Campaign’s Los Angeles dinner.
Keep up with the latest in LGBTQ+ news and politics. Sign up for The Advocate's email newsletter.
“The Trump administration and his Republican lackeys in Congress are looking to reverse every single victory this community has won over the last 50 years,” Pritzker said in the speech at the Fairmont Century Plaza. “And right now it’s drag queens reading books and transgender people serving in the military. Tomorrow, it’s your marriage license and your job they want to take. Bending to the whims of a bully will not end his cruelty. It will only embolden him. The response to authoritarianism isn’t acquiescence. Bullies respond to one thing, and one thing only, a punch in the face.”
“And in the midst of this existential fight, this battle that seems to consume everything, well, let’s not take the soul-sucking path of sacrificing the most persecuted for that which we deem to be most popular,” Pritzker went on. “I know that there are transgender children right now looking out at this world and wondering if anyone is going to stand up for them and for their simple right to exist. Well, I am. We are. We will.”
This comes at a time when even some Democrats, such as California Gov. Gavin Newsom, are backing away from support for trans people.
Watch Illinois Governor JB Pritzker Reject the Politics of Trans Abandonment
Video of Gov. Pritzker's speechwww.readtpa.com
Pritzker also offered some history of the LGBTQ+ rights movement, starting with the Society for Human Rights in Chicago in the 1920s — a group that was quickly quashed — and going on to the Mattachine Society, founded by Harry Hay in California in the 1950s. “Harry said that he was first told about the Chicago group as a warning that the idea was too dangerous and nobody should try to pull anything off like that ever again,” the governor said. “How lucky the world is that Harry didn’t listen.”
“When we say history repeats itself, it’s not because the villains and battles don’t evolve with the ages. They do,” he continued. “But the fight itself remains elemental. It’s always men who would be king, blaming the suffering of the masses on those who look different or sound different or live differently. And since the dawn of time, the triumph of good over evil has relied on those who believe in empathy and kindness, summoning the steel spine needed to defend those values that by their nature leave us vulnerable to attack. This community knows that. You have lived and breathed this fight for generations. Our hope, our hope lies in this room.”
Since his first run for governor in 2018, Pritzker has been an adversary of Trump. “I said at the beginning of every stump speech, everything we care about is under siege by a racist, misogynist, homophobic, xenophobic Donald Trump,” Pritzker said. He ended every speech by asking if his listeners were ready for the fight, and he called on the LGBTQ+ community to keep up the fight now.
“Take to the streets, protest, show up at town halls,” he said. “Jam the phone lines in Congress, (202) 224-3121, and afford not a moment of peace to any elected representatives who are aiding and abetting [Elon] Musk and Trump’s illegal power grab.”
“What we do and don’t do matters,” he added. “It matters right now more than it ever has before. When my future grandkids look back on this moment, I want them to know that my voice was one of the loudest in the room, screaming for justice and fighting against tyranny.”
