Republican U.S. Senate candidate: Government should stay out of LGBTQ+ issues

Brent Hatch, son of the late Republican U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch, is now running for the Senate himself — and he has asserted the government should stay out of LGBTQ+ issues.

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“I think the government largely needs to stay out of these things, and people need to live their lives,” Hatch, a Salt Lake City lawyer, said in a recent interview with Newsweek.

“Nobody talked about these kind of things 10, 20 years ago,” said Hatch, who is one of several Republicans — and so far, one Democrat — running for the Senate seat from which Mitt Romney is retiring. “And every one of us had had friends or family members that were dealing with some of those issues, and we got through it ... and now government wants to make it a government thing. I don't see any reason to do that.”

Hatch didn’t go into specifics, but it appears he’s distancing himself from many of today’s Republicans, who have made it a priority to attack the LGBTQ+ community, especially its most vulnerable members, such as transgender youth. As a senator, he said, his priorities will include efforts to improve border security and reduce the national debt. He also said he is “very clearly pro-life” but considers abortion a personal decision.

His view of the history of LGBTQ+ rights is somewhat at odds with the facts. Ten to 20 years ago, politicians, activists, and ordinary citizens were talking about LGBTQ+ issues — employment discrimination, hate crimes, marriage equality, and more. As LGBTQ+ people and their allies, mostly liberals, fought for equal rights, conservative forces resisted. Some activists have attributed today’s widespread anti-trans actions as a response to progress made by other segments of the LGBTQ+ community.

Hatch’s father, who represented Utah in the Senate for 42 years, retiring in 2019, was a deeply conservative Mormon Republican, but he evolved on LGBTQ+ issues. As a freshman senator in 1977, he said that letting gay people teach in public schools would be like letting Nazis do so, but in his farewell address he called for LGBTQ+ equality, saying the community should be protected from "invidious discrimination." This evolution was gradual. In 2013 he came out in support of civil unions for same-sex couples, although he still opposed marriage equality. The following year he admitted that nationwide marriage equality was inevitable, and the Supreme Court made it so in 2015.

He also voted for the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, one of very few Republicans to do so; no version of ENDA ever became law, and the legislation has been superseded by a more sweeping LGBTQ+ rights bill, the Equality Act, which is still pending in Congress. In another pro-LGBTQ+ move, Orrin Hatch opposed Donald Trump’s transgender military ban.

In the Newsweek interview, Brent Hatch called his father, who died in 2022, “an incredible man.” He said their political views are similar, but he may be a bit more conservative than his father. The younger Hatch is treasurer of the Federalist Society, a conservative group that recommended many of Trump’s judicial nominees.

He also said he is more conservative than Romney, who is conservative by just about any measure but has stood up to the most right-wing forces in the Republican Party. Romney has had a generally poor record on LGBTQ+ issues but did support 2022’s Respect for Marriage Act, which wrote marriage equality into federal law, protecting it in case the Supreme Court reverses its 2015 ruling. He was one of only 12 Republican senators to vote for it. He announced in September that he would not seek reelection in 2024.

Ten Republicans have announced they’re running to succeed Romney, along with the lone Democrat and one independent. Utah is heavily Republican, so the seat will likely stay in GOP hands. The primary election is June 25 and the general election November 5.