The California governor’s new podcast, where he broke with Democrats on trans rights, triggered a media firestorm and evoked a variety of opinions from Californians. Below, a queer parent says Gavin Newsom was pandering to conservatives by scapegoating his own constituents. The opposing view: A longtime voter says Newsom’s desire to have nuanced conversations is badly needed.

Guest Commentary written by

Tori Truscheit

Tori Truscheit

Tori Truscheit is a queer parent based in Sacramento.

On the first episode of his new podcast, Gov. Gavin Newsom broke some news last week: He no longer aligns with the Democratic Party on trans rights.

He invited right-wing provocateur Charlie Kirk onto his show, unprompted, and proceeded to agree with him on whether trans athletes should be able to compete in girls’ sports. The interview seemed intentionally designed to show how much they had in common — like when Newsom complained about how weird it was when people shared their pronouns in a meeting.

It was Newsom’s show, released on his feed, meaning none of it was an accident. It is his brand now. He wants the public to know that he agrees with Kirk.

Well, that now includes my family. We are, in most ways, totally boring. We walk our first-grader to school — or rather, she runs and we keep up. We FaceTime my sister and her toddlers in LA for two minutes before someone gleefully presses the red button. We cook every night since it’s expensive to live in California.

It’s worth it for us because we need particular legal protections. I’m a lesbian, my partner carried our child, and she’s known for decades that she’s not a man or a woman. We are both on our child’s birth certificate, but I got a second-parent adoption just in case. My spouse had gender-affirming surgery a year ago.

You might wonder about what pronouns she uses if you were, like, in a meeting with her.

There are 2.8 million of us in this state, the largest LGBTQ population in the country. We live here for a reason. Some of us grew up here and are glad to be able to stay. Some of us landed here seeking peace and safety. I’ve lived in Missouri, Texas, Florida, Connecticut and New York, and calculate my geographic safety level almost unconsciously.

Wildfires notwithstanding, California is where I feel the most relief. 

Some of us are young, and some of us remember the old days. We know how it feels to be a political pawn, like when California voted against gay marriage in 2008, or when George W. Bush got reelected for bashing gay rights in 2004. I owe many layers of my life’s happiness to the queer and trans people who fought before me, and I do not forget them.

Newsom himself sailed into the governor’s office on the memory of the same-sex marriages he ordered in San Francisco in 2004, defying a federal ban and ingratiating himself with Californians who found him courageous. 

But instead of leading with a vision of California many people actually want, he’s decided to scapegoat trans people for an imagined Midwest voter in a future presidential run. It’s the 2024 right-wing script on repeat: They push creepy political ideas until liberals, in an attempt to sound tough, adopt them instead of shutting them down. (I wish I could forget when former Vice President Kamala Harris bragged about her Glock.)

It’s a trap, however, because then those creepy ideas become mainstream, and Newsom is falling for it.

This trap has real consequences for the LGBTQ community. Trans athletes were the opening salvo in a playbook already well underway in red states: Elimination of health care for trans kids leads directly to elimination of health care for trans adults, like in Texas bill HB3817. Policing genitalia leads to proposals like Georgia’s HB 267, which is about trans athletes but would also restrict parental birth certificate options to “mother” and “father.”

Californians do not want any part of regressive laws or the bigotry they embolden. We are proud to live in a place where trans people live freely, where our rights are never in question and where our leaders show up for us.

No one elected Gov. Newsom to befriend right-wing influencers. We need him to represent us, and that includes queer and trans Californians, too.