FPI / November 1, 2022

Corporate WATCH

Commentary by Joe Schaeffer

Pennsylvania Democrat U.S. Senate candidate John Fetterman in his official role as lieutenant governor celebrated 2019 “International Transgender Visibility Week” by declaring, “I passionately reject any efforts to define gender as a biological, immutable condition determined at birth.”

The alarming nature of the pronouncement extends beyond how it serves to highlight the ultra-radical core tucked away beneath the Harvard grad’s faux-working class, hoodie-wearing veneer. For the words eerily echo those of the Pennsylvania Department of Education in dismissing the notion that gender is a biological reality.

Fox News’s Jessica Chasmar reported Aug. 1:
 

The Pennsylvania Department of Education website lists "ne, ve, ze/zie and xe" as gender-neutral pronouns that some students may prefer and advises teachers to ask before making false assumptions about someone’s gender identity.

A page on the education department website, titled, "Creating Gender-Inclusive Schools and Classrooms," includes a section about "preferred personal pronouns."...

The webpage also defines "binary gender" as the "faulty concept that there are only two genders: male and female."

Fetterman’s quote comes from a stunningly extreme March 26, 2019 release from his lieutenant governor office. In two short paragraphs, Fetterman stridently asserted that there should be no limitations whatsoever on the all-encompassing concept of transgender “rights”:
 

On this important week and all year long, we reject the hate and ignorance used to marginalize vulnerable people. No matter how you identify, you have a right to equal and fair treatment, and your elected officials have the responsibility to fight for those rights for you....

I support the rights of people of all genders, gender identities, and gender expressions and fully embrace protections for transgender people under federal civil rights law. From our troops to our pulpits, you deserve the same protections of any American in every circumstance.

With that last sentence, Fetterman appears to be saying that there should be no right to claim religious freedom in opposing the transgender agenda. Fetterman’s pro-transgender agenda is no secret but the candidate makes sure to carefully couch it in more palatable public phrasing. He has expressed his support for allowing biological males to play girls’ sports. Townhall’s Spencer Brown writes:
 

During the Pennsylvania Democrats' U.S. Senate primary debate in April, Fetterman was asked whether he supported biological males competing in women's sports at the youth and college level. "Yes," was his simple response. He continued by accusing those who try to protect women's athletics as being on the wrong side of history, saying "we will look back on that as a shameful chapter if we don't immediately stop."

His same opposition to protecting women's sports and female athletes was expressed in Fetterman's response to a bill in West Virginia that barred biological males from competing in women's athletics from middle school through college.

Fetterman is also closely tied to the mother of a then-8-year-old boy being raised as a girl who infamously asked Democrat presidential nominee Joe Biden a question about transgender youth at a nationally televised October 2020 town hall:
 

I know this family well. I’m proud to count this family as dear friends.

They make our commonwealth better.

They make their community better.

This is a beautiful family. Full stop.

Hate has *no* place in PA.
🖤🤎❤️🧡💛💚💙💜@EzraNanes https://t.co/njksERGCy0

— John Fetterman (@JohnFetterman) October 29, 2020

The woman, Mieke Haeck, is married to the Democrat mayor of State College, home of Penn State University. Her husband, Ezra Nanes, unsuccessfully ran for a state Senate seat in 2018 and was endorsed by Fetterman.

As The Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway noted at the time, the unabashedly pro-Biden big-box media were stacking “town halls” meant to portray the befuddled and isolated candidate as a man answering to average citizens with Democrat operatives like Haeck:
 

The ABC event also featured Mieke Haeck, listed as a physical therapist. Haeck happens to be the wife of Ezra Nanes, who ran unsuccessfully for the Pennsylvania State Senate two years ago. Nanes now serves as on the Centre County Democratic Committee.

“My youngest daughter is transgender. The Trump administration has attacked the rights of transgender people, banning them from military service, weakening nondiscrimination protections and even removing the word ‘transgender’ from some government websites,” Haeck said in the near empty auditorium. “How will you as president reverse this dangerous and discriminatory agenda and ensure that the lives and rights of LGBTQ people are protected under U.S. law?”

Sounds like an undecided voter.

Nanes continues to aggressively promote the transgender agenda today in his role as mayor of State College as he and Haeck put their confusedly-dressed son on public display. Now that he is in general election mode, Fetterman has been even more careful about soft-pedaling his extremist pro-transgender position while still not backing away from it. “Of all the problems facing PA, do you know how many of them will be solved by attacking trans kids? ZERO,” he tweeted July 8. Here’s how he explained his stance to the noxious cultural Marxist rag Teen Vogue in an interview posted Oct. 19:
 

Schools should be safe havens for our kids. It’s vile the way the GOP has turned trans kids into a political punching bag.

As lieutenant governor, I always stood with the LGBTQ+ community and fought for state and local laws to prohibit anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination. I regularly ordered the display of Pride flags, including the Trans Pride flag, from the balcony at the State Capitol in Harrisburg, even after Republican lawmakers banned the practice.

In the Senate, I will work to eliminate the filibuster so we can pass the Equality Act and codify protections for the LGBTQ+ community into law.

It’s clear Fetterman wants to emphasize a simplistic “bullying” argument in order to downplay his insane belief that gender is not a biological fact. That the state education department is attempting to brainwash the schoolchildren of Pennsylvania with this very lunacy at the same time that Fetterman serves as the number two politician in the state captures the magnitude of the threat this deranged radical poses to the nation if he manages to make his way to the U.S. Senate.

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