Gov. JB Pritzker emphasized the urgent need to defend transgender rights and fight authoritarianism while delivering a passionate speech March 24 at the Human Right Campaign’s Los Angeles Dinner.
Pritzker’s speech, available on YouTube, touched on several points, including transgender rights, threats to LGBTQ+ progress and the need for mass action to defend the U.S. against authoritarianism under President Donald Trump’s administration.
On transgender issues, the governor said Democrats must not take the “soul-sucking path of sacrificing the most persecuted for that which we deem to be most popular,” referencing the handful of Democratic leaders who have recently backtracked on their support for the trans community. This includes California Gov. Gavin Newsom and former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel.
“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,” Pritzker said. “Well I am. We are. We will.”
The governor evoked Chicago’s history as home to the first known gay rights organization—the Society for Human Rights, which inspired activist Harry Hay to found the Mattachine Society in Los Angeles—before going into his own personal connection to the LGBTQ+ community.
“As a little kid growing up in Silicon Valley in the 1970s, my mother was an activist for reproductive rights and LGBTQ+ rights, and she took me to Pride parades back when they weren’t really parades—they were protests,” Pritzker said. “So I have to laugh when I hear the right wing carry on about the dangers of exposing kids to trans people or same-sex couples, because I’m living proof that introducing your kids to the Gay Agenda might result in them growing up to be governor.”
Pritzker warned that Trump and his Republican allies in Congress are looking to reverse the LGBTQ+ victories that have been made since then, and he cautioned that these attacks will not stop at drag queens and transgender people.
“Tomorrow, it’s your marriage license and your job they want to take,” Pritzker said. “Bending to the whims of a bully will not end his cruelty. It will only embolden him.”
Pritzker also accused Trump and his allies of undermining American democracy and “intentionally breaking the American system of government so they can rebuild it in their own image.”
The Trump administration has already gone after cancer research, HIV prevention and regulations for drinking water and clean air, Pritzker said. At the same time, Trump and his allies have moved to give tax breaks to the ultra wealthy, relying on the middle class to pay for them.
Pritzker called for immediate action and mass activism to counter these threats, urging people to protest, attend politicians’ town halls, contact Congress and support organizations like the Human Rights Campaign or pro-LGBTQ+ candidates.
“The response to authoritarianism isn’t acquiescence,” Pritzker said. “Bullies respond to one thing and one thing only: a punch in the face.”