LGBTQ equality, pluralism, and human dignity

My position on LGBTQ equality begins with a line I am not willing to blur: human dignity is not negotiable. It is not conditional. It is not something to be weighed against political convenience, public discomfort, or someone else’s theology. Equal protection under the law is not a favor granted by the majority. It is a baseline obligation of government.

Utah has a long history of what gets called “compromise” on LGBTQ issues. Sometimes that has meant good-faith coalition-building that produced real and meaningful protections.

Too often, it has meant asking LGBTQ people to accept partial recognition, conditional safety, or delayed equality in exchange for political quiet. When the question is whether a group of people can live openly, access healthcare, keep their families intact, or participate fully in public life, compromise stops being pragmatic and starts becoming coercive.

My position is shaped by experience, not abstraction. I am a gay, married man. I worked directly on housing and employment nondiscrimination protections in Utah, and I know those protections mattered. I also know the difference between coalition-building and capitulation. A compromise that expands real protection can be worth making. A bargain that requires LGBTQ people to surrender part of their humanity to preserve someone else’s comfort is not. That is not equality.

I have seen the progress Utah is capable of making. I have also seen the recurring pattern in which LGBTQ people are told to wait, shrink, remain quiet, or accept less so that everyone else can remain comfortable. I reject that framework.

As a legislator, I will not support laws that trade away LGBTQ dignity for political consensus. I will oppose legislation that denies the existence or legitimacy of LGBTQ people, strips away medically appropriate healthcare, or treats identity as something the state is entitled to regulate. And where those laws have already been enacted, I will work to repeal them. Rights are not bargaining chips. Dignity is not a concession.

This commitment is not in conflict with religious freedom. It depends on taking religious freedom seriously. Every person has the right to their beliefs, conscience, worship, and faith tradition. That right is fundamental, and I will defend it. No one should be compelled by the state to profess a belief they do not hold, worship in a way they do not choose, or surrender their conscience to government authority.

But religious freedom and religious imposition are not the same thing. There is a clear and necessary boundary between protecting belief and enforcing belief. Government must never compel faith. It also must never codify one group’s religious doctrine as civil law for everyone else. A person’s faith does not grant them the authority to deny housing, employment, healthcare, public services, or legal recognition to someone who does not share that faith. Respecting belief does not require permitting discrimination. Protecting conscience does not require erasing another person’s identity.

Utah politics has too often framed LGBTQ equality as a conflict between competing “rights,” as though one person’s dignity must come at the expense of another person’s faith. That framing is false. We do not resolve disagreement by forcing marginalized people to shrink themselves until they fit comfortably within someone else’s theology. We resolve it through a secular, neutral government that protects both belief and equality without turning either into a weapon against the other.

The legislation targeting transgender Utahns is no longer a warning about where we might go. It is a record of where we have already gone.

During the 2026 session, the Legislature converted its 2023 moratorium on hormonal treatment for transgender minors into a much broader ban. Under the final law, only minors who were already receiving cross-sex hormones and were at least 16 years old when the law took effect may continue treatment. Other young people who had previously been allowed to receive care must be taken off hormonal treatment by January 28, 2027— not because their doctors changed their medical judgment, not because their parents withdrew consent, but because legislators who never examined, and have documented animous towards trangender existance, ordered it.

The Legislature also carved a new hole in Utah’s Fair Housing Act, allowing landlords in dormitories, boarding houses, shared rental properties, and other group-living arrangements to restrict occupancy according to what the law defines as biological sex at birth.

Another measure, HB183, sought to replace references to gender with sex throughout Utah law, restrict some transgender Utahns from certain public-facing jobs, and sharply limit changes to birth certificates. It passed the House before stalling in the Senate. The fact that it failed this year is not a reason for comfort. It is a warning about what some lawmakers intend to try again.

None of this is neutrality. These are acts of exclusion. It is antagonistic lawmaking. They single out a small population and invite stigma, surveillance, and hostility under the guise of “common sense” or “clarity.” When a legislature decides it understands a child’s medical needs better than that child’s doctor and parents, it is not protecting anyone. It is performing control.

When the state begins legislating identity, it stops governing and starts enforcing ideology. History is clear about where that leads. It does not produce stability, cohesion, or safety. It produces fear, sanctioned harm, and long-term damage to public trust.

I approach LGBTQ equality through a pluralistic lens rooted in the belief that infinite diversity in infinite combinations is our strength. Human beings are varied in identity, experience, belief, family, and expression. Systems that try to flatten that diversity inevitably become brittle. Systems that make room for difference adapt and endure.

Pluralism does not mean everyone agrees. It means disagreement is not settled through domination. It means the state does not get to decide which identities are legitimate or which families are real. It means government creates the conditions for people to live authentically without fear of legal punishment, exclusion, or erasure.

A healthy society should be mature enough to handle difference without panic, confident enough to protect minorities without requiring them to justify their existence, and wise enough to reject scapegoating as a substitute for governance.

From a constitutional standpoint, none of this is radical. Equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment does not contain exceptions for politically unpopular groups. Due process does not disappear when a legislature finds someone uncomfortable. Liberty does not depend on majority approval. When officials forget those obligations, courts can and should remind them— and citizens should be willing to hold them accountable.

My commitments are straightforward. I will defend the nondiscrimination protections Utahns already have in housing and employment and work to restore the protections this Legislature has weakened. I will support consistent protections in education, healthcare, and public accommodations. I will fight to repeal restrictions on medically appropriate care for transgender minors and oppose further political interference in decisions that belong to patients, families, and qualified healthcare professionals. I will resist every attempt to repackage discrimination as “balance” or “compromise.” I will support policies that allow LGBTQ people and families to live openly, safely, and with full legal recognition. And I will insist that civil rights enforcement be consistent, not conditional.

This framework does not place LGBTQ people above anyone else. It insists they are equal to everyone else. This principle also shapes how I intend to govern beyond LGBTQ policy. Ending culture-war government is one of the central reasons I am running. Utah’s Legislature has spent too much time turning resentment, public discomfort, and national partisan talking points into state law.

My opponent, Ken Ivory, has not merely voted along with that agenda. He has spent years helping drive it— sponsoring and supporting legislation that turns classrooms, libraries, identity, and personal freedom into political battlegrounds. That is not serious governance. It is antagonistic lawmaking: using the power of the state to provoke division, target vulnerable people, and keep Utahns fighting with one another while housing, healthcare, education, water, and the cost of living go unresolved.

I intend to be a very different kind of legislator. I will vote against culture-war legislation, regardless of where the talking points originated or how politically convenient the chosen target may be. I will work to end this cycle of governing through grievance and return the Legislature to its actual purpose: solving real problems, protecting constitutional rights, and building systems that allow a diverse state to live together in peace.

Utah does not need more laws designed to make neighbors fear one another. It needs lawmakers disciplined enough to refuse the bait.

A pluralistic society does not require uniformity. It requires boundaries. The boundary I will enforce as a legislator is simple and firm: you are free to believe as you wish, but you are not free to use the power of the state to deny another person’s humanity.

That is not radical. It is the foundation of a free society.

And it is not something I am willing to compromise.