Democrats love supporting women — unless those women defend their identity and deny the idea that males can become females.
Maud Maron is a centrist Democratic candidate in New York’s 10th Congressional District. She’s pushed back on COVID policies that kept children masked in schools into 2022. She calls for investment in law enforcement rather than defunding the police. She publicly questions gender ideology and opposes including men in women’s sports (her Twitter bio includes #IStandWithJKRowling). Yet she remains, as Suzy Weiss called her, “one of those classic big-city liberals — pro-choice, a longtime public defender at Legal Aid, a Bernie Sanders contributor.”
The Brooklyn Democratic clubs determined yesterday that Maron’s views on gender make her unfit for a public platform. The collective of clubs, including Lambda Independent Democrats, New Kings Democrats, Brooklyn Young Democrats, South Central Brooklyn United for Progress, and Equality NY, decided jointly to exclude Maron from an upcoming forum featuring candidates for NY-10.
Citing her criticism of Biden’s expansion of Title IX, they accuse her of using her platform to “spread hate and misinformation around gender identity and the transgender community” by “intentionally citing falsehoods and scientific inaccuracies to justify bigotry.”
The decision, the clubs said, was made “with the welfare of the LGBTQ+ community in mind.” Here’s the kicker: These clubs think they can decide what best promotes the community’s welfare.
Rather than encouraging open debate and letting New Yorkers decide for themselves whether or not they will be “hurt” by Maron’s ideas, the party is deciding from the get-go. “New Yorkers do not need a representative whose office will be used to hurt people,” they assert.
Such anti-democratic action by Democratic Party clubs was not lost on Maron, who responded by saying that excluding the only centrist candidate “is simply not serious.”
“The Brooklyn Democratic Clubs’ refusal to include me in a candidate forum shows that the ideological party purge continues, to the detriment of the Democratic Party and our voters,” Maron said. “All this announcement does is attempt to control how voters think by shielding them from a moderate, common sense candidate’s viewpoint which is the absolute opposite of what a democratic club should be about.”
Brooklyn Democratic clubs ought at least to give Maron a chance against other candidates in the August primary, which includes former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, current 17th District Rep. Mondaire Jones (D-NY), New York State Assemblywoman Yuh-Line Niou, City Council District member Carlina Rivera, New York state Assemblywoman Jo Anne Simon, and former federal prosecutor Daniel Goldman. If the clubs are right, they should have no fear. The votes will reflect Maron’s unpopularity.
But voters may well agree with Maron. A Washington Post poll found that 58% of Americans oppose including biologically male transgender athletes in professional women’s sports. In a recent Pew Research poll, 62% said meeting the educational needs of K-12 students was given “too little priority” in the nation’s COVID response. Amid rising violent crime, the “defund the police” movement has grown unpopular, with President Joe Biden distancing himself from the idea and the majority believing Republicans would do a better job creating safe communities.
The Brooklyn Democratic clubs demonstrate why Democrats are losing voters nationwide. Moderates and freethinkers are no longer welcome in the party.
Unless you are an orthodox believer in the infallible truths of gender ideology, you will be swiftly excommunicated.
Katelynn Richardson is a Summer 2022 Washington Examiner fellow.
