Why I'm Not Voting

I can't cast my vote for a political party that has abandoned women and gay people.

I’m a tried-and-true liberal American. I believe in individual rights, civil liberties, and democracy. I’ve voted Democrat in every election since 2004—the first year I was old enough to vote. I’ve campaigned for Democratic candidates, marriage equality, and legislation that would ban discrimination against transgender people in employment and housing.

My fellow liberals tell me this is the most important election in U.S. history. That if I don’t vote blue, I can kiss liberal democracy goodbye. I’ll admit, they might have a point. Donald Trump’s denial of the 2020 election results caused a national crisis. It eroded the American people’s faith in our electoral process. That, to me, is inexcusable. I fear that if he loses, it will happen again.

But I’m not voting blue. In fact, I’m not voting at all. Because the party I belonged to, the party I believed in, is not the party I once knew.

The Democratic Party is no longer the party that is for gay people and women. 

The progressive position, embraced by Democrats, used to be that there was no “right way” to be a boy or a girl. That boys can like dolls and girls can play football. Not so today. Today, so-called progressives tell young boys that if they like pink, mermaids, and long, flowing dresses, they might be girls “on the inside,” and they tell young girls that if they prefer short hair and hate makeup, they might really be boys.

What we have known for years, decades, maybe centuries, is that most gender-nonconforming children—that is, butch girls or girly boys, like the sissy little boy I once was—will grow up to be gay. And yet the Democratic Party advocates for medical treatments that block the natural development of these young people. Medical treatments that leave them sterile and often sexually nonfunctional. Medical treatments that began as nothing more than an attempt to turn homosexual young people into straight adults.

Talk about conversion therapy!

This is not progressive. This is regressive, illiberal, and antigay.

And, like Donald Trump’s election denial, it is inexcusable.

During her speech at a campaign event in Michigan last week, Michelle Obama spoke directly to American men who are thinking about sitting this election out. “Are you, as men, prepared to look into the eyes of the women and children you love and tell them that you supported this assault on our safety?” she said, after detailing the consequences of Republican-led anti-abortion laws.

Okay, let’s talk about women’s and children’s safety.

Let’s talk about the incarcerated males, who, because of Democratic policies, have been sent to women’s prisons. Just this past January, NBC New York reported that a former female inmate at Riker’s Island is suing the state, alleging that the jail staff ignored her complaints about a trans-identified male who had groped her in the shower. The man, she says, ended up sexually assaulting her while she slept.

Don’t believe that female inmate? Well, in April 2022, another man was sentenced to seven years in prison for rape. He too identified as a transwoman, and he too was placed in the women’s jail on Riker’s Island. He raped a female inmate in the shower.

Now let’s talk about the males in women’s sports who injure female athletes and take away their scholarships and opportunities. According to a 2024 United Nations report titled “Violence against women and girls in sport,” injuries have included “knocked-out teeth, concussions resulting in neural impairment, broken legs and skull fractures.” The report also states that “over 600 females in more than 400 competitions have lost more than 890 medals in 29 different sports.”

Six-hundred females!

And Democrats not only oppose legislation that protects women’s sports; they’re the ones who wrote the policies that allow males to compete against women to begin with.

Let’s talk about the fact that, in many U.S. states, if a woman sees a naked man in the women’s locker room, where she and her young daughter might undress and shower after an aerobics class or a dip in the pool, she has no right to demand that that naked man leave. Because of Democratic policies, all that naked man has to say is, “I am a woman.” And he has the legal right to stride right into that communal shower with that mother and her young daughter.

This is not progressive. It is regressive, illiberal, and anti-woman.

And it is inexcusable.

I’ve learned a lot since I started speaking out about these issues. One is how little the American people know about the medical harm being done to gays and lesbians under the guise of “gender-affirming care,” mainly due to a dereliction of duty by mainstream journalists. Another is how many American liberals agree with my opinions on these issues. Liberals who, like me, have only ever voted Democrat.

They too don’t want to see another Trump term. But, like me, they cannot in good conscience cast a vote for a political party that stands behind policies that are causing irrevocable harm to gay people and women. They too see the Democratic Party as a mere shadow of its former self.

A few days ago, on the phone with a friend—another gay American, who also will not be voting this year—I said that if Kamala Harris voiced her opposition to the antigay and anti-woman policies that proliferated during the Biden Administration, I would happily cast my vote for her on Tuesday. My friend answered, “Me too.” Yet Harris has done no such thing. And all signs suggest that a Harris administration would just be more of the same.

My friend and I know we are not alone. We both believe that it is because of these very issues that the Democratic Party has bled support. It is because of these issues that so many liberal Americans now find themselves politically homeless.

And it is because of these issues that, against all odds, a divisive, narcissistic election denier has another shot at winning the U.S. presidency.