One of the nation’s leading gay-rights advocacy groups is accusing Republican gubernatorial candidate Paul Mango of supporting a policy that would lead to a “surge of hate violence” against transgender Pennsylvanians, while costing the state economic harm as well.
In a statement, Human Rights Campaign Senior Vice President for Policy and Political Affairs JoDee Winterhof said Mr. Mango was “proposing to take Pennsylvania down the same path of anti-LGBTQ discrimination that has wracked North Carolina since the passage of their infamous HB2 law,” a measure that “put countless LGBTQ people at risk [and caused] $886.4 million in economic losses.”
The statement is a reaction to “Faith, Family, and Pennsylvania Values,” a six-page position paper — only one page of which outlines a policy agenda — released by the Mango campaign on Thursday. Among provisions that include an outright ban on abortions after 20 weeks and expanding charter schools, the plan pledges that Mr. Mango will “veto any ‘bathroom bill’ legislation violating presumed privacy for bathrooms and public facilities based on the idea that gender is a matter of personal choice.”
"The Human Rights Campaign is a radical left-wing group intent on attacking anyone of faith or who believes in traditional family values,” said campaign spokesman Matt Beynon Friday. “Paul Mango will not be bullied by them."
Controversy over access to bathrooms has become a lightning rod in Pennsylvania and across the country, with conservatives raising alarms that women and children may be at greater risk of assault if transgender people are allowed to use the restroom of the gender they identify with. There is no empirical evidence to verify that claim, and in places like Pittsburgh, which has expressly allowed transgender people to use the restroom of their choice since 2014, officials say there’s been no uptick in assaults.
North Carolina’s law, which required people to use the bathroom matching the gender on their birth certificate, touched off a major controversy during the 2016 election. But it did little for North Carolina’s then-governor Pat McCrory who, as the HRC noted today, was defeated for reelection amid business boycotts of the state.
The statement also blasted Mr. Mango for “running on a platform of defunding Planned Parenthood, one of the most crucial health care providers for the LGBTQ community. ... Paul Mango would do well to remember there are 360,000 LGBTQ voters — and millions more allies across the state of Pennsylvania — who won't stand for these kinds of attacks.”
Still, the position paper appears to have won over one well-known Pennsylvania conservative. Former U.S. Senator Rick Santorum is quoted lauding Mr. Mango as being “one candidate in the race for Governor who hasn’t succumbed to the pressures of the popular culture.”
One of Mr. Mango’s Republican rivals, state Senator Scott Wagner of York, has taken a much different stance on such issues, having championed anti-discrimination bills in the past. In 2016, when some conservatives fought such legislation by raising alarms over bathroom access, Mr. Wagner stood his ground.
“The fact that attempts have been made to intimidate me and other supporters ... to change the conversation to make it about men in women’s bathrooms should not deter us from our goal,” he said in a May 2016 statement. “Cities all across Pennsylvania have had ordinances similar [legislation] for well over 20 years without a single issue as it relates to bathrooms.” The bill in question, SB 974, died in committee.
Chris Potter: cpotter@post-gazette.com or 412-263-2533.
First Published: December 1, 2017, 8:57 p.m.
