Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey repeatedly supported efforts to allow men in women’s spaces and called Republicans “extreme” for focusing on transgender issues.
When the NCAA announced it was pulling its 2016-17 neutral-site games from North Carolina over legislation banning trans-identifying males from women’s bathrooms and locker rooms, Casey invited them to Pennsylvania.
“Pennsylvania is proud of its diversity across the Commonwealth,” the Democrat wrote in a September 2016 letter to the president of the NCAA. “We strive to achieve equality for the people who both reside and visit the Commonwealth regardless of race, gender, religion, sexual orientation or sexual identification.”
Sen. Bob Casey is now lobbying the NCAA to bring games once scheduled for North Carolina to Pennsylvania. #Palestra pic.twitter.com/VuyVnrv280
— Dan McQuade (@dhm) September 15, 2016
“I certainly wish it was a letter nobody had to write,” Casey told Philadelphia Gay News at the time. “If the state government in North Carolina had done the right thing, nobody would have to write a letter suggesting alternate locations.”
“On most days,” Casey told the LGBTQ publication, the state of Pennsylvania “is both more tolerant and more accepting than what the state government in North Carolina displayed.”
Several years later, in August 2020, Casey called Republicans “extreme” for focusing on males in women’s spaces.
“No one should fear for their safety because of the gender with which they identify,” he tweeted, referring to an article on the beating of a trans-identifying man. “Yet some extreme Republican politicians care more about what bathrooms transgender people use, or what sports team they play on, than they do about violence against transgender women of color.”
In 2021, Casey cosponsored the radical Equality Act, which would have amended the 1964 Civil Rights Act to prevent “discrimination on the basis of sex, gender identity, and sexual orientation,” meaning that men who identify as women could not be denied access to female locker rooms, prisons, shelters, and more.
Democrats like Casey downplayed fears about men in women’s spaces, arguing that the Equality Act is about protecting people who identify as LGBTQ from discrimination. “I believe LGBTQ+ individuals, like all individuals, should be able to live and flourish in a safe and welcoming environment without fear of harassment or discrimination,” Casey said at the time.
In May, the Daily Caller News Foundation exposed a June 2023 letter from Casey in which he expressed support for “young adult” transgender transition attempts. He also said that the multiplying concerns about males in women’s sports were based on “overgeneralized” and “unfounded assumptions.”
“The decision to transition is a profoundly significant and challenging one that young adults make after careful consideration,” Casey wrote. “This is a conclusion that young adults reach after extensive consultation with their medical providers and loved ones, and with the knowledge of the tremendous social obstacles that unfortunately lie ahead.”
Casey, who did not immediately respond to requests for comment from The Daily Wire, is supported by the far-left Human Rights Campaign and GLAAD, two major LGBTQ organizations that support transgender surgeries and procedures for children.
Though Casey’s Republican opponent, Dave McCormick, does not specifically mention transgender issues in his platform, he has pushed back against males in women’s sports and criticized his opponent for voting in support of such efforts.
“Bob Casey actually voted for biological males to compete in women’s sports,” he said in their debate earlier this month.
“The very idea of allowing biological males to compete with biological females is fundamentally unfair,” McCormick said in a fireside chat in June, where he also pushed back against ideological education in schools.
“Our schools are introducing transgender ideology to young children before they are old enough to form their own views as adults,” he said. “And so I think it’s deeply troubling. It’s something that I would be completely opposed to as a senator…We need to get commonsense back.”
A new poll released this week by Atlas Intel found that McCormick had taken the lead in the Pennsylvania senate race: 48.3% of respondents said they would vote for McCormick, while 47.1% said they would work for Casey.
