A Wyoming newspaper is under fire from GLAAD after running an op-ed from conservative writer Mona Charen that referred to Vermont’s transgender Democratic gubernatorial candidate Christine Hallquist as a male “who now prefers to dress as a woman.”
“Instead of providing a platform for medically and scientifically debunked lies, media should use this moment to elevate voices who can properly share stories and insights with their readers about who transgender people really are,” said GLAAD vice president Zeke Stokes in a tweet from GLAAD’s official account.
"Instead of providing a platform for medically and scientifically debunked lies, media should use this moment to elevate voices who can properly share stories and insights with their readers about who transgender people really are.” — @zekestokes https://t.co/T1mVu6aMg8
— GLAAD (@glaad) August 22, 2018
In her piece which ran in Wyoming’s Casper Star-Tribune on Tuesday, Charen said she didn’t consider Hallquist a woman and suggested that people should just be “polite and respectful” to her.
“If someone born a man now wears a dress and has breast implants and wants me to call him ‘she,’ I will respect that (even if I do not believe that makes him a woman). It’s important to be polite and respectful,” Charen wrote.
“Part of the progressive project is to shoehorn certain new nonconformists, particularly sexual nonconformists, into the minority category,” she added. “These favored groups — transgender people are the flavor of the month — are compared explicitly to African-Americans, and thus any accomplishment is celebrated as progress for them personally and for our society for shedding its prejudice.”
Josh Wolfson, the Star-Tribune’s editor-in-chief, did not immediately respond to request for comment from TheWrap.
Charen, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, is no stranger to controversy. At the Conservative Political Action Conference in February, she was booed after she denounced President Trump and had to be escorted from the venue for her own safety.
This is not the first time a prominent conservative has gotten into trouble over their coverage of Hallquist. Last week, “Fox & Friends” co-host Ainsley Earhardt called her “that transgender” before swiftly apologizing for the remark.
“I was responding to the reporter’s comments when I moved too quickly and couldn’t recall Christine Hallquist’s name,” Earhardt told TheWrap. “As a person of faith, I sincerely promise I never ever meant anything derogatory and I am sorry it may have come off that way.”