Frank Liberati is an anti-transgender Democratic running for the Michigan House of Representatives (Photo by Pitcher23, via Wiki Commons), left, and Trans woman Joanna Whaley is a Democratic candidate for Michigan’s House of Representatives.
If you are a Democrat who participates in the scapegoating and dehumanizing of transgender people, you are a disgrace. You should be ashamed of yourself. You should take all of the seats and shut all of the fucks up.
Leave transgender people alone or, even better, work against their oppression as opposed to participating in it.
Republicans have gone all-in on trans hate. They think it’s a winning issue.
They’ve also gone all in on rounding up immigrants and putting them in concentration camps, stripping reproductive rights in as many states as they can, letting ICE agents terrorize our cities, looking the other way when it comes to a rich and powerful sex trafficking ring, punishing poor people for daring to be poor, building data centers in your backyard to power an AI revolution nobody but rich tech bros want, telling people with substance use disorder to just die already, welcoming the spread of previously eradicated infectious diseases, eviscerating voting rights, being out and proud racists and making rich people richer.
The Democrats are not obligated to adopt any of these positions. In fact, if the Democrats were truly an opposition party, they would loudly reject what the Republicans are doing.
Instead, too many Democrats seem to think that the American people want this hateful, stupid, destructive shit.
We don’t. But far too many Democrats don’t seem to be listening.
Which brings me to Michigan’s own Frank Liberati, who “represented Michigan’s 13th House District from 2015 to 2021” and is running for “Michigan’s 2nd House District in November,” according to the Michigan Advance.
Late last month, Liberati “filed a campaign complaint against one of his primary opponents, a transgender woman, alleging that she violated state campaign law by not listing her deadname on her affidavit of identity submitted to run for office.”
Now, if you don’t know, running for office requires a bunch of paperwork, and it’s really important that you get it in on time and fill it out correctly. There are plenty of cases where people do not get to be on the ballot because they mess it up.
Liberati is basically accusing Joanna Whaley of lying for not using her deadname on this paperwork.
But here’s the thing: Despite some hiccups in the court process along the way, Joanna Whaley is indeed her legal name. Liberati is simply being an asshole.
“I did not expect this from Frank Liberati. I expected this from one of the Republicans,” Whaley told the Michigan Advance. “I absolutely would have expected this coming from the other side of the aisle, but not within my own party.”
And why would she? The Democrats are the party of equality and social justice, right?
Right.
And in case you think I’m being sarcastic, I am.
And I’m not.
If you care about social justice, the Republican Party has absolutely nothing to offer you.
They are the party of social harm. They love hurting people and they’re damn near gleeful about it.
The Democrats, on the other hand, are supposed to be different. So, every time Democrats adopt Republican positions, especially one as manufactured as the panic over transgender people, they erase a little more of those differences.
And when voters who typically vote for Democrats see that, they become a little less likely to vote.
As the Michigan Advance explains, the person currently representing the 2nd District is Tullio Liberati, Frank’s brother, and he voted for a resolution to ban transgender high school athletes last year. Whaley cites this vote as one of the reasons she chose to run for the 2nd District seat.
“I think it further reminds people that there really is only one person who acts and votes like a Democrat in this race, and we’ve been without a Democrat in that seat for a long time, even though they’ve had a D next to their name,” Whaley told the Michigan Advance.
In other words, the Liberati brothers have got to go. It’s time for a Democrat who isn’t going to use her power to purposely hurt people to take this seat.
Whaley is not afraid to stand up for herself and for everyone who comes after her.
“My hope for future trans candidates is that we’ve gotten bloody enough to bust the hole in the wall that they can just walk through it,” she told the Michigan Advance. “I’m willing to take those punches to make it easier for folks in the future.”
The Michigan Advance reports that two transgender women, Whaley and Toni Mua, are running for the Michigan legislature in 2026. Consider donating to their campaigns and/or volunteering your time to make history and to say good riddance to guys like Liberati.
D’Anne Witkowski is a writer living in Michigan with her wife and son. She has been writing about LGBTQ+ politics for nearly two decades. Follow her on Twitter @MamaDWitkowski.