A Kansas Democrat Called Trans Girls “Biological Males." So why are LGBTQ+ outlets covering him like he's a hero?
A network of LGBTQ+ outlets is pinkwashing a transphobic candidate.
A group of self-identified queer news outlets bolstered a wave of misinformation about Democratic Senate Nominee Adam Hamilton by taking his words out of context to seem more supportive of the trans community than they were.
In a recent interview with local Kansas City news outlet KMBC, Hamilton answered two questions about transgender people. The first, which asked where he stood on transgender rights, was met with an answer that condemned “bullying” of minorities and stated Jesus tells him “love your neighbors as you love yourself.”
But seconds after that, when asked a follow-up question about trans athletes, Hamilton said, “I have a 12-year-old granddaughter. I don’t want biological males competing with my granddaughter in sports where she could be hurt or where there’s an unfair advantage for them.” He added that his position is “just common sense.”
That is not a pro-trans position.
Yet the answer to the first question – a question that specifically asked about his stance on trans rights, but was answered without any concrete policy stances or positions – was the clip that went viral. It received glowing coverage by ostensibly queer outlets including The Advocate, LGBTQ Nation, and PinkNews.
He served them nothing. They ate it up.
The Advocate, an online magazine that calls itself “the queer paper of record,” ran a story with the headline “Kansas megachurch pastor running for U.S. Senate has a message for Republicans: Stop bullying trans people.” The story, credited to reporter Jacob Ogles, omitted mention of the misgendering or any additional context surrounding Hamilton’s anti-trans views, despite including the interview as an embedded link.
I reached out to The Advocate yesterday for comment, and they did not respond prior to publication. But after I reached out, they did update the story’s lede to include the fact that Hamilton expressed “worries” about trans athletes and included the full quote further down in the article. The positive headline remained intact.
The Advocate did not respond to any of my questions, which included asking about the editorial process that allowed this to happen, if their reporter or any editor even watched the video they linked in their own coverage, or if they thought laundering an anti-trans candidate as supportive of trans people was potentially harmful to the very readers they serve.
LGBTQ Nation, another queer outlet, published similar feel-good coverage about Hamilton. Their headline reads: “Red state Democrat praised for “excellent” response to trans rights question: “God bless this man.”
They, too, neglected to print the quote with accurate context and at time of publication, have not updated the story, which is credited to LGBTQ Nation’s deputy editor, Molly Sprayregen. Both LGBTQ Nation and Sprayregen did not respond to my request for comment prior to publication.
LGBTQ Nation’s story also included eight embedded posts from X (formerly Twitter) that celebrated Hamilton’s statement. Some of those quotes were not even from transgender people, the group that would have the most obvious standing to judge the impact of Hamilton’s comments.
PinkNews, a British LGBT outlet, released a story that printed the contextless quote, along with highlighting Hamilton’s opponent U.S. Senator Roger Marshall’s efforts to codify male and female into law as the only two sexes.
But Marshall and Hamilton do not fully disagree on that stance. Hamilton has reiterated on multiple occasions his belief that trans girls, whom he misgenders consistently during his remarks, do not belong in sports alongside cisgender girls. He said on a debate stage with Marshall he believes there are only two genders. PinkNews described this by saying “Hamilton opposes allowing males to compete in female sports,” misgendering trans girls in the exact way Hamilton did.
PinkNews also did not respond to my request for comment. LGBTQ Nation and PinkNews have not updated their stories to accurately reflect Hamilton’s position.
Is this…journalism?
The publication of these articles is an unambiguous violation of journalistic ethical standards. If a candidate discusses how it is wrong to bully minorities, then immediately goes on to bully minorities within seconds, it is irresponsible to quote the former without discussing the latter.
The Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics states: “Make certain that headlines…and quotations do not misrepresent. They should not oversimplify or highlight incidents out of context.”
That is exactly what these outlets did.
And while The Advocate may have corrected the quote, plenty of people who read their original article may never see that update, or they may only read the headline, which would leave them misunderstanding Hamilton’s position. The updated story cites Hamilton’s “worries” in its lede, but does not debunk the transphobic misinformation he is spreading until its very end, with a single line.
The science is settled on trans athletes – and it says there’s no reason not to let them play. If a flat earther expressed “worries” about his granddaughter falling off the face of the earth, outlets wouldn’t print it uncritically, regardless of how much time he spent giving lip service to respecting the dignity and humanity of his opposition.
This treatment raises clear and obvious concerns about the editorial processes and motivations fuelling coverage like this.
So why did this happen?
So why did all these queer outlets suddenly start glazing this guy? It’s hard to know for sure. None of the outlets responded to my inquiries about their editorial policies and fact-checking processes.
It is possible their reporters may not have watched the full video; instead, maybe they watched a viral clip and wrote up their stories, not knowing Hamilton contradicted himself seconds later.
Human Rights Campaign (HRC), which describes itself as a nonprofit “organized and operated for the promotion of the social welfare of the… LGBTQ+ community,” plastered Hamilton’s “love thy neighbors” moment across their social media.
“It’s that easy,” reads their Instagram caption. Their clip, like the aforementioned reporting, doesn’t include Hamilton’s further remarks, and seems to be where the video began gaining traction. (HRC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)
So maybe it’s laziness. Each of the aforementioned outlets releases a high volume of content. Perhaps that high volume came at the cost of their work’s integrity.
It’s also possible that they considered Hamilton’s position on trans athletes irrelevant to his support of transgender people. Conservative rhetoric about trans athletes has been a powerful wedge issue, but not everyone recognizes it for what it is.
It is, of course, impossible to square support of transgender people with calls to segregate trans children from their peers. If that’s the trap these outlets fell into, it casts doubt on their expertise as an outlet that’s supposedly meant to be serving transgender people.
Either way, it raises serious concerns about their ability to do the job they say they’re doing: serving a vulnerable minority audience in a time where they need it most.
So if they won’t publish accurate information about trans people, who will?
Well…trans women, of course.
The executive producer of the KMBC interview featured in the viral clip, Madison Gant, stated she was the one behind this line of questioning for KMBC.
Danielle Froom, the Bluesky poster who first called attention to the misinformation online, is also a trans woman.
Without trans journalists like Gant, we never get this insight into Hamilton in the first place. Without Froom, the out-of-context clip might’ve remained the only public record.
Still, it's easy to lose their voices in a media sphere widely dominated and controlled by cis people.
So I reached out to Froom and asked her how it feels when queer outlets publish reporting like this.
“When I see queer outlets buy into trans panic by blindly accepting false narratives, it makes me even more worried for our community than I already am,” she told me. “Feeding into disinformation, even through improper vetting, isn't just journalistic malpractice, it's actively dangerous to the very people you're purporting to support.”
She’s right about that danger.
Hamilton is Part of an Ugly Pattern
There is an obvious cost to spreading misinformation, no matter how small the topic. But what these outlets did – painting a transphobic candidate as an ally for their queer audiences – has a unique capacity for harm, especially right now.
This midterms season, Republicans have spent an estimated $183 million on anti-trans TV ads.
Yet Hamilton’s remarks place him among a growing coalition of Democratic politicians who have made transphobic campaign remarks, including voices like Amy Acton, Marcy Kaptur, and Josh Turek.
Hamilton’s comments and positioning are particularly reminiscent of U.S. Senate Candidate James Talarico’s transphobic trajectory. Talarico won the Democratic nomination for Senate in Texas after making comments about how god is nonbinary (good for them!) and saying there are six genders. Hamilton, a pastor, runs a megachurch that considers itself LGBTQ+ friendly and has been criticized for its sponsorship of local pride events.
Both men drew on their biblical backgrounds to position themselves as nominal trans allies, poised to potentially win over their historically red states, so queer outlets and mainstream media have covered their journeys with rapt attention. But after the primary, Talarico walked back those pro-trans comments the second he got in front of a Fox News anchor.
Hamilton’s specific views on transgender people merit further scrutiny, too, given their potential impacts.
Hamilton confessed in the KMBC interview he “does not know everything about there is to know about transgender people,” a fact made all the more clear when his next remarks contrasted being trans and straight, which are not mutually exclusive categories.
In that same interview, he expressed an interest in joining the U.S. Senate’s Healthcare committee. Transgender healthcare has faced major attacks in the Trump era, and on that committee, he would potentially shape policies that determine whether trans people get the healthcare coverage they need to survive.
Trans Kansans, too, are already under attack in their home state. Back in February, Kansas invalidated hundreds of driver’s licenses for transgender people with almost no warning.
In midterms that are widely anticipated to be a blue wave, trans Americans find themselves facing an attack from all sides: voting for the people who hate them or the people who hate them more. They are abandoned by the politicians who supposedly support them.
By failing to name Hamilton’s role in this pattern, queer news sites neglect their trans readers and rob them of an opportunity to make a fully-informed choice when they vote. They harm trans people’s ability to trust journalists.
And, like those transphobic Democrats, they tell their readers: Shut up, and take what we give you.
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