Cher speaks out for trans rights: “We’ve got to stand together”

Cher is sounding the alarm about the unprecedented number of anti-trans bills that have been introduced by Republicans in state houses across the U.S. this year.

While promoting her first-ever holiday album, Christmas, out this Friday, the “Believe” singer seemed aghast when asked about the GOP’s anti-trans crusade ahead of the 2024 election.

Related:

Cher reportedly postpones wedding from 36-year-old boyfriend Alexander Edwards

… or she broke up with him entirely?

“It’s something like 500 bills they’re trying to pass,” she told The Guardian.

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In fact, the American Civil Liberties Union is currently tracking 501 anti-LGBTQ+ bills that have been introduced, and in some cases passed into law, across the country during the 2023 legislative session. Those include bans on gender-affirming care for trans young people and laws restricting which bathrooms trans people can use and the sports teams on which they can compete.

“I was with two trans girls the other night – and of course my own child,” Cher continued, referring to her son, Chaz Bono, who is trans. “I was saying, ‘We’ve got to stand together.’ I don’t know what their eventual plan is for trans people. I don’t put anything past them.”

A long-time LGBTQ+ ally—not to mention a gay icon—Cher has spoken candidly about her struggle to come to terms with Bono coming out as trans.

“I think it’s about the fear, mostly. I felt, who will this new person be? Because I know who the person is now, but who will the new person be and how will it work and will I have lost somebody?” she told PrideSource in 2018.

In the years since Bono began transitioning in 2008, however, Cher has been a tireless defender of her son, blasting transphobic critics on the Ellen DeGeneres Show in 2011. “If you got that excess time and that amount of hostility, I’m not so sure that I can say anything to you that would make you change your feelings,” she said. “Those are such feelings of hostility and fear, that I don’t know that I would have any magic words to make you feel more comfortable and to soothe you into not being terrified of my child dancing on ‘Dancing With the F–king Stars.’”

Following the 2016 election, she told LGBTQ Nation “I shudder to think” what Donald Trump’s presidency might mean for transgender Americans.

“I almost got an ulcer the last time,” Cher told The Guardian of a potential second Trump victory. “If he gets in, who knows? This time I will leave [the country].”