Rep. Ro Khanna: You don’t have to see someone suffer to become a warrior for LGBTQ+ rights

Most modern Democrats (and a handful of Republicans) have their personal story of coming around to support LGBTQ+ rights. Their child came out and told them about being bullied. One of their friends was discriminated against. A family member had a heart-to-heart with them about the violence they’ve faced. A staff member with a “wonderful” partner couldn’t get married. Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) doesn’t. He didn’t need one.

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Khanna didn’t need someone else to suffer to see the light. Instead, he says that basic empathy drove him to be an ally.

Khanna’s parents immigrated to America from India – where his grandfather was imprisoned alongside Gandhi during the country’s fight for independence — and he has carried the family legacy through his political career.

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He was at the forefront of the effort to add an X gender marker on passports, has been a staunch supporter of civil rights legislation like the Equality Act, and hasn’t hesitated to speak out against far-right attacks on the queer community. Why? Because he should.

LGBTQ Nation spoke to Khanna about the role of straight politicians in the LGBTQ+ movement, the reality on Capitol Hill, and the basic kindness of empathy.

LGBTQ Nation: What a crazy year it’s it’s been. Obviously, for the LGBTQ+ community, we need straight people to help. It can’t just be queer politicians because there aren’t enough of them. So, what brings you to the fight? It seems like everybody has that friend or relative or an experience that influenced them. Everybody’s got a story. What’s yours?

Rep. Khanna: Mine is probably rooted in my values from my childhood, growing up in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and my grandfather spent four years in jail alongside Gandhi as part of India’s independence moment. So, from a young age, I grew up being taught about the dignity and worth of every human being. He literally spent years of his life in jail fighting for those principles.

Growing up in school as a son of immigrants with a funny-sounding name, I used to get teased. And I just thought bullying is cruel, and it’s not something that should have any place in society. So, for me, it’s about sort of a broad honor principle that we shouldn’t pick on people, we shouldn’t be cruel to people. We should treat everyone with basic dignity. School, in particular, can be a pretty mean place if you don’t fit in, and the folks now being picked on are often LGBTQ or trans. Standing up for them is standing up for the kind of decency and kindness that I would have wanted in my school experience and that my grandfather fought for for every person.

LGBTQ Nation: I have to admit, sometimes covering Congress feels like covering a high school, with the constant picking on people and snide, mean comments. They’re even on social media constantly, just bad-mouthing everyone.

RK: I think it is like a high school, though, in some ways, worse with the insults.

I probably didn’t meet someone who was gay until college and someone trans until later in the Bay Area. But I don’t think it requires knowing someone who has gone through an experience of discrimination, who’s LGBTQ or trans, to stand up for kindness and decency. Right? I think we have to think about our own experiences and the cruelty we have faced and then say, “Why would you want any person to face that?” You don’t want to have everyone need to have an awakening.

LGBTQ Nation: I agree with that. One of the things that always hurts me a little bit is the idea that somebody has to suffer for them to be able to do the right thing. Speaking of people that were in your life, who are the queer people in your life that influence you now?

RK: Many people who work with me have very thoughtful views and have helped educate me on the issue. There’s a particular person that I met during the Bernie [Sanders] campaign in New Hampshire, a state representative who is trans that I ended up working with on the passport bill. She brought to my attention that you didn’t get to have the gender that you wanted identified as on your passport, and some people wanted not to have a gender identifier. She did a bill like that for driver’s licenses in New Hampshire, and we stayed in touch. That’s what inspired me to do the bill on passports. President Biden, of course, did that through executive action at the State Department. So, she had a particular influence on my getting more active on a political basis.

LGBTQ Nation: The X gender marker is not something that you would typically think a cisgender man is going to get involved in as an issue. Usually, straight politicians are always going on about marriage equality or the same generic things over and over again. They claim they’re going to make sure the Equality Act passes, and then it never does. Everybody campaigns on it, but nobody ever bothers to mention that it will take bipartisan support that isn’t there. An X gender marker was something that could actually be accomplished.

RK: I started to hear the real stories. I mean, this is not theoretical. I remember I met a mom who talked about how her daughter is trans and didn’t want to travel. She was so embarrassed about traveling because she could not stomach the thought of having a gender listed that was different than how she identified. I started to hear these stories.

I have a staff person on my team who is very passionate about these issues. And she kind of pushed the envelope and said, “Look, this is a place where we can really make a difference. Let’s introduce a bill.” She took the lead in introducing the bill, and we got a lot of groups involved. I give the President, of course, the credit. But the fact that we introduced the bill, the fact that we got support, and the fact that it became part of the conversation in the caucus helped influence the issue to make it an administration priority.

LGBTQ Nation: A large part of the role of straight people in politics, when it comes to queer issues, is just behind-the-scenes influencing. I don’t think anybody’s asking everyone just to be a super champion, to go out and lead the charge. A lot of politics is nothing more than influence, being able to color some of the issues, put a face to it, and help push things.

RK: To describe it in cases of fundamental values, right? I mean, I think when you have someone who is straight or cisgender talk about these things and say, “Look, this is about recognizing people’s identity and respecting that. This is about making sure that people can have dignity and self-worth in who they are,” then people say, “yeah, that’s just common sense. You know, that’s being a kind human being.” That’s why it’s crucial to have a lot of allies making these points. If someone were discriminating against my being of Hindu faith or my being Indian-American, I wouldn’t want just Hindu Americans or Indian-Americans talking, I’d want people saying, you know, “This is a country of multiple faiths. This is a country where we have people of multiple heritages.” And so it’s important for us to bring it back to basic values.

Right now, the Speaker of the House [Mike Johnson] is not only talking about criminalizing gay marriage but is criticizing the amount of high school students identifying as gay or trans. I mean, literally saying that there is a national crisis because more people today feel comfortable expressing their identity or their sexual orientation. We have to push back against this and strongly say, “This is America; this is a place of freedom. This is where people get to decide how they want to live their lives and pursue happiness. And what you’re doing is pushing back against the very fundamental constitutional values of this country.” It actually has little to do with LGBTQ or trans or straight; it has to do with “Do you believe in the fundamental principle of this country? That people get to define the pursuit of happiness as they want it, and not as it’s prescribed to them by the government or some other institution?”

LGBTQ Nation: Things have been rough in politics lately, from Mike Johnson down to the state legislatures. What do you see in Congress? What’s going on that can give people hope?

RK: Look, I’m not gonna give people hope for 2024; we’re gonna get nothing significant passed out of the House of Representatives with Mike Johnson as Speaker. I mean, that’s the reality. It’s a defensive game. But what I am seeing is that the House Democratic Caucus is a lot more unified, right? You used to have dozens of House Democrats dissenting from basic civil rights like the Equality Act. In the Senate, you still have a few stragglers, but even that is becoming more unified. So this gives me real hope that when we have the presidency, Senate, and House again, we can get something like the Equality Act passed because you’re gonna have enough Mitt Romney-type Republicans.

We’re at least a year out. It depends on the 2024 outcome and on when we have that trifecta again, and it depends on making sure that you have at least 60 senators who share that view. What gives me hope is we’re probably around 50 to 53, as opposed to 30, and we’re at 215 House members as opposed to 170. So, the process is slowly working. You look at the civil rights movement; it took a lot of civil rights bills before we got the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Progress in America is always slow, and it’s always hard fought. Real hope is hope that recognizes that the fight is a long one. I mean, my grandfather spent 15 years of his life fighting for India’s independence. People are sick of false hope, of politicians saying, “Okay, just elect us, and we will do it.” I think they want to know the real battle. And the real battle is how we get to 60 senators who are willing to do it. How do we have the House majority and the presidency?

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LGBTQ Nation: Have you seen any movement on the other side? Are there any quiet conversations that are happening? There are plenty of Republicans that would actually vote in favor of queer rights. They don’t have anything against it. It’s the party that says no. Are we seeing more people trying to use a little bit of influence and being willing to speak up quietly in the caucus, unlike the Marjorie Taylor Greene kind of Republicans?

RK: I think you’re getting a dichotomy. You’re getting more people like Rob Portman, who left the Senate, who has a gay kid and understands that we need basic equality. And there are more Republicans like that getting elected because more people know someone in their family or a friend and are now more accepting. On the other hand, you’ve had the radicalization of the Republican primary base. In this environment, politically, it’s very, very hard for any Republican. Until you see the defeat of that radical Republican base, I think it’s going to be hard. But until this sort of MAGA extremism is defeated, I find it hard to think that you’re gonna get Republican support of the kind we need.

I think part of MAGA extremism is rooted in the demographic changes in this country. Women and gay folks and people of Indian origin are becoming part of leadership and the changing face of the country. There has never been a truly multiracial, multi-ethnic democracy in the world. So, I think to say that fear of the other is not going to be there is naive. Of course, so much depends on whether Donald Trump wins or not. It would be a huge degradation of American democracy, set us back tremendously, and embolden the MAGA wing to have a much longer influence on American life.

LGBTQ Nation: I appreciate your blunt honesty instead of spinning a political fantasy and ability to skip the “I saw somebody have to get discriminated against, so I saw the light” campaign story. There’s enough cruelty going on right now in politics. Not everybody needs to suffer for somebody to be able to do the right thing, and making that the standard does a disservice to humanity.

RK: I appreciate the straightforward way that you’re approaching these issues. I wish more people would see it simply as a matter of dignity for every person because I think it would get us past a lot of the nonsense that is cruelty for political advantage. It’s nothing more than that.

That sort of empathy is right. If we were required to see the suffering of every person in a group before we could stand up for them, it would be very impoverished politics.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.