How Republican Congressperson Nancy Mace Transformed from LGBTQ+ Ally to Anti-Trans Hawk

South Carolina Rep. Nancy Mace drew the ire of fellow conservatives after speaking out in a 2021 interview for LGBTQ+ equality. But when Sarah McBride, a Democrat from Delaware and a transgender woman, was elected to Congress – a historic first – Mace sponsored a bill intended to restrict her access to restrooms at the Capitol.

Brad Polumbo, the journalist who interviewed Mace for The Washington Examiner in 2021, contributed an op-ed piece to MSNBC in which he evinced surprise at the way Mace "introduc[ed] a resolution explicitly targeting her transgender colleague... that would bar McBride and other transgender women who work in the Capitol from accessing women's restrooms or other gender-based facilities."

"'I strongly support LGBTQ rights and equality,' Mace told me at the time," Polumbo wrote, going on to quote the congressperson saying, "No one should be discriminated against."

Polumbo recalled that Mace, during the interview, set out the basis for her view, saying, "I have friends and family that identify as LGBTQ," and adding, "Understanding how they feel and how they've been treated is important."

"Having been around gay, lesbian, and transgender people has informed my opinion over my lifetime."

"Times have changed," Polumbo wrote, "and, evidently, Mace has, too."

Indeed, Mace's rhetoric around the measure has a decidedly MAGA ring that stands out all the more clearly following a campaign by Donald Trump and JD Vance that spent millions demonizing transgender Americans.

"Just because a Congressman wants to wear a mini skirt doesn't mean he can come into a women's bathroom," Mace wrote in a post that misgendered McBride, before she went on to throw additional red meat to her transphobic base with the declaration, "There is nothing the Radical Left can do to stop me from protecting women and girls."

Precisely what sort of threat McBride would pose to "women and girls" was left unexplained, but the congressperson's views on the matter might be better understood from a tweet she posted on Nov. 21 that hurled similar vitriol.

"The Left wants to NORMALIZE balls in women's stalls," the tweet declared in vulgar terms. "Hell no. I'm NOT backing down."

The tweet promoted a T-shirt emblazoned with a symbol for a women's restroom and the provocative invitation, "Come and take it."

"Every purchase will help FUEL MY FIGHT to protect women and girls across America," Mace's tweet added.

Polumbo suggested that if ensuring the safety of women and girls is what Mace wants, she would do better to take that fight out of the restroom.

"Assaults by transgender women in women's bathrooms are incredibly, incredibly rare," Polumbo noted, "and there is zero reason to specifically believe that McBride is going to assault anyone in a restroom.

"What's more," Polumbo added, "any criminal who would enter a women's restroom intending to assault or harass a woman is clearly already undeterred by policies or laws. (This is the exact point Republicans themselves often make about signs designating certain areas as 'gun-free zones.')"

"And in practice," Polumbo pointed out, "women's restrooms are filled with private, individual stalls, so the most that could happen here is encountering a trans woman at the sink next to you."

Polumbo pointed out another confounding fallacy in Mace's narrative, writing that, "ironically, her resolution would lead to a perverse situation where transgender men who work in Congress – who may have beards and large muscles and outwardly appear indistinguishable from other men – would be forced to use the women's restroom.

"Wouldn't that make women much more uncomfortable?" Polumbo asked.

But the House leadership has promptly, and predictably, fallen in line behind Mace's MAGA-aligned rhetoric.

"House Speaker Mike Johnson on Wednesday announced his support for the resolution," Polumbo recalled, before quoting Johnson as having said via a statement that "All single-sex facilities in the Capitol and House Office Buildings – such as restrooms, changing rooms, and locker rooms – are reserved for individuals of that biological sex."

Polumbo noted that "Mace openly admits that this is directly targeted at McBride, answering a reporter's question by saying, 'Yes, and absolutely, and then some. Someone with a penis in the women's locker room – that's not OK.'"

Mace then added, "I'm a victim of abuse myself. I'm a rape survivor."

"While Mace's past trauma is tragic and worthy of our sympathy, her logic here still doesn't follow," Polumbo observed. "She has no idea what genitalia McBride has, as some transgender women choose to have "bottom surgery" that removes their penises and some do not.

"And genitalia does not ever need to be exposed in a women's bathroom that's exclusively composed of individual stalls," Polumbo added.

Even so, Mace has continued to frame the issue in starkly sexualized terms, lashing out at Democratic fellow representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez with a post that referenced a slang term for male genitalia after Ocasio-Cortez expressed worry that GOP-imposed restrictions would lead to women and girls being subjected to intrusive inspections before being allowed to enter women's restrooms.

To Ocasio-Cortez's claims – including the accusation that the new bathroom policy at the Capitol is actually geared toward "fundrais[ing] off an email" – Mace responded, "Keeping peckers out of women's spaces is the very definition of protecting women..."

Aside from adding to the burden of needlessly sexualized trauma that transgender Americans are forced to endure every day, Mace's sharp right turn reads, Polumbo suggested, as a response to her district having been redrawn – with the result, the journalist noted, that Mace's district "now skews more conservative than when she was first elected."

That was back when she was supportive of the idea that, in her own words, "religious liberty, the First Amendment, gay rights, and transgender equality can all coexist."