Thousands of these documents and emails from the covert Science of Identity political operation have been independently examined by the Washington Post. The content on this website is attributed solely to the site's author.
Tulsi Gabbard brands LGBTQ people as a danger to children, even claiming the Left is "ushering in the normalization of pedophilia." Meanwhile, one of her siblings served prison time in another country for child sexual abuse, and her family worked to keep it secret. The LGBTQ community she now attacks is the one she once courted and betrayed.
Tulsi Gabbard's relationship with LGBTQ people is not a story of steady conviction. It is a story of how she lied and manipulated people to get votes, to win endorsements, to raise money, and to fuel her climb to power. When she needed one of the most progressive electorates in the country, she was their ally. When a national right-wing audience became more valuable to her, she became their attacker.
In 2022, Tulsi attacked transgender people, while her family hid a sibling's child SA record
In October 2022, on Joe Rogan's program, Gabbard tied the acceptance of transgender people directly to child sexual abuse.
Tulsi Gabbard warned that the political Left is "ushering in the normalization of pedophilia."
Tulsi Gabbard, The Joe Rogan Experience, October 11, 2022 1
The accusation is grotesque coming from her, because of what her own family did when confronted with a real predator.
A firsthand account
In 2020, after I became aware of shocking patterns of child sexual abuse and cover-ups by leaders and members of the Science of Identity Foundation, I sent an email to more than 100 SIF leaders and members, saying that far more needed to be done to keep children safe and to ensure that predators were prosecuted.
Tulsi Gabbard's parents called me in response. The call was chilling. They had no interest in taking any action to protect children. The sole purpose of the call was to make sure I would not tell anyone that one of their own children, Tulsi's sibling, had served prison time in another country for the sexual abuse of a child. They showed zero concern for the victims. 2
That instinct, to protect the abuser and bury the truth, is the same one documented across the Science of Identity Foundation, the group led by Tulsi Gabbard's guru Chris Butler, which spent decades covering up the sexual abuse of children within its ranks. 3
To win Hawaii in 2012, Tulsi apologized and promised to fight for LGBTQ rights
Gabbard's early career carried real baggage: she had grown up in the orbit of her father Mike Gabbard's anti-gay organization and, as a young state representative, had opposed civil unions and disparaged gay-rights supporters. 4
By 2012, running for Congress in a district she could not win without progressive and LGBTQ support, she publicly apologized.
"I want to apologize for statements that I have made in the past that have been very divisive and even disrespectful to those within the LGBT community."
Tulsi Gabbard, 2012 5
In Congress, Tulsi delivered for the LGBTQ community
The apology was followed by a record. Once in office, Gabbard built a genuinely pro-LGBTQ legislative profile and was embraced by the movement that had helped elect her. She joined the Congressional LGBT Equality Caucus, co-sponsored the Equality Act, was an initial co-sponsor of the bill to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act, and signed a 2013 amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to recognize a constitutional right to same-sex marriage. She compiled a 100 percent legislative scorecard with the Human Rights Campaign. 6
Hawaii's LGBTQ community had taken her at her word, and she had repaid them.
Then Tulsi betrayed the LGBT community for money and power
As Gabbard's ambitions shifted from a blue Hawaii district to a national right-wing audience, so did her message. The same politician who had marched under the banner of LGBTQ equality, won its endorsements, and raised its money began casting LGBTQ people as a danger to children, culminating in the 2022 "normalization of pedophilia" smear. The community that had vouched for her and helped send her to Washington had become a useful target to abandon.
Tulsi cosplayed "aloha" while exploiting it
Aloha is not a tourism slogan. To the people of Hawaii it means open-heartedness, a deep respect and love for others. Gabbard made it her personal brand, defining it, in her own words, as love for everyone "irrespective of… gender identity, or sexual orientation."
"I am a very firm believer in the Aloha spirit, respect and love for everyone, irrespective of their religion, race, sex, gender identity, or sexual orientation."
Tulsi Gabbard 7
She carried the word to the national stage, selling it as the cure for the country's divisions.
"Washington, our country, and the world is in dire need of aloha. Only aloha has the power to heal the divisive wounds in our nation."
Tulsi Gabbard, 2019 presidential campaign announcement 7
It was a performance. She invoked the aloha of the people of Hawaii to sell herself, then exploited the very trust and good faith that word represents, turning on the LGBTQ community she had explicitly named.
Butler directed Tulsi's LGBT strategy the entire time
Behind the shifts was the same constant: her guru's project office, managing her public posture for whatever the moment required. Even during her pro-LGBTQ years, the office was quietly hedging her, dictating, for example, a deliberately noncommittal stance on transgender service members in 2014.
"Concerning the transgender thing, I think that TG should say: I am undecided on this question. The reason is because of the extreme lack of clarity of definition…"
Chris Butler's project office, SIF transcript, August 25, 2014 8
And when reporters pressed her on her anti-gay past and her guru's hateful teachings, the office wrote her deflection word for word. 9
Hypocrisy: Butler attacked trans people, but wore makeup and women's clothes
The man who wrote the rules didn't live by them. According to the woman who ordered Butler's clothing, Butler only
wore women's pants. And according to the people who watched and worked on his video productions, he wore women's makeup for many of his recordings. The same man who scripted Tulsi's anti-trans attacks, and dictated a strict dress code policing what women and girls could wear, never held himself to the gender lines he imposed on everyone else. 10
My apology to the LGBTQ community
In 1995 and 1996, when I first moved to Hawaii and was 23, I helped Mike Gabbard with his Alliance for Traditional Marriage campaign. His campaign against gay marriage was sold to me as protecting children. I believed that then, and I was wrong. I came to regret it, and I did not help with his later campaigns. Furthermore, I later came to learn that Mike and Carol Gabbard's approach to children is deeply harmful, to the point of protecting child predators at the expense of children's safety.
In 2011, I agreed to help Tulsi's run for Congress when I was asked. I believed she and her guru Chris Butler genuinely supported LGBTQ civil rights. By the time she was running for president, I was starting to wonder if the entire platform was a scam.
To the LGBTQ community, and to the people of Hawaii who trusted her, I am sorry.
She used Hawaii's LGBTQ community to win, then branded them a threat to children, all while her own family worked to keep a sibling's prison record for child sexual abuse buried.
