Democrat responds after sparking protests outside office with defense of women's sports

Protests erupted near the office of Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., shortly after he spoke out against transgender athletes competing in women's sports, a stance that veers away from his party's mainstream views. 

"I'm not afraid of protests," Moulton told Lawrence Jones during "Fox & Friends" on Tuesday. "People [are] protesting out in front of my office all the time because they think I'm too pro-Israel, for example. And so protests are OK. They're part of freedom of speech… We just need to be willing to talk about these contentious issues. And I'm not anti-trans either. In fact, I have a strong record of supporting trans people, including trans kids. And this isn't about trans kids either. That's another criticism I hear."

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"My kids are young. They play on co-ed soccer teams just like I did when I was their age, too. But when they get older, when we're talking about competitive sports… when people are a lot bigger, it's reasonable to have restrictions," he continued. "That's why the NCAA has restrictions. That's why the Olympics have restrictions. And yet, for some reason, because of some orthodox litmus test in our party, we're not even supposed to entertain the idea. And I'm just saying, let's have a debate."

Massachusetts Democrats held the "Neighbors for Hate" rally near Moulton's office over the weekend in response to his stance on protecting women's sports as some critics called on him to resign. 

"I have two little girls. I don't want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete, but as a Democrat I'm supposed to be afraid to say that," Moulton told the New York Times earlier this month. 

After his comments to the Times, he received a swarm of backlash from members within his own party, including Rep.-elect Sarah McBride, D-Del., who became the first openly transgender person to win a seat in Congress, and Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., who has a transgender child. 

Despite backlash from critics within his party and beyond, he has defended his position, calling on those who disagree with him to have a discussion about their differences. 

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"My job isn't to just represent the people who voted for me back in Massachusetts. It's to represent everyone," Moulton said Tuesday. "And I'm proud to stand up for civil rights, but part of… having a civil debate in America is having freedom of speech and being willing to speak your mind."

Meanwhile, Democrats have downplayed the impact that the transgender athlete debate could have had on the outcome of the 2024 elections. 

"Another one of the lines that ran over and over again in those ads and throughout right-wing media is this idea that America is faced with a crisis of boys playing in girls sports," MSNBC host and former White House press secretary Jen Psaki said on Sunday. "Now, these ads created this perception that the issues of trans kids playing sports was dominating schools across the country, which is completely false."

Moulton, who won re-election earlier this month, argued some members of his party spend too much time trying not to offend when they should be engaging in civil discourse about key issues they disagree on. 

"You can have a debate about this issue, and that's really my core point, is that we need to be able to debate contentious issues without just being shut down," he said. "And this is a problem that we have in politics today. We can't, as Democrats, feel like we can debate some of these contentious issues at the risk of offending people. I hear this from my Republican colleagues as well. Some of them have real trouble coming out and just saying that Biden won the 2020 election or there's a good case for being involved in Ukraine because they're afraid of what they'll hear from their own party base on those contentious subjects."

"But we can't advance policies for the American people. We can't represent the vast majority of Americans and the concerns that they face if we're not willing to actually engage in debate, and that's really my core point here."