There are political defeats, there are landslides, and then there is what happened to Jadon MacCormack in Connecticut on August 11.

Ninety votes.

That is what Republican voters gave a candidate who reportedly wanted LGBTQ people stripped of marriages, stripped of their children, driven from schools, subjected again to criminal laws governing consensual relationships and, at the farthest edge of his rhetoric, executed for being LGBTQ.

Ninety.

According to LGBTQ Nation, MacCormack received fewer than 20 percent of the votes cast in the Republican primary for Connecticut House District 50. Anthony Emilio defeated him and became the Republican nominee who will face Democratic incumbent Pat Boyd in November (Villarreal, 2026).

MacCormack responded to this unmistakable rejection by proclaiming himself “the true winner.”

Of course he did.

Apparently mathematics has now joined gay people, transgender people, marriage equality and constitutional liberty on the list of things Jadon MacCormack does not particularly care for.

Let us dispense with the temptation to treat this as another funny story about an extremist candidate getting clobbered at the polls. There is something satisfying about watching voters reject this kind of politics. I will happily admit that. Yet there is something much darker buried underneath those 90 votes.

A candidate for public office in the United States of America reportedly advocated killing people like me.

Not metaphorically.

Not politically defeating us.

Not merely opposing Pride celebrations.

Not arguing that churches should be free to decline same-sex weddings.

According to reporting on his statements, MacCormack supported the death penalty for people proven to be LGBTQ, including people who were celibate and had committed no crime (Villarreal, 2026).

Mr. MacCormack, since you apparently wanted America’s attention, you have mine.

So let us talk.

Mr. MacCormack, I Am One of the People You Are Talking About

I am gay.

There is no polite euphemism needed here. There is no reason for me to hide behind abstract language about “the LGBTQ community” when a political candidate reportedly discussed whether people belonging to that community should live or die.

I am one of them.

When you talk about LGBTQ people as some dangerous population from which America must be rescued, you are talking about actual human beings. We have parents. We have children. We have grandchildren. We have jobs. We pay taxes. We bury people we love. We sit beside our families in hospital rooms. We worry about grocery bills and utility bills. We argue about politics. We mow lawns, complain about traffic, walk dogs, watch terrible television and try to get through another week like everybody else.

Some of us have spent decades watching politicians discover that attacking us can be useful.

I have watched enough of that history to recognize the language.

What I find particularly revealing about your politics is how little your agenda appears to have to do with governing.

Connecticut families have housing costs. They have property taxes. They have healthcare bills. They have schools to fund. They have roads and bridges that need attention. They have jobs, businesses, public safety concerns, childcare expenses and aging parents.

Your own Republican House leader made essentially that point.

After MacCormack’s anti-LGBTQ comments became public, Connecticut House Minority Leader Vincent Candelora called them “immature and reckless” and said residents wanted a representative concerned with their paychecks, property taxes and children’s futures. Candelora called on MacCormack to step aside (Monk, 2026).

Even leaders in your own party looked at what you were doing and said: enough.

Think about how far somebody has to travel into political extremism for his own party to organize an effort to remove its endorsed candidate.

Republicans eventually rallied around Anthony Emilio, who qualified for the primary against MacCormack. Emilio described the rhetoric he was opposing in striking terms, telling reporters that he did not want his party tainted by it (Moritz, 2026).

Republican voters apparently agreed.

Ninety votes.

You Did Not Lose for Being Too Brave

There is a familiar routine after political extremists lose elections.

They rarely conclude that voters examined their ideas and rejected them.

Instead, the electorate was fooled. The establishment conspired against them. The media sabotaged them. Their party betrayed them. Voters were insufficiently courageous. The candidate somehow becomes the victim of the election he voluntarily entered.

MacCormack’s response followed that pattern.

After losing, he declared himself “the true winner” and attacked Emilio personally, telling his victorious opponent to return to the retirement home from which he came. He portrayed Emilio as a pawn of Republican leadership rather than deal seriously with the fact that Republican voters had just overwhelmingly preferred Emilio (Villarreal, 2026).

There is an easier explanation.

They heard you.

And they said no.

That distinction deserves attention. MacCormack was not silenced. He was not prohibited from expressing his beliefs. He exercised his freedom of speech with remarkable enthusiasm.

Then voters exercised theirs.

That is democracy.

Freedom of speech does not come with freedom from criticism, social consequences or electoral humiliation. The First Amendment does not contain a clause requiring voters to reward somebody for saying appalling things.

You spoke.

People listened.

You lost.

That is not persecution.

That is a ballot count.

Let Us Discuss Your Constitutional Education

MacCormack reportedly said he wanted the Supreme Court to recriminalize consensual sexual relationships between men.

There is a problem with that proposal beyond its cruelty.

The United States has already litigated this question.

In Lawrence v. Texas (2003), the Supreme Court struck down Texas’s law criminalizing certain consensual sexual activity between people of the same sex. The case involved John Lawrence and Tyron Garner, who had been convicted under the Texas statute.

The Court reversed those convictions.

The Supreme Court’s own docket records show that the judgment was reversed and remanded on June 26, 2003. The constitutional dispute centered on liberty, privacy and equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment (Lawrence v. Texas, 2003).

The government does not belong in an adult couple’s bedroom policing consensual intimacy merely because politicians disapprove of the couple.

That principle should not be particularly difficult for people who spend considerable time talking about limited government.

Then there is marriage.

In Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), the Supreme Court held that the Fourteenth Amendment protects same-sex couples’ right to marry. The Court required states both to license those marriages and recognize lawful same-sex marriages performed elsewhere (Obergefell v. Hodges, 2015).

MacCormack apparently wants that constitutional protection dismantled too.

Then comes the proposal to remove children from LGBTQ households.

Based on what?

Sexual orientation?

Gender identity?

Religious disapproval?

That is not a child-welfare standard. That is government punishment of families based on the identities of their parents.

Then we arrive at the most grotesque proposal of all: execution.

At that point we are no longer debating tax rates, education policy, healthcare policy or competing interpretations of administrative law.

We are talking about whether the government should kill a category of Americans for who they are.

That is not conservatism.

That is authoritarian fanaticism wearing campaign clothes.

Stop Using Children as a Human Shield for Hatred

There is another part of this rhetoric that infuriates me: the endless invocation of children.

“Protect the children.”

We have heard variations of that phrase for generations.

LGBTQ people were accused of recruiting children.

Gay teachers were portrayed as dangers to students.

Marriage equality opponents warned that allowing two men or two women to marry would somehow destroy heterosexual families.

Transgender people are now routinely depicted as threats to children.

MacCormack reportedly followed this familiar script. LGBTQ Nation reported that he described his proposals as necessary to “protect children,” despite proposals that included removing children from LGBTQ parents and imposing extraordinary punishments on LGBTQ adults (Villarreal, 2026).

Here is a question that deserves an answer.

Protect children from what?

A lesbian couple taking their daughter to soccer practice?

A gay father helping his son with algebra?

A transgender teacher explaining fractions?

Two married men paying a mortgage and arguing over whose turn it is to unload the dishwasher?

A teenager realizing she is gay and discovering that she is not the only one?

The phrase “protect children” cannot function as a magic incantation that transforms prejudice into public policy.

If somebody alleges that a particular adult abused a child, investigate it.

If somebody committed a crime, prosecute it.

If a school employee behaved improperly, address the conduct.

Those principles apply regardless of whether the person involved is gay, straight, bisexual, transgender or anything else.

Collective guilt is different.

When a politician compares LGBTQ people broadly with predators or murderers, he is not protecting children. He is manufacturing suspicion against millions of people based on identity.

That has consequences.

It tells LGBTQ children that adults seeking government office regard them as contaminants.

It tells LGBTQ parents that their families are conditional.

It tells extremists that LGBTQ people are legitimate objects of contempt.

Then somebody inevitably insists that everyone is overreacting when members of the targeted population become alarmed.

No.

We are listening.

The Noose Should Have Ended This Before It Began

CT Mirror reported another episode that deserves far more attention.

According to Republican House Minority Leader Vincent Candelora, when the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage in 2015, MacCormack posted an image of a noose accompanied by the words:

“The Bible got it right.”

Sit with that for a moment.

A noose.

Following a ruling recognizing the marriages of gay and lesbian Americans.

Candelora cited that history when condemning MacCormack’s later conduct and said he would not allow a novice candidate to define the Republican Party or its position (Monk, 2026).

Good.

That repudiation was necessary.

Yet Americans should ask how someone with such a record became a major-party-endorsed candidate for a state legislative seat in the first place.

That is the part of this story that cannot disappear beneath jokes about 90 votes.

The eventual rejection is reassuring.

The path to the ballot is troubling.

MacCormack did not materialize on Election Day. He participated in party politics. He received a Republican endorsement at the district convention before party officials revolted against his rhetoric and a challenger emerged.

Political parties are gatekeeping institutions whether they like that description or not. They recruit candidates, endorse them, fund them, introduce them to voters and give them legitimacy.

That creates responsibility.

Every political party occasionally discovers a candidate it wishes it had never met. Democrats have them. Republicans have them. Minor parties have them. No party can prevent every crank or extremist from filing paperwork.

The relevant test comes afterward.

What happens when the candidate reveals himself?

Connecticut Republican leaders eventually answered correctly: they condemned MacCormack and worked to provide Republican voters with another choice.

That deserves acknowledgment.

The voters completed the job.

Ninety People Still Voted for Him

Now comes the uncomfortable part.

Ninety votes can be funny.

Ninety votes can become a punchline.

Ninety votes can make an extremist candidate’s boast about being “the true winner” look spectacularly detached from reality.

Yet there is another number worth discussing.

Ninety people voted for him.

I cannot know every voter’s motivation. Some may have voted solely based on party endorsement. Some may have known little about the controversy. Some may have disliked Emilio. Some may have supported MacCormack’s broader political positions without endorsing every statement he made.

We should not assign motives to individual voters without evidence.

Yet MacCormack’s views were hardly secret by Election Day.

His rhetoric had generated statewide news coverage. Republican leaders had condemned him. His party chairman wanted him out. A Republican challenger had emerged in direct response to the controversy.

His statements were part of the campaign.

That means his 90 votes should temper our celebration.

Hatred does not need majority support to hurt people.

History provides plenty of examples of relatively small movements gaining influence when larger institutions dismiss them as ridiculous until they are no longer ridiculous.

The correct response to MacCormack is neither panic nor complacency.

It is scrutiny.

Who else is saying these things?

Who is funding them?

Who is inviting them onto platforms?

Which candidates are quietly borrowing softened versions of the same arguments?

Which politicians condemn calls for execution yet promote the underlying fiction that LGBTQ people constitute an inherent danger to children?

Those distinctions deserve examination.

Political extremism rarely arrives at the legislature announcing its final destination on the first day. It tests boundaries.

It asks what the public will tolerate.

Christianity Does Not Give You Ownership of the Government

MacCormack has repeatedly invoked religious morality in connection with his political positions.

He has every right to his faith.

So do I.

So does every Christian who disagrees with him.

So does every Jew, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, atheist, agnostic and person whose beliefs fit none of those labels.

The Constitution does not require Americans to abandon religious convictions when entering public life. It does require government to operate within constitutional limits.

There is a profound difference between saying:

“My religion teaches that homosexuality is sinful.”

and saying:

“My religious beliefs authorize the state to kill homosexuals.”

The first is religious belief.

The second is a proposed exercise of government violence.

Nobody is required to celebrate my sexual orientation. Nobody is required to attend Pride. Nobody must change personal theology to make me comfortable.

You may believe I am going to hell.

You may pray for me.

You may preach against homosexuality from your pulpit.

You may write books explaining why you believe my life violates scripture.

I may think your interpretation is absurd.

That is pluralism.

What you do not get is ownership of my citizenship.

You do not get my marriage.

You do not get my family.

You do not get my constitutional liberty.

You certainly do not get my life.

This Is What Political Rejection Looks Like

There is something genuinely encouraging in what happened in Connecticut.

Republican leaders condemned one of their own.

Republican voters rejected him.

That is how democratic systems are supposed to respond when candidates move from controversial political opinions into rhetoric contemplating state violence against innocent citizens.

Anthony Emilio did not squeak through.

MacCormack was crushed.

That sends a useful message far beyond Connecticut House District 50.

There remains a line.

American politics has become viciously polarized. Anti-LGBTQ rhetoric has grown more aggressive in many political spaces. Transgender Americans in particular have been subjected to relentless political targeting.

People can disagree about sports policies, medical standards, curriculum decisions, parental rights, religious liberty and the boundaries of antidiscrimination law.

Those disputes can be fierce.

Yet democratic society cannot lose sight of a fundamental boundary.

Your political opponent is still a citizen.

The minority you dislike is still protected by the Constitution.

The neighbor whose family you do not understand still possesses rights.

And losing an argument does not give government permission to eliminate the people on the other side.

Jadon, Here Is What You Apparently Failed to Learn

You wanted to protect America from people like me.

Tuesday night, Republican voters protected a little corner of America from you.

That is the part of your defeat you should study.

You were given an opportunity millions of Americans will never receive. You became the endorsed candidate of a major political party for a seat in a state legislature.

You could have talked about taxes.

You could have talked about housing.

You could have talked about Connecticut’s economy.

You could have talked about schools, roads, healthcare, jobs, crime, agriculture, small businesses or government spending.

You could have knocked on doors and asked people what kept them awake at night.

Instead, your campaign became nationally known for hostility toward LGBTQ people.

Then your own party’s leaders condemned you.

A challenger emerged.

And Republican voters handed you 90 votes.

You say you are the true winner.

No, Jadon.

Anthony Emilio won the election.

That is not an ideological judgment. It is arithmetic.

The people who counted the ballots were not grading your feelings. They were counting votes.

You lost.

Badly.

There may be a lesson buried in that humiliation if you ever become willing to hear it.

LGBTQ Americans are not ideological abstractions.

We are not a “movement” that can be separated from the human beings whose lives are being discussed.

We are Americans.

We live in Connecticut.

We live in Iowa.

We live in Alabama, California, Texas, Florida, Mississippi, New York and every place between them.

We are Republicans, Democrats, independents and people who despise politics altogether.

We are parents.

We are veterans.

We are teachers.

We are factory workers.

We are business owners.

We are taxpayers.

We are somebody’s child.

We are somebody’s parent.

We are somebody’s grandparent.

We are somebody’s neighbor.

And some of us have lived long enough to recognize what happens when political leaders begin talking about entire populations as contaminants that society needs to remove.

That language is never harmless.

My Message to Jadon MacCormack

I will finish this directly.

Jadon, I am gay.

According to the policies attributed to you, my sexual orientation alone could place someone like me within a category of people you believe the government could execute.

So I want you to understand something.

I am still here.

Millions of us are still here.

Your 90 votes did not make you a martyr.

They did not make you a revolutionary.

They did not make you “the true winner.”

They made you the losing candidate in a Republican primary where members of your own party decided they wanted somebody else representing them.

You wanted government deciding whether LGBTQ people could marry.

You wanted government policing consensual intimacy.

You wanted government deciding whether LGBTQ parents could keep their children.

You reportedly wanted government deciding whether LGBTQ people deserved to remain alive.

For somebody presumably campaigning within a political tradition that talks incessantly about government overreach, that is an astonishing amount of government.

I do not need you to approve of me.

I do not need you to celebrate me.

I do not need you at Pride.

I do not need you waving a rainbow flag.

I do not need your permission to exist.

I need my government to obey the Constitution.

I need political candidates to comprehend the difference between personal religious conviction and state authority.

I need political parties to reject candidates who treat minority populations as disposable.

And I need Americans to recognize that calls for government violence against innocent citizens cannot become another piece of political entertainment that disappears after the election.

Your defeat deserves celebration.

Your candidacy deserves examination.

The first tells us that an overwhelming majority of Republican primary voters in Connecticut’s 50th District rejected you.

The second reminds us that someone espousing these ideas got far enough to become a major-party-endorsed candidate for public office.

Both facts belong in the history of this election.

So congratulations on being “the true winner,” Jadon.

Your opponent gets the Republican nomination.

Republican voters get another candidate.

Connecticut gets to move forward.

And you get 90 votes and what I hope becomes a very long opportunity to contemplate them.

References

Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003).

Monk, G. (2026, June 3). CT GOP candidate defiant in face of criticism for anti-gay post. CT Mirror.

Moritz, J. (2026, June 23). Republican qualifies for primary ballot against anti-LGBTQ candidate. CT Mirror.

Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U.S. 644 (2015).

Villarreal, D. (2026, August 12). GOP candidate who supports executing LGBTQ+ people suffers humiliating defeat. LGBTQ Nation.