Laverne Cox responds to backlash after revealing ex-boyfriend was a MAGA-supporting cop
Laverne Cox says she was ‘in love’ with a MAGA supporter for several years. (Getty)
Laverne Cox says she was 'in love' with a MAGA supporter for several years. (Getty)
Transgender trailblazer Laverne Cox has responded to online uproar after she admitted to previously dating a Donald Trump-supporting police officer.
In a video shared earlier this week, the Clean Slate actress revealed that she met the unnamed “blonde-haired, blue-eyed MAGA Republican voter who is a New York City police officer” five years ago.
She was in a relationship for several years with the man, who was 22 years her junior, but split from him last year. Cox insisted that during their romance, she did not “develop any of his politics”.
The video was shared to tease her upcoming one woman show Gurrl, How Did I get Here, which is about Cox navigating the relationship and how it came to end.
Yet after posting the teaser, the Orange Is The New Black star was inundated with angry comments seemingly suggesting that Cox was betraying the trans community by being in a relationship with a Trump voter.
Cox’s post even attracted the attention of RuPaul’s Drag Race stars including Mo Heart, Jaida Essence Hall, and Coco Montrese, who all shared their disapproval via social media posts and comments.
In a near hour-long Instagram Live video, Cox responded to the backlash, and attempted to set the record straight.
“For the record, when we matched on Tinder, I didn’t know what he did for a living. I didn’t know his politics. He told me he did something else,” Cox shared.
“I was in love,” she continued. “He has a beautiful soul and has really beautiful qualities. As I found out his job and his politics, particularly in 2020, we were having conversations really for the first time in this country about white supremacy and trying to have conversations with people across difference.
“For years, I’ve always tried to encourage people to have conversations with people with difference, with love and empathy. That is a value of mine that I strongly believe in. And that is something I tried to do in this relationship.”
Cox re-iterated in her video that she didn’t share any of her ex-partner’s views, adding that she has never voted for Trump and is “not MAGA”.
MAGA refers to the phrase “Make America Great Again”, adopted by Donald Trump as part of his presidential campaign.
“I always challenged him with love and empathy and tried to listen to his perspectives and often corrected him with facts,” she continued.
“I wanted to see if it was possible to have a relationship with someone with different political beliefs, in theory. I fell in love with a human being who had different politics, and I was in love. The good things about that relationship were so good that I was willing to work with the politics I didn’t agree with.”
Cox shared that “lines had to be drawn” last year due to the “current administration”, with Trump in power.
Since re-entering office back in January, Trump has made numerous attempts at stripping the trans community of certain rights, including banning transgender people from serving in the US military and threatening to pull federal funding from healthcare providers who offer gender-affirming care to under 19-year-olds.
He has also attempted to stop trans and non-binary people from being provided with passports that are stamped with the correct gender marker, though this executive order was blocked by a federal judge last month.
A total of 120 anti-trans bills have passed in the US this year alone, but 647 bills targeting the trans community have failed.
In her video, Laverne Cox said that she understands why some trans folk may feel like her relationship was a “betrayal to my community”, but urged that her ex’s “humanity went beyond who he voted for – I think everybody’s humanity does”.
“It feels like a lot of people in the comments are dehumanising people who have different political beliefs than they do,” she added, “[as though] if someone has different political beliefs, they’re somehow not human anymore. Dehumanising anyone is not consistent with my values. Fascism is not consistent with my values.
“I’m not going to hate people. I don’t believe in that… We have to fight the fascists, and we have to fight the fascist regime. But as we do that, I hope that we’re not dehumanising people with different beliefs the way they’re dehumanising us.”
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