Story at a glance
- Jasmine-Beach Ferrara, a Democrat, is trying to become the first lesbian woman North Carolina voters send to Congress.
- Beach-Ferrara, a minister and one of the founders of the Campaign for Southern Equality, says recent efforts to strip LGBTQ+ people of their rights “keeps me up at night.”
- She is polling within single-digits of her opponent, Republican Chuck Edwards, according to an internal poll, though the district is considered a Republican stronghold.
Democrat Jasmine Beach-Ferrara is putting LGBTQ+ issues front and center in her campaign as she seeks to become the first openly lesbian woman to represent North Carolina in the House.
Beach-Ferrara faces an uphill battle at best to win her general election race against Republican Chuck Edwards in a district won by former President Trump by 10 points in 2020.
But in an interview with Changing America, she made it clear she sees her campaign as a chance to shine a light on attacks on young LGBTQ+ people in the South and in North Carolina — a state where that issue has been a battleground for years.
“We’re living through a moment when two things are true: There are unprecedented levels of support for LGBTQ people and youth in the South, but we’re also seeing, in many ways, an unprecedented level of political attack, particularly on LGBTQ youth,” said Beach-Ferrara, who is 47 years old.
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“On a very personal level,” she said, “it keeps me up at night.”
Beach-Ferrara, a native of Chapel Hill, N.C., said she grew up around “incredibly clear” messaging from community and church leaders, as well as elected officials, that “it wasn’t right to be gay.”
“You couldn’t talk about it, you couldn’t ask questions about it, you couldn’t share that part of yourself,” she said. “If you did, you’d be met with judgment and condemnation.”
“The combined effect of all of that meant that it was a pretty tough journey to come out,” said Beach-Ferrara, who began coming out as gay to her friends and family as a teenager. But it also drove her to pursue a career in LGBTQ+ advocacy work, she said.
In 2011, Beach-Ferrara helped launch the Campaign for Southern Equality, an organization dedicated to furthering LGBTQ+ rights in the South, where nearly a third of LGBTQ+ people in the U.S. live, according to the Movement Advancement Project.
For years, Beach-Ferrara and her now-wife, Meghann Burke, fought alongside other queer couples and allies across the South for the right to marry and have their families protected by law.
“To be living through a time when folks are redoubling efforts to take those rights away is chilling,” she said.
North Carolina legalized same-sex unions in 2014 following a number of legal challenges to a constitutional amendment instituted two years prior that prohibited the state from performing or recognizing same-sex marriages — a measure that was backed by the district’s former Rep. Mark Meadows, a Republican.
A year later, in 2015, the Supreme Court ruled in Obergefell v. Hodges that the right to marry is guaranteed to same-sex couples under the U.S. Constitution, but in 35 states including North Carolina, bans on same-sex marriage remain on the books.
In July, after Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in an opinion that the Court should revisit landmark decisions including Obergefell, House lawmakers introduced the Respect for Marriage Act — pioneering federal legislation that would require states to recognize same-sex and interracial unions and officially repeal the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which defines marriage for federal purposes as a union between one man and one woman.
On the state level, legislatures in at least 40 states have passed or considered legislation that would in some way restrict how LGBTQ+ people, particularly LGBTQ+ youth, are able to talk about their identities, access health care and play on sports teams with their peers. Similar efforts have been pursued by municipalities and school boards.
“We’re entering a period where the aperture opens up again and there’s broad widespread attacks,” Beach-Ferrara said. “Not just at the legislative level, but at the level anywhere an attack can happen.”
She added that efforts to strip LGBTQ+ people of their hard-earned rights has motivated her political ambitions, in part because she recognizes that she’s fighting to represent the values of the majority.
Support for legal same-sex marriage ticked up to a record high in June, according to polling from Gallup, and nearly 60 percent of respondents in a July Politico and Morning Consult poll said the right to same-sex marriage should be enshrined in federal law.
Late last week, Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), one of the lead negotiators on the Respect for Marriage Act in the Senate and the chamber’s first openly gay member, announced that action on the bill would be postponed until after the midterm elections in November. GOP senators have said stronger religious liberty protections will need to be added to the bill before they can consider passing it.
Beach-Ferrara, also a minister in the United Church of Christ, a mainline Protestant Christian denomination, said she believes all Americans should have the right to hold and practice their own religious beliefs, but those beliefs cannot — and should not — be “weaponized” to deny or restrict the rights of a certain group of people.
“Faith is what keeps me grounded and keeps me going and gives me strength and hope,” she said. “But it’s also critically important that we are always thinking about how we are creating a country where no one faith is elevated above others and where everyone has the freedom to worship their own ways.”
“As a pastor who believes firmly in the separation of church and state, it’s really important that we’re talking about all these nuances,” Beach-Ferrara said.
In addition to her ministry work and her job at the Campaign for Southern Equality, Beach-Ferrara, who has lived in Asheville, N.C. for more than two decades, serves as a Buncombe County Commissioner, a position she has held since 2016, the same year the state’s controversial “bathroom bill” that barred transgender people from using public restrooms consistent with their gender identity took effect.
The measure drew swift backlash from companies and organizations including the NCAA, which avoided the state as a host site for its annual basketball tournament. Before the law was repealed in 2017, North Carolina was projected to lose billions of dollars in revenue over the next 12 years.
This year, each of the nation’s more than 400 congressional districts has been redrawn as part of a redistricting process that takes place every 10 years. In February, North Carolina’s Supreme Court struck down the first draft of the legislature’s new congressional and legislative maps, ruling that they were examples of partisan gerrymandering in violation of state law. Revised maps were approved later that month.
Beach-Ferrara is confident that redistricting has increased her chances of winning in November against Edwards, who ousted incumbent Madison Cawthorn in May’s primary after a single term. As of June, Beach-Ferrara had a little less than $237,000 in cash on hand, according to the Federal Election Commission, compared to Edwards’ $117,000.
An internal poll commissioned by Beach-Ferrara in May shows the two candidates in a tighter-than-expected race, with Beach-Ferrara trailing just slightly behind Edwards. Still, even with redrawn political lines, the district leans solidly Republican.
Beach-Ferrara’s campaign manager, Luke Tonat, said momentum gained by Democrats nationwide following the Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization in June that overturned federal abortion protections shouldn’t be discounted.
On average in the month following the Dobbs ruling, 55 percent of newly registered voters in 10 states were women, according to a recent New York Times analysis of voter registration data, up from just less than 50 percent before the decision was leaked in early May. In North Carolina, 52 percent of new registered voters between May and August were women, up just marginally from 51 percent before the leak.
Across the district, Tonat said, “we’re seeing people ready to do work, and that has only increased throughout the summer.”
“It’s incredibly inspiring,” he said, “and I think shows that we’re in a position to win this.”
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