Virginia Republican Jen Kiggans Voted for ERA, Helped Dems Push Radical Gender Legislation in Richmond
Since winning election to Virginia’s Senate in 2019, Republican Jen Kiggans has taken a sharp turn to the left, voting alongside Democrats and standing at odds with conservative voters to pass key pieces of radical gender legislation championed by Governor Ralph Northam.
Just a week after assuming office in 2020, Kiggans began her career in Richmond by joining with Senate Democrats in the midst of a historic gun grab to vote in favor of ratifying the so-called Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the United States Constitution. Giving a floor speech on the issue, Kiggans, who cast the deciding vote, said that while the ERA, often described by experts as redundant and unconstitutional, isn’t needed for women to achieve great things, its ratification and apparently the potential constitutional issues that could ensue have symbolic value.
A year later, and as previously reported by National File, Kiggans voted to repeal the ban on same-sex marriage approved by a majority of Virginians in 2004. Despite the ban being rendered obsolete by a 2014 Supreme Court decision, Kiggans sided with Democrats once again as the party used gay marriage as a wedge issue ahead of November’s 2021 Gubernatorial Election. Even a handful of Democrats voted against the measure, with Kiggans and a small group of establishment-friendly Republicans siding with the most left-leaning wing of the Democrat Party.
Additionally, Kiggans has cast votes with the far-left on hot-button issues facing Virginia and the nation, even voting to expand “hate crime” and anti-discrimination legislation to include gender identity and sexual orientation, while voting against measures to increase penalties on individuals filing false police reports. Under the so-called anti-discrimination bill, property owners could be forced to lease spaces in their own homes to individuals living lifestyles that collide with their religiously held beliefs, or risk facing government intervention.
On the issue of birth certificates and transgenderism, Kiggans voted against the most simple of sciences and in favor of requiring registrars to change the birth certificate-documented sex of those identifying themselves as trans.
With Kiggans expected to declare a 2022 run for Congress in Virginia’s 2nd District, and a voting record standing at odds with the Republican Party’s grassroots base, conservatives fear that voters could see a re-run of the district’s 2018 and 2020 contests, in which establishment-backed Republican Scott Taylor was handily defeated by current Representative Elaine Luria, a self-proclaimed moderate Democrat who votes in near lockstep with Nancy Pelosi and the Harris-Biden agenda.