Laverne Cox Responds to Backlash Over MAGA Ex-Boyfriend

Actress and outspoken trans rights activist Laverne Cox has responded to online fervor after she admitted to previously dating a Trump supporting police officer.

In a video shared earlier last week, the Orange is the New Black star revealed that she had met the nameless “blonde-haired, blue-eyed MAGA Republican voter who is a New York City police officer” five years ago on the dating site Tinder. Cox was in a relationship for several years with the man, who was 22 years her junior, but the pair split last year. Cox insisted that during their romance, she did not “develop any of his politics.”

The video post was shared in order to tease her upcoming one woman stage show Gurrl, How Did I Get Here, which is about Cox, the relationship, and how it came to end.

However, after dropping the teaser trailer, the star’s comment section was swarmed with irate suggestions of Cox’s betrayal of the trans community by being in a romantic relationship with a Trump supporter. Cox’s post even attracted the attention of a few RuPaul’s Drag Race stars such as Coco Montrese, who all added their disapproval via social media posts and comments. As a response, Cox appeared in a lengthy Instagram Live video, attempting to clear the air.

“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 shares in the video.

“I was in love,” she continues. “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.”

Later in the video, she says, “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 reiterated 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.”

Cox shares that “lines had to be drawn” last year due to the “current administration.” Since re-entering office back in January, Trump has made countless attempts at stripping the transgender community of certain rights, such as: banning transgender people from serving in the U.S. military and attempting to pull federal funding from healthcare providers who offer gender-affirming care to those under 19 years old. He has attempted to stop trans and nonbinary people from being provided with passports that are stamped with the correct gender marker, though this executive order was blocked by a federal judge in June. A total of 120 anti-trans bills have passed in the U.S. this year alone.

In her video, Laverne Cox says that she understands why some trans people may feel like her relationship was a “betrayal to my community,” but passionately argued 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 dehumanizing 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. Dehumanizing anyone is not consistent with my values. Fascism is not consistent with my values.” Cox further stateds“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 dehumanizing people with different beliefs the way they’re dehumanizing us.”

Photo courtesy of social media