Graham Platner welcomes attacks from 'fascists and bigots' over his support for trans rights

Days after marching in the Portland Pride Parade, Graham Platner, Maine’s Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate, is promising to fight federal attacks on transgender Americans as he heads into a nationally watched general election against Republican U.S. Sen. Susan Collins.In an exclusive interview with The Advocate on Wednesday, Platner welcomed the endorsement from the Christopher Street Project, a political action committee dedicated to electing transgender rights advocates. The group’s executive director, Tyler Hack, said Platner represents the kind of Democrat needed not only to build a congressional majority but also to prevent transgender people’s rights from being negotiated away.“We are super excited to endorse Graham in his race for Senate,” Hack told The Advocate alongside Platner. “It’s abundantly clear that the only way that we take back our rights and freedoms and push back on all of these attacks on our community, whether that’s standalone anti-trans bills or whether that’s appropriations fights and poison pills in every single bill attacking the trans community, is if we take back the House and take back the Senate.” See on Instagram Platner, a Marine and Army veteran and oyster farmer, won Maine’s June 9 Democratic primary and will challenge Collins in November. The contest could help determine control of the Senate.The Christopher Street Project’s support came two days after the Planned Parenthood Action Fund endorsed Platner at a Monday event in Portland. Its president, Alexis McGill Johnson, backed him as a defender of reproductive freedom and contrasted his position with Collins’s vote to confirm Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who later voted to overturn Roe v. Wade.Collins chairs the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee, where Republicans have sought to attach restrictions on transgender health care and other LGBTQ+ protections to federal spending legislation.Hack said stopping those provisions should be one o