Melissa Chaudhry, a Democrat seeking a Washington state congressional seat, said she has avoided highlighting LGBTQ+ rights on her campaign website because of concerns about how some Muslim voters in the district might respond.
Chaudhry, 34, is making her second run in Washington’s 9th Congressional District after losing her 2024 campaign. She discussed the issue during an interview with the Seattle-based newspaper The Stranger.
During the interview, Chaudhry, who took the last name of her husband, a Muslim Army veteran, and wears a hijab, was asked why her campaign site did not include a section on LGBTQ+ rights despite her stated support for the community.
“Because a lot of Muslims do not feel that way, unfortunately,” Chaudhry told The Stranger last month.
A 2025 report from the Pew Research Center found that 41% of American Muslims say homosexuality should be accepted by society, compared with 57% of Christians and 82% of Jewish Americans.
The Seattle metropolitan area, which covers much of Chaudhry’s district, is about 2% Muslim, according to Pew Research Center data from its “Religious Landscape Study.”
Seattle also has one of the nation’s largest LGBT+ populations, with roughly 17% of adults identifying as LGBT+, according to the most recent US Census data.
Even so, Chaudhry said in the interview that she “was careful about her Muslim constituents” when deciding how to present the issue publicly.
Chaudhry’s campaign did not respond immediately to requests for comment, and in the wake of the interview, she has rushed to do damage control in the face of criticism from LGBT+ activists.
“Our community is not expendable. LGBTQ+ rights are not optional. They are foundational to any candidate seeking Democratic support,” wrote Andrew Ashiofu, chair of Washington Stonewall Democrats, on Facebook earlier this month, prompting a lengthy response from Chaudhry.
“If you are queer, and you are wondering if you and your rights are safe with me, I assure you from the bottom of my heart, you are, you have always been, and you always will be,” she wrote.
Chaudhry also insisted that she supports her sister, who is “in a homosexual relationship, happily and committedly so,” and is friends with a “disabled lesbian woman, her partner, and their autistic son,” in her response.
But her reply drew short shrift from Ashiofu.
“I decided not to respond. She’s throwing blame on other people and saying she has LGBTQ+ friends. That’s the same thing as a racist saying, ‘I have black friends,” he told the Stranger.
