affection for each other, and his 2007 description of an incident during high school of beating up a gay man who had made an advance on him in a public bathroom. In the same year, he called Democratic primary contenders cowards for not pledging to legalize same sex marriage and stated that he would support that. In 2021, Carlson belittled the paternity leave taken by U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, a gay man, joking that Buttigieg could be "trying to figure out how to breastfeed". Carlson's promotion of inflammatory rhetoric about LGBTQ controversies was scrutinized after the Colorado Springs nightclub mass shooting in November 2022. Carlson has criticized aspects of the transgender rights movement, including stating that hospitals that provide gender-affirming healthcare to minors are criminals who harm children, and that they should not be surprised to receive threatening phone calls. COVID-19 pandemic and vaccines Carlson aired segments warning about COVID-19 in the first months of 2020, and reportedly influenced then-President Trump to take the virus more seriously. But by May 2020, Carlson began to publicly question the severity of the virus and oppose social distancing measures. In 2021 and 2022, he repeatedly aired segments casting doubt on masks and vaccines, and falsely accused National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director Anthony Fauci of contributing to the creation of the virus. Carlson differed with Trump and some of his colleagues at Fox News in early 2020 by saying COVID-19 should be taken more seriously in the U.S. On March 9, 2020, Carlson opened his show by saying, "People you trust, people you probably voted for, have spent weeks minimizing what is clearly a very serious problem.... But they're wrong. It's definitely not just the flu." Sources in the White House said Carlson's statements caused Trump to reconsider his position. Carlson also told Vanity Fair that he spoke to Trump about COVID-19. Carlson blamed China for causing the pandemic. However, Carlson also claimed that some U.S. officials were overstating the deadliness of the virusa claim that PolitiFact called mostly false. Carlson criticized stay-at-home orders brought on by the pandemic, and ridiculed Anthony Fauci. Carlson defended protests against lockdowns in rural areas, saying, "The threat to rural America from this virus is minuscule, so why are we punishing the people who live outside the cities?" In 2021, Carlson ran segments that misrepresented the safety of COVID-19 vaccines and asserted that