Kentucky state Rep. Nick Wilson (R) recently introduced a bill that would have legalized incest between first cousins. The 33-year-old legislator, who won the 2018 installment of the reality TV competition Survivor, said the legalized incest provision of his bill was filed in error.
Wilson voted in favor of his state’s ban on gender-affirming care for transgender youth last year. The bill forces transgender youth to de-transition, bans LGBTQ+ topics from public schools, and allows teachers to deliberately misgender their trans students.
On January 16, Wilson filed H.B. 269, a bill that would’ve added “sexual contact” to the state’s incest law (which currently only outlaws incestual intercourse). Among the family relationships included in his bill, Wilson left out first cousins. News of its omission quickly circulated on social media and news headlines, with many claiming that he wanted to legalize incest.
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The legalization seemed understandable considering that 19 states and the District of Columbia allow first cousins to marry, The Guardian noted.
Explaining his error, Wilson wrote in a public Facebook post, “During the drafting process, there was an inadvertent change, which struck ‘first cousins’ from the list of relationships included under the incest statute, and I failed to add it back in.”
He said he refiled a corrected bill outlawing incest between first cousins and said he hoped the legislation would “combat a problem of familial and cyclical abuse that transcends generations” and get a second chance despite his mistake.
“Due to the subject matter of the legislation, it was obviously quite embarrassing,” Wilson told the aforementioned news outlet. “It was also frustrating that it blew up so quickly, just because I was on a TV show five years ago. I didn’t get a chance to fix the mistake – not even one day. I feel like most legislators would get that opportunity.”
In March 2023, Wilson voted in favor of S.B. 150, his state’s ban on gender-affirming care and LGBTQ+-inclusive school policies. He justified his vote was to “protect children,” not discriminate against LGBTQ+ people.
Echoing right-wing talking points, he compared gender-affirming care for youth with tobacco, alcohol, drugs, tattoos — “things that we do not allow a child to do, even with a parent’s permission,” he said. But unlike those things, the biggest U.S. medical and psychiatric organizations consider gender-affirming care as safe and essential to trans minors’ well-being.
Several past Survivor contestants blasted Wilson for his transphobic vote. Ricard Foyé, a queer competitor from Survivor 41, said he first befriended Wilson at a party.
“It is hard to feel so understood, so seen, by a person while I shared the transitioning process, healthcare woes, and the lack of humanity we experience just being queer and living in this world,” Foyé told People magazine. “And then after all of that, for that person to turn around and vote for essentially criminalizing being trans.”
“I am not a lesser human for who I am, nor is my husband,” Foyé said. “However, Nick Wilson is a lesser human for not treating the people of this country and especially the amazing trans youth of Kentucky as human beings and using their rights and freedoms as a means of gaining popularity in his political ventures.”
“Targeting trans youth is the most dangerous and cowardly way to score political points, but I don’t believe that’s what Nick Wilson was trying to do,” Foyé continued. “I believe he wants trans youth to suffer and trans people to cease to exist. He is a bad person. Kentucky youth, and all trans youth, deserve so much better.”
Eliza Orlins, another former Survivor contestant who also ran for district attorney in Manhattan in 2020, told People, “Nick Wilson is a bigoted, cruel person who is using his Survivor platform to harm kids and families in Kentucky. It’s disgusting to see him not just vote for, but in fact sponsor horrific transphobic legislation. It’s hateful and discriminatory. As someone who ran for office myself, to watch Nick use his voice and his political position to actively hurt people is awful to witness.”
