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Vocalist and musician Laura Jane Grace performed at Democratic Senator Bernie Sanders’ stop in Somers, Kenosha, Wisconsin, on March 7, 2025, as part of the ongoing ‘Fighting Oligarchy’ rally. The Against Me! Punk rock band founder shared a 13-second video on her Instagram highlighting her show, which was the “main support act” for the event.
“Thank you for having me in Kenosha last night @sensanders I have so much respect for everything you’re trying to do right now,” the post was captioned.
Subsequently, she reshared the post on her IG Story with the text:
“The interpretation is everything.”
It saw Laura Jane Grace, a transgender singer, songwriter, and guitarist, and a LGBTQ+ advocate perform a song with the lyrics, “Does your God have a big fat d**k? Cause it feels like he’s f**king me,” that is now being deemed as controversial.
In the wake of the now-viral video of the performance, the internet is putting Laura Jane Grace under fire. Here are a few of them from the social networking site, X.
“Standards. We need standards,” a person wrote.
“Just when you think they can’t get any worse. God will not be mocked,” one person wrote.
“This is sick,” wrote another.
Others continued to weigh in.
“These are disgraceful people with no respect for anything,” a netizen wrote.
“This is absolutely not okay at all,” another netizen wrote.
Besides netizens, many conservative influencers also called out Laura Jane Grace’s performance. For instance, far-right social media activist Robby Starbuck dubbed the lyrics as “pure evil,” “grotesque,” and “anti-Christian,” adding Democrats were “insane.”
All you need to know about Laura Jane Grace
Laura Jane Grace was born as Thomas James Gabel in November 1980 at an army base in Fort Benning, Georgia. Her parents were U.S. Army Major Thomas Gabel and Bonnie Grace Gabel (née Grace).
She was raised alongside her younger brother Mark and spent her childhood in Germany, Italy, and across USA in Texas, Pennsylvania, and Florida.
At 13, she formed a local rock band and played covers of Nirvana and Pearl Jam before dropping out of high school at 17 and founding the punk rock band, Against Me! in Naples, Florida, in 1997. She is the group’s lead vocalist, lyricist, and guitarist. She came out as a trans woman in May 2012.
Grace also leads an eponymous band called Laura Jane Grace & the Devouring Mothers, which was originally founded as a solo venture in 2016. Other groups the 44-year-old is associated with include Laura Jane Grace and the Mississippi Medicals and Laura Jane Grace (With Dan Ozzi).
The latter is a punk rock duo while the former is a rock quartet comprising of Grace alongside bassist Matt Patton of Drive-By Truckers, drummer Mikey Erg of The Ergs, and percussionist and vocalist Paris Campbell Grace.
They released their debut EP, Give An Inch in September 2024, which comprised the hit singles, All F*cked Out and Karma Too Close.
Laura Jane has released solo projects and seven albums with Against Me! including Former Clarity in 2005, New Wave in 2007 and White Crosses in 2010. Her solo studio albums include Stay Alive in 2020 and Hole in my Head in 2024.
Her music explores her gender transitioning alongside other themes such as environmentalism, personal and social liberation, political critiques, and more.
She has 208,000 followers on Instagram and over 98,500 monthly listeners on Spotify. In 2014, Laura Jane Grace appeared in the series True Trans with Laura Jane Grace and in 2016 published her memoir Tranny: Confessions Of Punk Rock's Most Infamous Anarchist Sellout.
Grace, who now lives in Chicago, was married twice, first to Tiffany Danielle Kay between 2000 to 2004 and to Heather Hannoura from 2007 to 2013. She and Hannoura have a daughter, Evelyn, born in 2009.
Laura Jane has been a longtime supporter of Bernie Sanders and previously performed at his 2020 campaign. At the time, she sang Hanging Tree that had the lyrics, “God is good and God is great, now get the f**k out of the USA.”
Bernie Sanders’ ‘Fighting Oligarchy: Where We Go From Here’ rally is a series of town hall discussions being held across various U.S. cities ever since Donald Trump took office in January 2025. The senator’s tour is a critique of the current administration.
