Jamie Lee Curtis Says Supporting Trans Kids is Just What Good Parents Do

Oscar-winning actress Jamie Lee Curtis has earned widespread adoration from LGBTQ+ fans for becoming her trans daughter’s most outspoken champion. But Curtis is no hero, as far as she is concerned. She’s just doing what every parent ought to do: extend unconditional love and understanding to their children.

“People have said, ‘You’re so great to accept her!’ I was like, ‘What are you talking about?’,” Curtis told MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Friday.

“This is my daughter. This human being has come to me and said, ‘This is who I am.’ And my job is to say, ‘Welcome home.’ I will fight and defend her right to exist to anyone who claims that she doesn’t.”

“At the bottom line, life is about love,” she said. “Being a parent is about love, and I love Ruby. Love her.”

Ever since her daughter Ruby came out as trans in 2020, Curtis has proudly demonstrated that love at every opportunity. She has advocated for the trans community in interviews and online, she officiated Ruby’s wedding, and she even gave her first Academy Award nonbinary pronouns as a tribute to Ruby.

Even as Curtis characterized her support as a completely natural part of being a parent, she knows why she is treated as the exception rather than the rule. Later in the interview, she lamented the politicizing and demonization of trans people, particularly in “‘Don’t Say Gay’ Florida.”

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For Curtis, the key to combating this rhetoric lies in listening. “I’m trying to learn the most important thing is that I don’t know everything,” she said. “And I, I wake up every day sober, saying, ‘I don’t know everything.’ I don’t know a lot. There are a lot of things I don’t know about. And there’s a lot of this that I need to learn.

“I’ve gone to people and said, ‘Please educate me, help me learn what the issue is, why that’s so important and what the other opinion is, so that I can hear both sides.’

“Because if I only hear one side of an argument or an idea, then I have no ability to think and the whole idea here is we can think we have minds to think. And as you said, you’re like, how do you walk through this? Nobody said there’s no handbook. There are people who will be helpful guides.”

She might be modest, but Curtis consistently offers a powerful example to other parents. You don’t have to know everything—you just have to stand with your child.