For much of her time in Congress, Rep. Nancy Mace has portrayed herself as a Republican outlier on LGBTQ issues — someone who backed marriage equality while balancing conservative religious values. This week, she abandoned that posture in a single, familiar line.

On Tuesday afternoon, the South Carolina Republican posted a short message on Elon Musk’s X platform: “Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.” The decades-old phrase, long associated with evangelical opposition to same-sex marriage, appeared without context — but not without timing. Mace is widely expected to run for governor in 2026.

The post quickly drew backlash, including a user-added Community Note pointing out that Mace voted twice in 2022 for the Respect for Marriage Act, which repealed the Defense of Marriage Act and required states to recognize same-sex marriages performed elsewhere. Those votes had previously served as the foundation of her claim to be “pro-gay” within a deeply conservative party.

Online critics were quick to resurrect Mace’s own words. Screenshots circulated of a November 2024 exchange between the congresswoman and a transgender user who accused her of abandoning gay rights once it became politically useful. At the time, Mace had just introduced a resolution seeking to bar transgender women from women’s restrooms in the U.S. Capitol. In response to the criticism, Mace defended herself by writing that she had “voted for gay marriage twice.”

She repeated that defense again weeks later, emphasizing her support for marriage equality while pairing it with attacks on trans people and gender-affirming care. After Tuesday’s post, the same user responded tersely: “‘votes’ lmao.”

The slogan Mace used has a long history. First appearing on placards at anti-LGBTQ protests in the late 1970s, it entered the political mainstream during the rise of the Religious Right in the 1980s, promoted by figures like televangelist Jerry Falwell. Today, it’s widely viewed as a relic — more commonly encountered in satire than in earnest political messaging.

Earlier in her career, Mace made a point of distinguishing herself from hardline social conservatives. In 2021, she co-sponsored the Fairness for All Act, a Republican-backed alternative to the Equality Act that proposed extending civil rights protections based on sexual orientation and gender identity while carving out broad exemptions for religious institutions.

At the time, Mace spoke openly about her support for LGBTQ people. She told the Washington Examiner that no one should face discrimination and argued that LGBTQ equality and religious liberty could coexist. That same year, she posted messages recognizing Pride and praising the resilience and future of the LGBTQ community in South Carolina’s Lowcountry.