Openly gay Chase Oliver runs for US president as the Libertarian Party nominee

Chase Oliver is the Libertarian Party’s nominee for president of the United States in the 2024 election and the only openly gay candidate in the race. He is 39 years old, an activist, and a committed libertarian. Polls give him just 1–2% support with no real chance of winning, but his campaign has attracted attention.

Oliver was born in 1985 in Nashville, Tennessee. Before entering politics, he spent 13 years working in the restaurant industry. He currently lives in a suburb of Atlanta. He describes himself as an “armed gay man” and is a practising Christian.

Oliver’s political activism began with protests against the Iraq War under George W. Bush. In 2010, he discovered the Libertarian Party at an LGBT festival in Atlanta. He ran for Congress in 2020 and for the Senate in 2022, losing both races.

His platform combines support for LGBT rights and abortion rights with the defence of gun rights and deep cuts to federal spending. Oliver is a vocal supporter of the right to bear arms, stressing its importance for LGBT self-defence: “Armed gays are harder to oppress and harder to beat up.”

He opposes laws restricting drag shows and government regulation of transgender women’s participation in women’s sports, arguing that such decisions should be left to sports leagues. In foreign policy, Oliver follows a non-interventionist line: he calls for closing all US military bases abroad and ending foreign aid. He has described the fighting between Israel and Hamas as “genocide” and demands an immediate ceasefire.

Oliver also insists on ending the war on drugs, legalising marijuana, and decriminalising all narcotics, citing Portugal as an example. He supports free trade, lower taxes, and minimal government intervention.

In June 2024, Donald Trump spoke at the Libertarian Party convention but was booed. Oliver said Trump “got exactly the libertarian reception that a man like him deserves.”

At the time of the election, the Libertarian Party had secured ballot access in forty states and the District of Columbia. The party has more than 700,000 registered members and is the third-largest in the United States. Oliver sees his campaign as an inspiration for future LGBT politicians and aims to attract young voters disillusioned with both major parties.