Vivek Ramaswamy has certainly lit things up during the GOP debates. 

But as he campaigns, he's shown an interesting side with a talent for dealing with people who may be confrontational, be on the other side of the aisle, or have a different viewpoint than he does. He encourages such conversations, saying we don't have enough of them. He tells such folks they can have the mic for their question, then he gets to respond. 

I wrote before about one such exchange he had with a single mother who stood up at one of his town halls in July. She started yelling about "protecting women" and being in favor of abortion. Ramaswamy demonstrated he truly believed in letting everyone speak "especially if they disagree with [him]." He even thanked her for raising her child. It was a great example of how to turn away wrath and deal with voters. 

Ramaswamy had another exchange at his town hall on Friday night in Iowa, with a woman who stood up and started saying, "LGBTQ." It wasn't clear what the woman was trying to say. Vivek gave her the mic and let her explain. 

Warning: adult language

A protestor came to my event in Iowa last night. I gave her the mic. And then something surprising happened. pic.twitter.com/rKM1FPYPjS

— Vivek Ramaswamy (@VivekGRamaswamy) December 23, 2023

She said some children were bullied for being gay, lesbian, or transgender. "What is your stance on LGBTQ?" she asked. 

Ramaswamy said the same movement that said that the sex of the person you are attracted to is "hardwired" on the day you were born is now saying that your biological sex is fluid throughout your life. He said you can't think both of those things, not if you are operating according to principles of logic. 

He said he believes transgenderism is a mental health disorder. The woman started making noise and gave him the finger. She started to walk out, saying, "It's how they f**king feel." 

Then he was able to get her to stay there, with the story of two women who had surgery as teenagers because they thought they were transgender, that they'd had breast removal and one had her uterus removed. Now, in their 20s, they regret it. He said that it was not compassion. He said that when you have a person saying that their gender doesn't match their biological sex, you need to take time with that person to figure out what's going on with them, and help the person with "compassion and dignity." 

"If you're an adult, you're free to live your life as you want, as long as you're not hurting someone else," Vivek said. "But kids are not the same as adults, and we have to protect them."  Interestingly, the woman who was upset then came back in and didn't walk out. Vivek said he loved that they were having an "open debate." 

Ramaswamy said right now, what we have is a "tyranny of the minority" that tells you to "shut up, sit down and do what you're told." 

The woman said that she knew she was gay as a child, and that she knew she was attracted to women. She said that she had to hide it while living in that town. 

Vivek spoke about how he thought something odd had happened when we got closer to racial equality, and just as you can marry anyone you want, we get the sexual identity revolution. Suddenly, there's all this division. He said the way he viewed it was you are free to live your life as you wish to, as long as you don't hurt anyone else in return. 

"But that doesn't mean we change how men and women compete in sports," he said. And then something interesting happened, when the woman suddenly agreed with him that men shouldn't be swimming with women in women's sporting competitions. 

"That's different," she said, as they fist-bumped and high-fived each other. He said it was great that they were able to find that point of agreement and said, if we could agree that kids aren't the same as adults, we'd made a step forward. 

A fascinating conversation -- the lost art of listening to each other and truly trying to hear each other through the din.