Less than two weeks before the midterm elections, the window for transgender voters to verify their identities for voting is closing fast.
Roadblocks for trans people to acquire accurate identification abound, while ID requirements to vote are getting stricter in a growing number of states. The predictable result will be fewer trans people voting in 2022, just as their rights are coming under attack from anti-LGBTQ candidates.
According to the latest research from UCLA’s Williams Institute, over 200,000 trans voters could be disenfranchised this November.
It could be worse. A 2015 study from the National Center for Transgender Equality reveals voter participation from trans people is higher than among all eligible voters, 54% to 42%, meaning more trans voters will manage to cast a ballot despite the barriers to their participation.
Trans people face numerous challenges in changing their official ID gender markers. The process can take time, money, and access to medical care that many trans people, particularly younger individuals, don’t have.
According to the Movement Advancement Project, 10 states require documentation from a medical provider in order to change a trans person’s gender marker. Eight states require proof of surgery, a court order, or an amended birth certificate. And ten states have “burdensome” or “unclear” policies on changing gender markers.
Changing a birth certificate to get a new ID can also present problems. 12 states require trans people to undergo some form of gender-affirming surgery before officials will revise a birth certificate. Four states don’t allow changing a birth certificate gender marker at all.
Name changes aren’t easy, either. Nine states require people to publicly post a name change request online, which can lead to harassment or violence.
“Such obstacles can impact voting in the 35 states that have voter ID laws,” according to the Williams study. “In these states, voters encounter additional verification requirements at the polls on top of federal standards for voter registration and eligibility determination. The strictest of these voter ID laws require voters to present a government-issued photo ID at the polling place, and provide no alternative for voters who do not have a photo ID, or as is often the case for transgender voters, have an inaccurate photo ID.”
UCLA Williams Institute
According to the Williams study, “Transgender people who are Black, indigenous, or people of color, young adults, students, people with low incomes, people experiencing homelessness, and people with disabilities are overrepresented among the over 203,700 voting-eligible transgender people who may face barriers to voting due to voter ID laws in the 2022 midterm election cycle.”
UCLA Williams Institute
Trans voters can seek help updating their state and federal identification with organizations like the National Center for Transgender Equality, which provides up-to-the-minute requirements for voter ID state by state, and other gender and name ID change information.
Voter ID laws are promoted by their primarily-Republican sponsors as a way to protect against voter fraud, a nearly non-existent problem in the United States, despite the hype. Both the American Civil Liberties Union and The Brennan Center for Justice have called voter ID laws a form of “voter suppression” that mostly disenfranchises Democratic voters.
“Regardless of whether you’re transgender, every eligible voter should be able to cast their ballot without fear of harassment or discrimination,” Olivia Hunt, policy director for the National Center for Transgender Equality, told LGBTQ Nation. “Onerous ID requirements are just one of the many strategies used to exclude marginalized people from participating in the political process. This kind of voter suppression is contrary to the guiding principles of American democracy, and is a blatant violation of the fundamental constitutional rights of all Americans.”
After five hours of tense testimony and protests, the Florida Board of Medicine voted Friday to start drafting a rule that would bar all minors in the state from receiving puberty blockers, hormone therapy or surgeries as treatment for gender dysphoria.
Florida’s medical board is the first in the country to pursue such a rule, but Florida is among a wave of states where officials have attempted to restrict gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors.
By the end of Friday’s five-hour meeting, protesters began yelling “Shame!” at the board members, and some of them staged a “die-in” in the lobby of the Orlando International Airport, where the meeting was held.
Protesters stage a “die-in” in the lobby of the Orlando International Airport on Oct. 28, 2022.Courtesy Kat Duesterhaus
The vote is the latest update in a months-long effort led by Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration to restrict transition-related care for people under 18.
The effort to restrict such care began in April, when DeSantis and Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo issued nonbinding guidancethrough the Florida Health Department that sought to bar both “social gender transition” and gender-affirming medical care for minors.
Despite that support, Florida’s Agency for Health Care Administration issued a report in June that “found that several services for the treatment of gender dysphoria — i.e., sex reassignment surgery, cross-sex hormones and puberty blockers — are not consistent with widely accepted professional medical standards and are experimental and investigational with the potential for harmful long-term affects.”
Just hours after the report’s release, Ladapo sent a letter to the Board of Medicine and asked it to establish a standard of care “for these complex and irreversible procedures.”
The board held its first meeting on the issue in August, and on Friday it officially voted to draft a ban on certain gender-affirming therapies for minors. The meeting began with expert testimony in favor of and against such care.
Dr. Michael Laidlaw, an endocrinologist in Rockland, California, cited often-criticized research that found 50% to 90% of children whose gender identity isn’t consistent with their assigned sex at birth grow out of the condition by adulthood.
“The basic problem with this treatment as I see it is: ‘What happens when you force a square peg into a round hole?’” he said. “You end up injuring or destroying the peg in the process.”
However, Dr. Meredithe McNamara, an assistant professor of pediatrics at Yale School of Medicine who treats transgender people between the ages of 10 and 25, told the board that the research Laidlaw cited and the June report issued by the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration are methodologically flawed.
“Neither of the authors of the state’s review is a subject matter expert,” McNamara said. “One individual is a dentist. The other is a post-doctoral fellow in biostatistics. At a bare minimum, the systematic review should be conducted by those who are qualified to assess the literature. I wouldn’t trust a dermatologist review of the literature on a neurosurgical procedure, for instance.”
After expert testimony, the board began the public comment period, which was scheduled to last two hours, according to multiple attendees.
The first nine attendees who spoke were in favor of restricting gender-affirming care for minors. Eight of them said they have detransitioned, or come to identify with their assigned sex at birth after having previously identified as trans. Only one of the eight had received gender-affirming medical care as a minor.
Chloe Cole, who described herself as an 18-year-old detransitioned female from California, said she began transitioning at 12 and received a double mastectomy at 15. At 16, she said, she realized she regretted her transition.
“All the talk about mental health, self perception, pronouns and ideology leads me to the question, why is a mental health epidemic not being addressed with mental health treatment to get at the root causes for why female adolescents like me want to reject their bodies?” Cole said.
The board also heard from the parents of transgender youths. Hope McClay, who has a 9-year-old trans daughter, said that she used to have to force her daughter to get short haircuts before she came out as trans.
“At one point she came up to me, at about three-and-a-half years old, and begged me, crying, and said, ‘Please, don’t make me be this way anymore. This is not who I am. I want to die,’” McClay said.
She said she and her family have consulted with medical professionals on medical care for their daughter, and they have found that allowing her to go through male puberty would be “psychologically damaging.”
“So we do not make these decisions lightly, but these are the decisions that should be made by the families, not by the state, and not by a board,” McClay said.
Jude Spiegel, the only transgender person to testify at Friday’s meeting, read the names of 17 trans teens who died by suicide “over living in a world that refused to acknowledge or accept them.”
With about 45 minutes left in the public comment period, board member Dr. Zachariah P. Zachariah said only one more person would be allowed to testify. The crowd protested, and he offered to provide an email where they could share their testimonies.
At one point, an audience member yelled that trans youths would suffer if the board voted to bar care: “The blood is on your hands!” To which Zachariah responded, “That’s OK.”
Emile Fox, a trans nonbinary person from Orlando who uses “they” and “he” pronouns, said they signed up to testify and weren’t able to, which frustrated them after the first eight people who testified were all in favor of restricting care, but none of them were from Florida.
“What was so appalling to me is how obviously staged this all was,” Fox said, adding that the board members didn’t appear to know that much about gender-affirming therapies. “They’ve been fed a narrative, and they ate it up.”
A spokesperson for the board said the committee “heard from subject matter experts and allowed for members of the public to speak on the issue at today’s workshop.”
“The content of public comment is not ‘stacked’ by Boards,” the spokesperson said in an email Saturday. “Any members of the public who were unable to provide comment can submit written comment via email to BOMpubliccomment@flhealth.gov within 24 hours of the conclusion of the workshop. These comments will be included in the rulemaking record and reviewed just as all other public comments.”
After the public comment period, the board attempted to come up with a rough draft of a rule. Initially, members considered making trans youths who were already receiving gender-affirming medical care exempt from the ban if they underwent an informed consent process, but they decided to cut that proposal.
Then, in a rushed exchange that attendees described as confusing, Zachariah pushed for a vote even as some board members asked for the proposal to be read aloud once more. He then said the motion was passed without saying what the final tally was.
Florida Rep. Anna Eskamani, a Democrat whose district includes parts of Orlando, said that there would be another meeting on Nov. 4 at the Holiday Inn, Disney Springs, to discuss the drafted rule, and then there would be a 28-day approval process that would include additional time for public comments.
She believes the timing of the rulemaking process — just ahead of the election — is intentional.
“It’s so clearly intentionally designed to create a news cycle that further polarizes and politicizes gender-affirming care to distract from the affordable housing crisis, to distract from the impact of Hurricane Ian and property insurance rates,” she said. “We have some actual real problems to solve, big health disparities that we need to address and yet, instead of talking about those real-life concerns, trans issues are going to be front and center, and that’s truly designed to continue to divide us.”
Just in case you missed it, the 2022 U.S. Trans Survey is now LIVE! If you haven’t taken the survey already, now is a great time. For the first time in 7 years, you have a chance to be part of the largest survey of trans people in the United States. We hope you’ll take about 60 minutes to share your story and be a part of history.
If you are trans and plan to take the survey, here’s what you need to know:
The survey is open to people of all trans identities (binary and nonbinary), ages 16 and older, living in the United States and U.S. territories, regardless of citizenship status.
If you pledged to take the survey, you are not obligated to take the survey. Participation is voluntary. When you click on the link to start the survey, you will be asked to consent to take the survey.
The U.S. Trans Survey is an anonymous survey. Your response will be kept confidential and will not be used to identify you.
The time required to take the survey may vary, but make sure to set aside at least 60 minutes to take the survey.
The survey will be available in both English and Spanish.
Please let your trans friends and siblings know about the survey too!
The U.S. Trans Survey is a survey for trans people, by trans people. The 2022 U.S. Trans Survey is conducted by the National Center for Transgender Equality in partnership with the National Black Trans Advocacy Coalition, the TransLatin@ Coalition, and the National Queer Asian Pacific Islander Alliance.
Phyllis Frye’s statusas the “grandmother of the transgender legal rights movement” was always partly the handiwork of her stalwart support system, second wife, Patricia “Trish” Dooley Frye, whom she was wed to for 47 years. Frye is now navigating life without Trish, who died in 2020.
“We had such a good love that I want love again,” Frye told Outsmart last year. “Not everybody [gets that kind of love].”
Frye is working to move on, taking heart that her legacy as a queer rights leader is being cemented as of late. A new book from historians Michael G. Long and Shea Tuttle, Phyllis Frye and the Fight for Transgender Rights, documents her momentous life and its instrumental role in trans liberation. Like Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Frye is best known as a judge — in 2010 she became the first openly transgender judge appointed in the U.S. — but some of her most impactful work took place when she didn’t wield a gavel.
After becoming a lieutenant in the Army and marrying Trish, Frye came out as trans in the mid-70s, enduring non-stop harassment from her Houston-area neighbors. Instead of hiding from the world, the hate turned Frye into an activist, leading her to law school and an integral role in the 1979 National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights. “Her trans advocacy would give birth to a movement and she used the march organizing as a means of [achieving] that,” march co-organizer Ray Hill says. “The state of our collective movement in 1979 was one of uneven development of its component parts. The trans movement did not exist, except for Phyllis’s advocacy.”
Frye would be involved in subsequent marches on Washington for queer rights, lobbying for trans inclusion and becoming the first transgender person to speak at a national march for lesbian and gay rights. Frye understood the importance of language and advocated for years — mostly through her positions in the National Lesbian and Gay Law Association and its influential Lavender Law Conference — to add the T to the LGB acronym.
Frye’s contributions to the trans movement continued through the 1990s. Among her many accomplishments are the six annual International Conferences on Transgender Law and Employment Policy which she organized, hosted, and provided grassroots training for. Eventually, Frye established a practice in criminal defense. “By 2010, I had become senior partner of my firm with lawyers who were either LGBT or supportive,” she recalls.
That year, Frye became the first out transgender judge in the entire country, when Mayor Annise Parker picked Frye to be an associate municipal judge for the city of Houston. As an associate she worked part-time, which allowed her to continue to practice law “and head this firm that I had worked so hard to establish.”
In recent years, Frye would take on transgender clients from around the state who need legal help with name changes and other paperwork. “I do kids as young as 6 and adults in their 70s and all in between,” Frye says.
Even after Trish’s death and an onslaught of anti-trans laws and political rhetoric, Frye remains optimistic and emboldened, telling everyone in the legal profession, including judges like herself, to come out.
“You’re dealing with so much angst if you’re worried about what other people are going to think,” Frye recently told out Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg. “They’re going to think what they’re going [to] think anyway.”
A Thai businesswoman and transgender advocate bought the Miss Universe Organization for $20 million, making her the first woman to own the global beauty pageant in its 71-year history, her company announced Wednesday.
Anne Jakkapong Jakrajutatip, the CEO of the Thailand-based media company JKN Global Group, is a reality TV star in her home country, where she has appeared on local versions of “Project Runway” and “Shark Tank.” She also helped establish Life Inspired for Transsexual Foundation, a nonprofit transgender rights group.
Jakrajutatip said her company’s acquisition of the Miss Universe brand is a “strong, strategic addition to our portfolio.”
“We seek not only to continue its legacy of providing a platform to passionate individuals from diverse backgrounds, cultures, and traditions, but also to evolve the brand for the next generation,” she said in a press release.
The Miss Universe Organization, which was co-owned by former President Donald Trump between 1996-2015, was bought by Endeavor’s IMG in 2015. The organization will continue to be led by its current CEO, Amy Emmerich, and president, Paula Shugart.
Miss Universe, Harnaaz Sandhu of India, waves after being crowned Dec. 12 in Eilat, Israel.Amir Levy / Getty Images file
Following the deal with the JKN Global Group, Endeavor President Mark Shapiro said in a statement that he’s “proud of the progress the organization has made in becoming a more inclusive and powerful platform where women can advance both their business objectives and their cause-based work.”
Emmerich agreed, saying that JKN Global will help to further grow the organization.
“Despite having recently celebrated the organization’s legacy of more than 70 years, we are just getting started,” she said.
The Miss Universe pageant, which started in 1952, broadcasts in 165 countries. The pageant featured its first transgender contestant in 2018, when Miss Spain, Angela Ponce, competed for the crown.
A new study has found that most people who initiate gender-affirming treatment in their youth continue it as adults — undermining the argument by right-wingers that transgender people are likely to regret such treatment and even detransition, and that young people are not ready to make decisions about gender transition procedures, even though they do so in consultation with parents and doctors.
The study, from Amsterdam University Medical Center in the Netherlands, looked at 720 people who had been treated with puberty blockers and hormones at the center as adolescents and whether they continued with gender-affirming care.
“Most participants who started gender-affirming hormones in adolescence continued this treatment into adulthood,” says a summary of the study, which was published online Thursday by The Lancet. “The continuation of treatment is reassuring considering the worries that people who started treatment in adolescence might discontinue gender-affirming treatment.” “Most,” in this case, was 98 percent.
“To our knowledge, this study is the first to assess continuation of gender-affirming hormones in a large group of transgender individuals who started medical treatment with puberty suppression in adolescence,” the report notes.
“The key message [of the study] is that the majority of people who went through a thorough diagnostic evaluation prior to starting treatment continued gender-affirming hormones at follow-up,” Dr. Marianne van der Loos, a physician at Amsterdam UMC who coauthored the study, told The Daily Beast. “This is reassuring regarding the recent increased public concern about regret of transition.”
Gender-affirming care for youth is under attack from conservative politicians in the U.S. and elsewhere. Alabama and Arkansas have outlawed the provision of such care to minors, with the Alabama law carrying criminal penalties; both states’ laws are blocked while court cases against them proceed. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has ordered that parents who allow their children to receive this care be investigated for child abuse; these investigations are also on hold because of a court case.
And U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a far-right Republican known for her outrageous statements and embrace of conspiracy theories, has introduced legislation that would make it a felony to provide gender-confirmation procedures to minors.
A Florida sheriff’s office has cleared an officer of wrongdoing after he was caught on a body camera footage choking a Guatemalan transgender woman and calling her “it.”
In November 2020, Sean Bush, a deputy from the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office (HCSO), said that a then-24-year-old trans woman named Jenny DeLeon had provoked his forceful arrest after she allegedly grabbed him by the wrist and knocked him off balance while he investigated a domestic disturbance on her property.
However, attorney Katherine Viker recently uncovered Bush’s body cam footage while conducting an unrelated allegation of another HCSO deputy using excessive force, The Huffington Post reported.
The November 2020 body cam video shows DeLeon greeting Bush with a fist bump and then refusing Bush’s instruction for her to sit down. DeLeon then says that no one in the home called for him to come and asked Bush to go back to his patrol car. Soon after, she asks Bush to please stay six feet away due to COVID-19 concerns. She then tells the officer, “You’re so awesome. Thank you for your service.”
However, when Bush moves towards her car, DeLeon raises her arm and asks him not to touch the vehicle because of fears of possible COVID-19 transmission. Such transmissions are rare, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Bush then says, “Don’t touch me,” before grabbing the woman’s arm, shirt, and neck and pushing her to the ground in a chokehold. Bush then pulls out his stun gun as DeLeon says, “I’m epileptic!” Bush uses the stun gun on her, even though stun guns can trigger seizures in epileptic people.
Later on, he grabs her by the throat again and then shoves her into some plants before using the stun gun on her again. He then rolls her onto her stomach and began handcuffing her.
As two other deputies arrived, Bush tells them, “Just keep whatever it is down,” referring to DeLeon as an “it,” a dehumanizing transphobic slur.
After the HCSO received a complaint about Bush’s use of force and a slur, the office conducted an investigation which began on December 2, 2020. The investigation ended one month later, and by March 2021, the HCSO sent Bush a letter saying that it found neither evidence of “excessive or unnecessary force,” nor of Bush making derogatory remarks. It also called Bush’s chokehold “brief and unintentional.”
Chokeholds violate the HCSO’s use-of-force policy, according to its website. Bush remains an HSCO deputy.
In a statement issued last week, HCSO wrote, “Following review of body-worn camera video… it was determined that … the suspect continuously refused to follow commands on scene and was physically combative with the deputy…. The deputy unintentionally briefly used techniques that are not in line with HCSO’s procedures.”
After her interaction with Bush, DeLeon was charged with battery, battery on a law enforcement officer, depriving an officer of means of protection or communication, and resisting an officer with violence. She was sentenced to 30 days in jail.
One year later, DeLeon was fatally stabbed. A 40-year-old man named Damien Marshall has been arrested in connection to her murder. Marshall said he slept with DeLeon but denied killing her.
“You see the video; what they said happened compared to what actually happened is not true,” Viker told The Huffington Post in a statement. “The video is the best representation of what actually occurred. Videos don’t lie.”
Viker isn’t representing DeLeon’s family members. It’s unclear if the family will take any actions in response to the newly uncovered video.
A March 2020 study by the National Center for Transgender Equality found that half of transgender people reported discomfort with seeking police assistance. About 22 percent of trans people who had interacted with police reported police harassment, and 6 percent of transgender individuals reported that they experienced bias-motivated assault by officers.
The right-wing political views of the new head of Grindr are causing some users to delete the popular gay dating and hookup app.
The tag #DeleteGrindr is trending after news incoming CEO George Arison, 44, previously tweeted he was a conservative who supported some of the positions of then-President Donald Trump, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin. Arison, who is gay, starts his new job October 19.
“FYI I am a conservative & agree with some Trump policies,” Arison wrote in a since-deleted tweet on February 28, 2020.
“Should totally run for President,” he wrote of Youngkin in a retweet dated February 24 of this year.
Arison appeared to express support for DeSantis in another retweet from January. In the retweet, he wrote that the man who championed the “don’t say gay” law was “not ideal” but agreed the Republican governor was “better-suited to advance a new, more comabtive [sic] and populist party.”
Users on social media responded quickly, calling out the past statements from Arison.
Another user called out Arison’s support for Youngkin.
Others indicated they were ditching Grindr.
Arison came to Grindr from e-commerce marketplace Shift Technologies, where he was CEO and cofounder.
In a statement to The Advocate about the issue, Grindr centered on Arison’s identity as a gay man, husband, and father.
“George is an out gay man, proudly married to his husband and the father of two children,” a Grindr spokesperson said. “George is passionate about fighting for the rights and freedoms of LGBTQ people around the world.”
Since a peak in August, the number of reported daily cases of the monkeypox virus has declined 85%.
That’s the latest seven-day average data from the Centers for Disease Control, indicating a drop from 443 reported cases at the height of the outbreak on August 6, to 60 cases reported on October 12.
As of yesterday, 27,022 cases of the monkeypox virus have been reported in the U.S.
Experts attribute the drop to a variety of factors. The monkeypox vaccine, with an 85% efficacy rate, helped slow the virus down. Men who have sex with men reduced their partners following the rise of cases in the wake of large gatherings around Pride month in June. And the virus, spread by close skin-to-skin contact, was self-limiting, unlike the airborne coronavirus, finding fewer places to spread as potential hosts reduced their exposure and the vaccine proved effective.
Centers for Disease Control
Another factor was a change in communications strategy. As cases began to rise sharply, it became clear that the virus was disproportionally affecting men who have sex with men, but officials at all levels of government were reluctant to highlight the fact, fearing the stigmatizing effect of a virus mislabeled as a “gay disease.”
In the middle of July, the New York City Health Department debated a strategy calling for gay men to reduce partners, issuing a statement that counseled caution: “For decades, the LGBTQ+ community has had their sex lives dissected, prescribed, and proscribed in myriad ways, mostly by heterosexual and cis people,” the statement read. New York would offer direction cognizant of “how poorly abstinence-only guidance has historically performed with this disgraceful legacy in mind.”
“Telling people not to have sex or not to have multiple sex partners or not to have anonymous sex is just a no-go, and it’s not going to work,” longtime AIDS activist and Housing Works chief executive Charles King told The New York Times at the time. “People are still going to have sex, and they’re going to have it even if it comes with great risk.”
In San Francisco, local officials decided the data should do the talking, expanding eligibility for the vaccine to all men who have sex with men who’d had multiple sexual partners in the previous 14 days. On July 28, the city announced a public health state of emergency, in an effort to prompt a more urgent response from the federal government and to put the city’s most at-risk population on high alert.
New York City followed suit with their own monkeypox state of emergency, at about the same time the World Health Organization’s director general recommended that men who have sex with men should consider limiting their partners. The CDC highlighted that guidance not long after.
At the federal level, in the beginning of August, the White House enlisted Dr. Demetre Daskalakis to help lead the administration’s response to the growing crisis and rectify a stumbling rollout of the vaccine. Daskalakis, who is gay, responded with a strategy directly targeting the MSM community, through outreach at large events attracting gay men, and even participating in a live Grindr forum addressing the issue, with explicit guidance for men who have sex with men to reduce their number of sex partners.
The new messaging seems to have worked. According to the CDC, by the middle of August, men who have sex with men reported changing their behavior because of the monkeypox outbreak: 48% reported reducing their number of sex partners, 50% reported reducing one-time sexual encounters, and 50% reported reducing sex with partners met on dating apps or at sex venues.
Centers for Disease Control
“The strategy worked,” Daskalakis told LGBTQ Nation, describing what he calls “a three-part trick that always works in addressing outbreaks and epidemics: community engagement, science and political will.”
“I think that the really frank, direct information that we generated through governmental public health, and then saw the community alter, magnify, and contextualize, got out,” said Daskalakis. “Seeing people who reduced their behaviors that could potentially expose them to monkeypox was definitely a part of this.”
Daskalakis added: “What’s important is that you don’t associate a virus with an identity, but rather talk about the behaviors that are associated with transmission of virus, and make sure the right people know.”
“I think the Biden administration kind of got its act together, but it was slower than it should have been,” Supervisor Raphael Mandelman, who pushed hard for San Francisco’s monkeypox emergency declaration, told LGBTQ Nation. “It was not a pleasant exercise, seeing this health crisis that the federal government was not adequately addressing, and seeing how slow the country was to get this vaccine, that had already been discovered, distributed into people’s arms.”
But, says Mandelman, “It seems like the gays have done a good job of getting their monkeypox vaccines, and it seems like we’ve kind of turned a corner. I can say this cautiously.”
Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, said its policies prohibit any reference to LGBTQ people being “groomers,” a term for would-be child rapists that conservatives have applied to LGBTQ people and allies – especially teachers and doctors – this past year.
The slur has increasingly been used by conservatives to oppose LGBTQ content in schools and gender-affirming care for transgender youth, leading to an increase in threats and harassment.
However, Facebook has continued to make money from at least 150 ads using the slur, even though the media watchdog group Media Matters alerted Meta to the issue. These ads have been seen over one million times, Media Matters reported.
On September 6, Media Matters told Meta about 134 ads using the slur. Meta removed only 40 of the ads from their platform. Now, Media Matters has discovered 19 more ads using the slur. Collectively, the advertisers paid Meta $13,600 to display these ads.
One ad, purchased by the conservative student group Turning Point USA featured a tweet from conservative pundit Candace Owen stating that she has “no patience for this child groomer movement.” The ad read, “Protect your kids.”
Another ad from The Dallas Express, one site of many in a right-wing propaganda network, purchased an ad referring to the anti-trans group “Gays Against Groomers” as an “an organization against the sexualization, indoctrination, and medicalization of children.”
New Jersey’s Holmdel Republican Party ran an ad asking people to support political candidates who “publicly state their opposition to the States [sic] new sex education curriculum which sexualizes our children to advance the agenda of groomers.”
Yet another ad by Republican Illinois state senate candidate Philip Nagel featured him stating that he is “fed up and pissed off with the sick perversion that is being pushed on our children” by “a political class full of pedophiles and groomers.”
Meta has also allowed several ads falsely linking LGBTQ rights to “the supposed normalization of pedophilia in society.”
Kayla Gogarty, deputy research director at Media Matters, told The Daily Dot that Meta’s policies against the slur don’t apparently matter.
“Those are just empty words when we see them turn a blind eye to the anti-LGBTQ rhetoric on their platform,” Gogarty said. “It’s really just another instance of Meta putting profit and engagement over the safety of its users.”
