By Erin Reed | WASHINGTON – On Friday, numerous conservative accounts and news sources promoted headlines that the “American College of Pediatricians” had issued a statement against transgender care.

A video accompanied the announcement featuring Dr. Jill Simons, who, wearing a white lab coat, states that there must be an end to “social affirmation, puberty blockers, and cross-sex hormones” for transgender youth.

Despite the official-looking attire and name, the organization’s name serves to mislead observers into thinking they are the much larger American Academy of Pediatrics, which represents tens of thousands of pediatricians. In reality, the ACP is a hyper-conservative Christian group of doctors created in 2002 to oppose gay parenting.

In the announcement released on Friday, Simons called for an end to social transition and gender-affirming care for transgender youth. One video, which went viral, begins with a statement that the organization has released a “declaration” authored by the American College of Pediatricians, along with “hundreds of doctors and healthcare workers,” opposing transgender care.

It references the highly-politicized Cass Review from the United Kingdom, whose author controversially blames pornography for being transgender, as well as the Climategate-style leak of the “WPATH Files” to support the statement.

The video, which was viewed over 51 million times on Twitter, cuts off just before the next speaker is introduced: Dr. Andre Van Mol, who represents the Christian Medical and Dental Associations. Van Mol serves on the board of the Bethel Church of Redding, which made headlines in 2019 for attempting to pray a dead child back to life.

He is followed by representatives from several other Christian medical organizations that also support banning transgender care. The website promoted at the event lists signatories to the statement, including the Catholic Medical Association, Genspect, The National Catholic Bioethics Center, the Family Research Council, and the Discovery Institute, an organization that promotes intelligent design over evolution in schools.

The American College of Pediatricians has been hugely influential in the promotion of anti-trans policy in the United States, relying in part to its misleading name. Members of the organization testify in state houses and courtrooms across the United States, misleading legislators into thinking they are the much larger American Academy of Pediatrics, the professional society that represents 67,000 pediatricians in the United States.

In 2023, the organization inadvertently left a Google Drive public, leading to the leak of a massive trove of files showing their extremist roots. According to these documents, the group received significant media training from the Alliance Defending Freedom, a right-wing organization that has played a large role in the passage and defense of anti-LGBTQ+ laws in the United States.

It also received free video production from Family Watch International, a group of Christian fundamentalists opposing homosexuality, birth control, abortion, and sex education. The American College of Pediatricians itself has been listed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center since 2012, when the group’s leader stated that “homosexuality poses a danger to children” and that the group was “essentially a Judeo-Christian values organization.”

Despite its clear Christian fundamentalist opposition to LGBTQ+ people, the organization’s name has been utilized to help create misleading headlines about the state of medical acceptance of transgender care in the United States.

On Friday, conservative influencer Robby Starbuck posted a video of Simons speaking with a statement that “The American College of Pediatricians” had called for groups to “IMMEDIATELY stop the promotion of social affirmation, puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgeries for children and adolescents who experience distress over their biological sex.”

That video was retweeted by Elon Musk, who quote tweeted it with a reply of “wow.” Michael Shermer of “Skeptic Magazine” also promoted the misleading video. Following millions of views on twitter, Fox News reported on the video, stating that “American College of Pediatricians issues fiery statement condemning child gender transition” and that “The American College of Pediatricians and other groups argue evidence does not support transgender medical procedures.”

The Fox News article makes no mention of the nature of the ACP and its Christian conservative roots.

The article and tweets successfully fooled many people. Replies to the Fox News story, for instance, feature top-rated comments such as “I’m a retired physician, pathologist, who has been wondering why this group and others have taken so long to publish a position paper along these lines,” “I never thought I would see anything like this in my entire life,” and “Finally…….a medical group has the courage to speak out against this evil practice!”

Despite the widespread misinformation, every major medical organization in the United States supports gender-affirming care. In February, the American Psychological Association, the largest psychological association in the world, released a policy resolution stating that gender-affirming care is medically necessary and saves lives.

The American Academy of Pediatrics currently recommends that transgender youth have access to gender-affirming care tailored to their unique needs. The Advocates for Trans Equality maintains a list of over 30 of the largest U.S.-based medical organizations that support transgender care, including the Endocrine Society, the Pediatric Endocrine Society, the American Public Health Association, and the American Medical Association.

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Erin Reed is a transgender woman (she/her pronouns) and researcher who tracks anti-LGBTQ+ legislation around the world and helps people become better advocates for their queer family, friends, colleagues, and community. Reed also is a social media consultant and public speaker.

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The preceding article was first published at Erin In The Morning and is republished with permission.

By Erin Reed | MONTGOMERY, Ala. – In a major move, the Southern Poverty Law Center has formally designated the anti-transgender pseudoscience organizations Genspect and the Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine as anti-LGBTQ+ hate groups.

This designation is part of the civil rights organization’s latest release of its “Year In Hate & Extremism” report, which tracks hate groups and extremist groups throughout the United States. Members of these and other anti-LGBTQ+ organizations listed have played significant roles in the passage of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation and policy by concealing and underplaying their ties to anti-LGBTQ+ extremism.

Most recently, members of the newly designated hate group, Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine, helped advise the Cass Review in the United Kingdom, which has led to the criminalization of possession of some forms of transgender care there and is currently being used to argue for heavy restrictions in the United States.

The designation is significant, placing these organizations alongside other extremist groups like the Alliance Defending Freedom and the Family Research Council—Christian fundamentalist organizations pushing anti-LGBTQ+ policies in the United States and internationally. Justifying the new designations, the report points to conferences held by these organizations that featured “expert witnesses” employed by the Alliance Defending Freedom to target LGBTQ+ people in the United States.

It also highlights an investigative analysis that discovered the organizations were at the center of a massive “anti-LGBTQ pseudoscience network.” The analysis further determined that in the case of SEGM, the organization’s funding stream included Koch Foundation money funneled through the Edward Charles Foundation. Notably, SEGM shared funding streams with right-wing Christian groups like the Alliance Defending Freedom and the Family Research Council.

In recent years, the Society for Evidence in Gender Medicine has played a huge role in advancing anti-transgender policy globally. In the United States, far-right politicians such as Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and Governor Greg Abbott have relied on SEGM materials to justify treating gender affirming care for transgender youth as child abuse.

In Florida, SEGM members aided in a DeSantis initiative to ban transgender care through a review for the Florida Board of Medicine; that review was conducted so poorly that it led to Yale researchers determining, “So repeated and fundamental are the errors in the June 2 Report that it seems clear that the report is not a serious scientific analysis but, rather, a document crafted to serve a political agenda.”

A later investigation determined that before the reviews were even conducted, board members had determined it would result in “care effectively banned.” At the same time, members of Genspect affiliates were placed on the Florida Board of Medicine who would ultimately vote to ban that care.

Importantly, members and associates of the Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine (SEGM) have recently played a significant role in the Cass Review, a supposedly “independent” review now being cited to crack down on transgender care in England and the United States.

Recent investigations revealed that multiple SEGM members and associates were part of advisory groups to the review with secret memberships. One such person was Dr. Riittakerttu Kaltiala, a Finnish psychologist who prominently presented at the latest SEGM conference and has been closely associated with SEGM, which denies her membership due to the organization having “no official members.” 

Dr. Kaltiala facilitated a meeting between Dr. Cass and Dr. Patrick Hunter, a DeSantis medical board pick and member of Genspect. Dr. Cass later shared information with the team according a letter obtained exclusively by this publication. Dr. Kaltiala went on to “meet regularly” with the DeSantis appointees and even testified in favor of Florida’s ban on transgender care.

The latest report from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) indicates that in 2023, the number of anti-LGBTQ+ hate groups increased by one-third to 86 groups, the highest number ever tracked by the organization.

According to the group, this surge is primarily due to the rise of “family policy councils” that push right-wing Christian agendas and members of anti-LGBTQ+ pseudoscience networks that often share the same goals.

“As in previous years, the anti-LGBTQ policy push was grounded in demonizing LGBTQ people and using pseudoscientific claims about LGBTQ people, but the weaponization of pseudoscience as a tool of trans suppression and the targeting of fundamental freedoms like free speech, expression, and assembly through book and drag bans has become a more prominent feature in recent years,” the report says, highlighting the increasing use of organizations weaponizing disinformation to target transgender people.

When asked about the inclusion of SEGM and Genspect as hate groups in the latest report and the ways in which they weaponize pseudoscience to target transgender people, R.G. Cravens, a Senior Research Analyst at the SPLC, stated, “We often defer to experts, allowing them to substitute their judgment for our own. Purveyors of hate and extremism count on this deference when they market pseudoscience as objective truth and use it to discriminate (and worse) against others.”

He also stated that such groups “frequently use pseudoscience to disguise their far-right ideologies, using the language of science in an attempt to make their extremism seem reasonable.”

You can find a full list of the anti-LGBTQ+ groups in the latest update here.

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Erin Reed is a transgender woman (she/her pronouns) and researcher who tracks anti-LGBTQ+ legislation around the world and helps people become better advocates for their queer family, friends, colleagues, and community. Reed also is a social media consultant and public speaker.

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The preceding article was first published at Erin In The Morning and is republished with permission.

By Ashley Murray | MONTGOMERY, Ala. – Emboldened by the mainstreaming of hard-right politics ahead of a presidential election cycle, white nationalist and anti-LGBTQ+ groups increased to record levels in the United States last year, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center’s latest annual report on hate and extremism released Tuesday.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, which has published the annual report since 1990, documented 835 active anti-government groups, up 133 from 2022’s count, and 595 hate groups, an increase of 72 over the previous year’s figure.

Accounting for a large portion of the increase was a 50% surge in white supremacy hate groups in 2023, the highest jump ever recorded by the SPLC, growing to 165 over 109 in 2022. White power and neo-Nazi rallies across the U.S. totaled 143 in 2023, down from 191 in 2022.

SPLC saw a 33% rise in anti-LGBTQ+ organizations over last year, bringing the total to 86. The group said the growth was largely attributable to the anti-trans movement on the far-right.

“What we’re seeing now should be a wake-up call for all of us,” Margaret Huang, SPLC’s president and CEO, said on a call with reporters. “Our 2023 report documented more hate and anti-government extremist groups than ever before. With a historic election just months away, these groups are multiplying, mobilizing and making, and in some cases already implementing, plans to undo democracy.”

Hate groups have increased in-person events and leafleting, according to the report. The SPLC tracked nearly 7,000 flyering incidents last year, many including language derived from racist and antisemitic conspiracies.

The groups also launched campaigns to gain influence in mainstream politics, according to the report, namely through the conservative Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 manifesto that outlines aspirations for anti-abortion, anti-free press and anti-LGBTQ+ priorities should presumed GOP presidential nominee and former President Donald Trump win in November.

Nine of the anti-government and hate groups tracked by the SPLC are part of the coalition that supports Project 2025, the organization reports.

Florida a leader in anti-government, hate groups

Among the states leading in numbers of anti-government and hate groups are California, Florida, Texas, Pennsylvania, New York, Virginia, Georgia, North Carolina, Washington and Ohio.

California topped the list with 51 hate and 66 anti-government groups.

The SPLC recorded the second-most groups in Florida, which has become a leader in book-banning incidents and restrictive policies on teachers. The Sunshine State is home to 43 hate and 71 anti-government organizations, according to the report, and is the birthplace of recently influential “parental rights” group Moms for Liberty.

Moms for Liberty co-founder Tiffany Justice was invited in March 2023 to testify before a U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary subcommittee then chaired by Rep. Mike Johnson of Louisiana, who is now House speaker. 

The annual survey of hate groups tracked 116 hate-leafleting incidents in Florida, where the antisemitic groups rallied and flyered on multiple occasions, including over Labor Day when groups named the Goyim Defense League, The Order of the Black Sun and the Maine-based Blood Tribe marched in Orlando wielding flags with swastikas and making Nazi salutes.

Antisemitism, already on the rise, became more pronounced following Israel’s continuing offensive on the Gaza Strip following the Hamas-led terrorist attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

“Antisemitic conspiracies seeped into mainstream narratives at an alarming pace and 2023. Specifically after Hamas’s Oct. 7 terrorist attack, the far right blurred the lines between legitimate criticism of the Israeli government’s actions and outright antisemitism,” R.G. Cravens, SPLC’s senior research analyst for its Intelligence Project, said during Tuesday’s call with reporters.

Following the Hamas attack, the so-called Goyim Defense League distributed a flyer online and in person that read “FREE PALESTINE,” as a “not-so-thinly-veiled attempt at stoking more antisemitism and using Palestinian people to further their own aims,” according to the report.

Christian ‘dominionism’

The SPLC report also cited the expanding influence of extreme Christian nationalism as a driver for the growing number of anti-government organizations.

The report expresses concern over the rise in the Republican ranks of Johnson, a former senior lawyer for the Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian legal advocacy group behind the U.S. Supreme Court case that precipitated the overturning of the federal right to abortion.

Johnson’s far-right politics, including his anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ+ positions and his advocacy to blur Christianity and the state, are well documented.

Spokespeople for Johnson did not immediately return an email seeking comment.

The Alliance for Defending Freedom describes SPLC as a “discredited” and “scandal-ridden group,” and denounces the organization’s “hate map.” The SPLC currently has an interactive U.S. map pinpointing locations of anti-government and hate groups.

“Eventually, their definition of hate included huge swaths of well-respected, mainstream, conservative America,” according to a post on the Alliance for Defending Freedom website.

The SPLC report specifically warns about the rise of the National Apostolic Reformation, a Christian movement made up of “dominionist leaders” that aim to “seize control” of seven areas of society, including government, education and business.

Decline in militias

One area in which the report documented a decline is in the militia movement, which suffered after the hundreds of Department of Justice prosecutions following the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

The numbers of militias dropped to 52 in 2023, from 61 in 2022.

One of the most prominent militias, the Oath Keepers, significantly diminished its presence following the 2023 conviction and sentencing of its leader Stewart Rhodes for seditious conspiracy leading up to and during the Jan. 6 attack.

The Oath Keepers active militia chapters dropped to 10 in 2023 from 79 in 2022.

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Ashley Murray covers the nation’s capital as a senior reporter for States Newsroom. Her coverage areas include domestic policy and appropriations.

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The preceding article was previously published by the Louisiana Illuminator and is republished with permission.

The Louisiana Illuminator is an independent, nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization with a mission to cast light on how decisions in Baton Rouge are made and how they affect the lives of everyday Louisianians. Our in-depth investigations and news stories, news briefs and commentary help residents make sense of how state policies help or hurt them and their neighbors statewide.

We’re part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.

LEXINGTON, Ky. – Speaking to a gathering of the right-wing Young America’s Foundation at the University of Kentucky on Tuesday, that was also live-streamed, Daily Wire pundit Matt Walsh, launched into a lengthy transphobic rant from the stage telling the audience that in regards to trans issues he will “tell the truth.”

“I care because the truth matters. Now, why do I care about gender ideology? I care because it harms children. I care because of what it does to women and their identities being appropriated and degraded by crossdressing men with fetishes.  

“But even before that I care because the truth matters and you are saying things that are not true and I’m not gonna just let you say things that aren’t true without, without disputing it. The truth matters more than anything.

“It matters more than your ideology. It matters more than your preferences. It matters more than your feelings or your self-identification or your gender identity or your sexual orientation.

“The truth matters more than anything — it matters more than your life and more than mine. You know, trans activists say that if you talk about this issue — that when I talk about this issue — that I’m putting their lives at risk somehow.

“If that’s true, well, you know what, its a risk worth taking. If speaking the truth puts your life at risk I’ll still speak it. It’s a risk worth taking. If speaking the truth puts my life at risk, I’ll still speak it.”

Remember this mask-off moment next time Matt Walsh claims he's "pro-life":

"Trans activists say … that I'm putting their lives at risk somehow, and if that's true, well, you know what, it's a risk worth taking. If speaking the truth puts your life at risk I'll still speak it." pic.twitter.com/JZkfEvnXpW

— Ari Drennen (@AriDrennen) October 18, 2023

Walsh has a lengthy record of anti-trans hate speech and bigotry. In a November 2022 show, he attacked transgender people saying: “Transgender, trans – it means beyond gender. You’re beyond it or something. You’re something past it, beyond it. Is it possible to be that? The answer is no. No one is beyond it because we’re human beings and there are two options, male and female, and nobody exists beyond that.”

Young America’s Foundation is a conservative youth organization founded in 1969. In 2018, the Los Angeles Times called YAF “one of the most preeminent, influential and controversial forces in the nation’s conservative youth movement.”

The Bridge Initiative Project from Georgetown University in Washington D.C. noted that YAF has chapters at high schools and universities across the country. YAF helps bring conservative speakers to college campuses and its speakers roster includes a number of anti-abortion-pro life, anti-LGBTQ, anti-Muslim activists, speakers, and thinkers. One of its university chapters was identified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Read more about Young America’s Foundation here: (Link)

TUPELO, Ms. –  A leading national anti-LGBTQ+ group,  The American Family Association, (AFA) listed by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a ‘Hate’ group for its lies and propaganda about LGBTQ+ rights and expression, pornography, and people is attacking Aveeno Kids shampoo company over its Aveeno Kids advert.

The notorious One Million Moms ‘division’ of the AFA headed by AFA’s Monica Cole sent out a newsletter and posted to the group’s website claiming Aveeno Kids is currently using a young boy in its 45 second social media, television and streaming commercial to “help push the gay agenda.”

Complete text of the post by Monica Cole:

Aveeno Kids is currently using a young boy in its commercial to help push the gay agenda. The male child is depicted using Aveeno Kids shampoo during bath time. Then, he is shown playing in what appears to be an astronaut costume with a pastel, rainbow-striped tutu added on top of his astronaut ensemble. This ad furtively advocates for the LGBTQ lifestyle.

By featuring a supposedly nonbinary child, Aveeno Kids has introduced a controversial marketing campaign they should have avoided. In fact, the focus of the commercial is gender dysphoria and not the product itself.

Unfortunately, the initial victim of this disgusting commercial is the young boy cast in this ad, not to mention any child who views the commercial. The sexualization and moral corruption of these children are examples of child exploitation at its worst. No child should be introduced to the experience of mental disorders through a commercial. 

Evidently, the use of gender fluid and non-binary characters in mainstream television commercial is the next step in normalizing a culture that dissociates a person’s biological gender from their “gender identity.”

Yet, DNA proves a female is female and a male is male. There is no gray area here and no such thing as “gender fluid.” Confusing young viewers and child cast members with gender dysphoria is destructive. Aveeno Kids is glorifying gender dysphoria, also known as gender identity disorder, and using a child to promote this mental disorder.

For clarification, Dictionary.com describes gender dysphoria as “a psychological condition marked by a significant emotional distress and impairment in life functioning, caused by lack of congruence between gender identity and biological sex assigned at birth.”

Related:

The Aveeno Kids Shampoo Advert:

Aveeno Kids from Sarofsky. Beautifully made. on Vimeo.

By Media Matters Staff | NEW YORK – On her show last night, Fox news host Laura Ingraham launched into a transphobic rant claiming among other things that those on the political left are cheering on what she termed anti-humanism.

Then she pivoted to the transgender community:

“Crusaders for climate change, abortion, euthanasia, gender fluidity, they all lead — eventually, their thinking — to the devaluing of human life.

“At its core, being anti-human means being anti- truth because it involves the questioning or denying of objective facts, including those at the very heart of our existence. 

“The cult of gender deviancy collapses into meaningless slogans and blather. None of it makes any sense, but it’s deeply anti-human.” 

Watch the Media Matters for America video clip:

CHICAGO – Outspoken British TERF Kellie-Jay Keen, who goes by the pseudonym “Posie Parker,” is in Chicago Sunday for the sixth stop in her 11-city “Standing for Women” speaking tour, which she launched in Los Angeles Oct. 16.

Her mission, she said when she announced the tour on Twitter earlier this month, is to “let women speak” and to “change the world.” 

“Women,” according to Keen and her supporters, only means cisgender people presumed to be female at birth and does not include transgender women. “No woman has a penis,” Keen said in Austin, Texas Saturday. “No man has a vagina.” GC activists and TERFs like Keen are campaigning for laws discriminating against trans rights on both sides of the Atlantic.  

Keen streamed the event on YouTube and posted photos on social media, showing what Keen claimed were Chicago police officers escorting her through crowds due to incidents of violence that had erupted on that tour. As of press time, Chicago police could neither confirm or deny whether on-duty officers provided security or whether off-duty uniformed officers were present. 

@Chicago_Police stepping up. #LetWomenSpeak #Chicago#LetWomenSpeakUSA pic.twitter.com/dTuvHnMJFA

— SFW Kellie-Jay Keen #AdultHumanFemale (@StandingforXX) October 30, 2022

In Tacoma on Wednesday, police made one arrest for assault and The News Tribune reported at least six counter-protesters were treated for being hit with pepper-spray. The woman wielding the can of bear spray, similar to that used in the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, was identified in that report and via YouTube as Jenna Hoch of Denver, an anti-trans activist. She can be seen in the video, backing away from counter-protesters, screaming “Don’t touch me.”

A 14-year-old girl claims to have been targeted by Hoch in a video posted to YouTube. 

“I was prepared for the violence,” Hoch told The News Tribune, following what she described as an assault in Portland, Ore. One protester’s hand was injured and required medical treatment, Hoch said. Keen, however, canceled the Portland event due to threats she claimed were made by Antifa. Video of a pie attack at that canceled event has since gone viral.

Despite canceling the stop in Portland, Keen did show up in Tacoma. A video posted by Keen shows a counter-protester storming the area of Tollefson Plaza where Keen and a dozen fellow speakers were holding their rally; One of Keen’s supporters swiftly intercepted the counter-protester. According to The News Tribune, about 30 people showed up at the plaza in support of Keen. However, within minutes, the crowd of 20 counter-protesters grew to about 200 and made their way into the plaza. By that time, Keen had already fled, according to the report. 

Keen is the U.K. activist who earlier this year advocated for gun-carrying, cisgender dads here in the U.S. to “use women’s toilets… to combat the insanity” of allowing transgender girls and women to use bathrooms matching their gender identity. Keen represents cisgender women who call themselves “Gender Critical,” and oppose laws and policies here and in the U.K. that allow transgender women to identify as women, compete as women and use public facilities dedicated to females. Keen also confronted this reporter covering the NCAA Women’s Swimming Championships in Atlanta in March about use of public bathrooms. 

When Keen launched her speaking tour on Oct. 16 on Hollywood Blvd., she was joined by a handful of supporters and fellow speakers and no opposition. And police presence was non-existent. 

Kellie-Jay Live from Los Angeles #LetWomenSpeak#LetWomenSpeakUSAhttps://t.co/YFhJOQx6Zs

— SFW Kellie-Jay Keen #AdultHumanFemale (@StandingforXX) October 16, 2022

The same was true in San Francisco, her second stop. But when protesters started showing up at Keen’s events, she asked for but did not receive police protection, including in Tacoma. That visibly changed when she arrived in Austin, Texas on Saturday, as ex-detransitoner and former radical feminist Ky Schevers tweeted, with a screenshot of armed security guards flanking Keen. 

Kyle KD Sims & his team did security for Kellie-Jay Keen’s anti-trans rally in Austin. Sims is a right-winger who’s previously done security for former Senator Don Huffines & Kelly Neidert/Young Conservatives of TX. TERFs are increasingly turning to right-wing men to do security. pic.twitter.com/Qnv93fUIIK

— Ky Schevers (@reclaimingtrans) October 30, 2022

According to Schevers, “Jeannette Cooper of PEC [anti-trans group Partners for Ethical Care] hired private security for Chicago & K. Yang aka the Deprogrammer is paying for security for the NYC rally.”

Also on hand on Sunday in Chicago’s Pioneer Court: Counter-demonstrators brandishing signs declaring, “TERFs MACE KIDS.” 

#TerfsMaceKids https://t.co/T8KnyvbCMq

— Katy Montgomerie 🦗 (@KatyMontgomerie) October 30, 2022

The counter-demonstrators staged their own rally in Chicago’s Cityfront Plaza, attended by at least one man identified by Twitter users as a member of the Proud Boys.
Keen’s next stops include Florida, Washington, D.C. and New York City, and she announced she plans to make a documentary from video of her events.

By Mia Gingerich | WASHINGTON – Last Friday, the Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh held a rally in Tennessee against gender-affirming care, a follow-up to his targeted misinformation campaign against Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital.

Footage from the rally, which included speeches from Walsh, Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), and other media figures and local politicians, shows that it attracted a cadre of extremists, including members of the violent Proud Boys extremist group and multiple protesters brandishing signs explicitly calling for violence against medical professionals. Following the rally,

Walsh called the protesters “normal decent Americans” while Blackburn said she was “proud” to have participated. 

Walsh, an opportunist who has committed himself to an anti-trans crusade, recently claimed to be “building a nationwide organized movement” to target hospitals and medical providers with harassment after helping to drive harassment against Boston Children’s Hospital. After the facility reported threats against doctors and staff, Walsh continued to target the facility, which later received more than one bomb threat. In September, Walsh targeted Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital with similar false claims and mischaracterizations of procedures offered to minors, falsely claiming the hospital would “castrate, sterilize, and mutilate minors as well as adults.” 

The efficacy of gender-affirming medical care for trans youth, and the serious psychological risks of denying that care, have been shown by numerous studies, and such care is supported by every major medical organization in America. 

Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital responded to Walsh by saying it did not provide gender-affirming genital surgeries for trans youth but would temporarily cease other gender-affirming surgeries for minors, despite such surgeries having very low rates of regret. Following the success of his targeting of Vanderbilt, Walsh announced the rally at the Tennessee state capitol on October 21, which was billed as “The Rally to End Child Mutilation.”

Walsh’s rally attracted extremists, some of whom explicitly called for violence against medical professionals

Leading up to the rally, Walsh, who has a history of promoting or defending political violence, continually targeting healthcare providers and the LGBTQ community, comparing doctors who provide gender-affirming care to Nazis, calling for police to “[break] down the doors” of establishments hosting drag events, and tweeting he was “not just reporting” on the trans health clinic at Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital but was “going to put a stop to it.”

Footage of the rally streamed by Walsh and local news outlets on YouTube showed multiple attendees at Walsh’s rally directly calling for violence against doctors, with one attendee’s sign reading “Doctors who mutilate children should be killed.”

The sign was visible at the front of the crowd for the duration of the rally, including during speeches by Walsh and Blackburn. The man holding the sign, who can be seen cheering for Matt Walsh during a speech by Tea Party activist Matt Meckler, was also recorded by local media confronting counter-protesters before the rally yelling, “No mutilators, mutilators go home.” 

Footage from a local newscast of the event also captured an attendee positioned further back in the crowd holding a sign that said, “mutilate the mutilators.” 

Following the bomb threat made against Boston Children’s Hospital, Walsh claimed that “no critic of gender ideology gains anything or has any incentive to make a threat.”

Footage from the rally also shows a number of members of the violent extremist group the Proud Boys, one of whom can be seen flashing a white nationalist hand signal as he passed counter protesters.

From CBS Channel 5’s livestream of Matt Walsh’s October 21, 2022, rally in Tennessee, streamed on YouTube

The rally also attracted fringe Christian fundamentalists who held oversized signs declaring, “homo sex is sin,” and that “hellfire awaits” gay people and “baby killers.” Another protester near the front can be seen holding a sign declaring, “We are at war,” with the other side reading, “No justice, no peace, free the J6’ers,” referring to those arrested for participating in the January 6 insurrection. 

Walsh and other speakers at the rally used incendiary language directing anger at medical professionals 

In addition to Walsh, speakers at the rally included GOP state politicians from Tennessee, who earlier this year passed multiple anti-trans bills (helping to perpetuate mental health crisis among trans youth in the state), and Blackburn, who used the confirmation hearing for Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson to push anti-trans talking points. Other speakers included Tulsi Gabbard, Dr. Colin Wright, and Chloe Cole.

During the rally, Walsh engaged the crowd with incendiary language, asking the audience, “As Tennesseans, do we believe in castrating children? Do we believe in that? Do we believe in drugging and mutilating kids?” Walsh added, “They believe in it.” He continued, saying, “I’m not going to leave it to my kids to fight this fight. We don’t leave it to our kids. We stand up and we fight. It isn’t our kids’ battle,” before going on to characterize his “fight” as “a battle of good versus evil.” 

In her speech, Blackburn directed the attention of the extremists in the crowd to Vanderbilt, saying Walsh and the Daily Wire did an “amazing job” targeting Vanderbilt, referencing “what was taking place just down the street right here in Nashville.” Later in her speech, Blackburn said she was going to “carry this movement to take care of our children, to end this child mutilation.” As she neared the end of her speech, Blackburn said, “Look, you all are happy warrior freedom fighters, and you are not going to let the left get their way with our children.”

Vanderbilt’s proximity to the crowd’s location was also referenced by State Rep. William Lamberth (R-TN), who said during his speech, “If not for Matt and his team, a certain university medical center just down the road would still be performing child mutilation surgeries.”

Walsh and other speakers reacted to the rally by targeting counter protesters and lauding the anti-trans protesters 

Immediately following the rally, Walsh, who last year called Kyle Rittenhouse a “victim” after Rittenhouse shot dead multiple people at a Black Lives Matter protest, tweeted a photo of the crowd where the sign calling for violence against doctors is visible, with Walsh simply captioning it, “We are winning.”

Blackburn tweeted after the rally that she was “proud to defend Tennessee kids from these dangerous procedures today.” Tulsi Gabbard wrote in her newly-launched Substack newsletter that there were “a handful of very noisy protesters who were there to support continued child mutilation” at the rally, but made no mention of those calling to murder doctors. 

During his podcast on Monday, Walsh targeted the counter protesters at the event, calling them “satanic leftist zombies” and “emotionally disturbed freaks and losers,” and claimed some of them were “of the paid variety.” Walsh contrasted them with his supporters.

In the end I have to be grateful that the disgusting hellspawns did show up because it provided exactly the kind of contrast that I want people to see. On one hand, you have normal decent Americans of all ages and demographics speaking out against one of the great atrocities of our time, and on the other hand you have a bunch of screeching goblins who have no argument to present, no point to make, and are only interested in silencing the other side by whatever means necessary. So it’s just up to each member of the public to decide whose side they want to be on. You see that footage, you decide, who do you want to line up with?”

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Mia Gingerich is a researcher at Media Matters. She has a bachelor’s degree in politics and government from Northern Arizona University and has previously worked in rural organizing and local media.

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The preceding article was previously published by Media Matters for America and is republished by permission.

NASHVILLE – The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh called for police to break “down the doors” of drag shows where children are present and charge everyone involved as pedophiles. He then compared drag shows to cancer, saying “just like cancer, stopping it is not a gentle or a painless process.”

Transcript:

MATT WALSH (HOST): Now, a few things here are confusing. Well, more than a few things, but focusing just on these for a moment. For one thing, the pronoun situation is all over the map, okay? It’s not clear of the various people mentioned here, which are actually females, though they all use female pronouns.

I mean, it doesn’t really make a difference I suppose, the child is being exploited either way, the adults are creeps and degenerates and worse either way, but that is a confusing aspect of this.

Also, I was not previously familiar with the term drag mom, though from context it seems that this is just another way of describing a professional groomer. The quote “drag child” is handed over to the drag mom to be groomed and conditioned. It seems to be essentially a sort of pedophilic, predatory farm system that the groomers have set up.

So, what can be done about this? That’s really the question. We’ve established that this is happening and it’s only getting worse over time. Progressivism does what the name suggests, what the label suggests, it’s progressivism so it progresses, except that it progresses in the same sense that, say, cancer progressives. It keeps spreading and getting worse and eating away at our civilization until it is stopped or until it destroys its host.

And just like cancer, stopping it is not a gentle or a painless process. The farther along the cancer is, the more aggressive you have to be in fighting it. Culturally, we are approaching, if we haven’t already reached, a terminal state, which means we have to be all the more aggressive, which calls for two things.

First, obviously involving children in drag events in any capacity should be outright criminalized everywhere. There is no other way. You know, this doesn’t stop until police are breaking down the doors at these places and carting the adults away in handcuffs. Charge them all as pedophiles. Throw them in prison, and whenever they get out, if they do get out, put them on the sex offender registry for life.

That man in the first clip dancing around with his skirt up should be treated legally as a child predator. That’s the level of protection that our children are owed and the people sexualizing and exploiting them are owed that level of punishment.

This is something that needs to start in red states. And if Republicans take over the White House, it should be handled on the federal level as well. 

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Media Matters for America is a politically left-leaning 501, nonprofit organization and media watchdog group. MMfA was founded in 2004 by journalist and political activist David Brock as a counterweight to the conservative Media Research Center.

By Ari Drennen | WASHINGTON – Self-described “theocratic fascist” Matt Walsh dismissed adolescence as a modern invention for which he had “a cure,” according to a deleted post from his blog discovered by Media Matters. Walsh has come under fire for past comments he made advocating for teenage girls to marry and get pregnant. 

According to a version of the blog post stored in the internet archive, the Daily Wire personality argued that “virtually every culture has its own child-into-adult initiation, and almost all of them happen significantly before the 18th birthday.”

In the 2013 blog post, Walsh, who has helped lead a right-wing campaign of harassment against children’s hospitals providing lifesaving gender-affirming care to trans youth and who has previously slandered LGBTQ people as “groomers,” wrote:

In modern Western society, we’ve delayed the onset of adulthood, instead inventing a new sort of human: the “teenager.” The teenager exists in this limbo which we’ve created; we call it “adolescence.” Adolescence is a state-of-the-art modern innovation, like crack-cocaine or chemical warfare.

The World Health Organization describes adolescence as a phase of life between childhood and adulthood between ages 10 and 19 when young people “experience rapid physical, cognitive and psychosocial growth” that “affects how they feel, think, make decisions, and interact with the world around them.” Walsh derides that period as as “a product of our expectations,” saying that if we expect 13-year-olds to act like adults, they will be able to do so:

Adolescence isn’t a product of brain chemistry — it’s a product of our expectations. If we expect 23 year olds to act like they’re 13, then we will get just that. For thousands of years, 13 year olds were expected to act like they’re 23, and those expectations were met.

Walsh has faced criticism for previous commentary, reported by Media Matters, in which the far-right pundit suggested that girls as young as 16 should marry and become pregnant, saying, “The problem is not, per se, teenage pregnancy — it’s unwed pregnancy.” Walsh argued that girls who are “still in high school … want, biologically and metaphysically and with everything in their body, they want to settle down, they want to start a family” and said that 16-year-olds are adults:

At about 16, you’re an adult who is mature and can make decisions — you are that at 16. I don’t care what anybody says. And if you’re going to tell me it’s different, well, then how come for the first 10,000 years of human civilization, that’s the way it was? It’s just recently where all of a sudden we’re all r——- until we’re 25?

In a two-tweet thread, Walsh called the comments “out of context material from a rock morning show I hosted in my early 20s on an obscure station in Delaware,” adding, “I apologize for nothing.”

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Ari Drennen is the LGBTQ program director for Media Matters, where she has worked since January 2022. She has a bachelors degree in political science and economics from Middlebury College. Previously she worked at the Center for American Progress and the League of Conservation Voters

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The preceding article was previously published by Media Matters for America and is republished by permission.