MILWAUKEE—Jamiee Michell, a lesbian who founded the organization Gays Against Groomers, finds it ironic and “hilarious” that the Southern Poverty Law Center brands her openly LGBTQ group an “anti-LGBTQ hate group.”
“It classifies us as an anti-LGBTQ hate group, which is the most ironic and hilarious thing ever because everybody in our organization is gay and we even have a few trans people,” Michell tells The Daily Signal in an interview at the Republican National Convention earlier this month.
She says the SPLC, Anti-Defamation League, and other liberal organizations “labeled us anti-ourselves just for speaking out, wanting to protect children.”
The SPLC—which brands mainstream conservative and Christian organizations “hate groups,” placing them on a map with chapters of the Ku Klux Klan—accuses Gays Against Groomers of amplifying “dehumanizing anti-trans rhetoric” and of perpetuating “anti-LGBTQ+ stereotypes by falsely claiming that LGBTQ+ supporters of trans rights are dangerous to society.”
The Anti-Defamation League, which critics fault for a left-wing bias, also brands Gays Against Groomers “anti-LGBTQ extremist.” ADL claims the group “peddles dangerous and misleading narratives about the LGBTQ+ community, focusing on false allegations of ‘grooming’ by drag performers, ‘indoctrination’ by LGBTQ+ educators and ‘child mutilation’ by gender-affirming care providers.”
These attacks on Gays Against Groomers echo the Southern Poverty Law Center’s suggestion that parents who complain about books with pornographic images in school libraries are “book banners” and reminiscent of the “uptown Klans” that opposed desegregation in the 1950s.
Many defenders of explicit books and children’s drag shows suggest there is nothing inherently sexual about images of naked teens or middle-aged men who are scantily clad and gyrate in front of young children.
“We fight the sexualization, indoctrination, and medicalization of children happening under the guise of LGBTQIA+, plus, plus, plus,” Michell tells The Daily Signal. “Nobody will ever say what the plus stands for. I think they’re trying to incorporate the ‘P’ for ‘pedophilia.'”
Michell also highlights the experimental nature of “gender-affirming care,” a euphemistic term for medical interventions aimed at forcing a male to appear female or vice versa. These interventions stunt natural development, may sterilize patients, and have been linked to cases of liver cancer in teens.
“Gender-affirming care” aims to address psychological distress—the feeling of identifying with a gender opposite one’s sex—through bodily alterations, rather than therapy.
Michell particularly notes the fact that some “gender-affirming care” involves “amputating the healthy body parts of young girls.”
“I can’t imagine having to be stuck with the decision I made as a 9-, 10-, 11-, 12-year-old [girl]—like, it’s absolutely insane,” she adds. “It’s been common sense and common knowledge for all of human history that no child can make permanent, lifelong decisions up until like 5 minutes ago.”
Michell describes herself as a former “tomboy” and says she would be quite susceptible to claims that she might be transgender were she growing up today.
“I would have absolutely been preyed upon by this cult, this cultish agenda,” she says. “If my parents bought into that, they would have medically transitioned me, without a doubt.”
Many gay or lesbian people might be convinced that they are “really” transgender because they don’t follow masculine or feminine stereotypes, Michell says. She calls gender ideology a form of “conversion therapy,” referring to efforts to induce a person with same-sex attraction to reject a homosexual lifestyle.
“It is a form of conversion therapy, except it’s way worse—it’s like a thousand times worse,” Michell says. “Regular, old-fashioned conversion therapy is just trying to change your mind, right? This conversion therapy leaves kids with missing body parts and sterilized, so it’s much worse.”
While the legacy media and most LGBTQ groups suggest that everyone who identifies as LGBTQ supports porn in schools, “gender-affirming care” for minors, and “Drag Queen Story Hours,” Michell says: “Every single gay person I know—and even trans people—we’ve all been staunchly against this.”
“It was very important to me to create a group to fight back against it from inside the community, to differentiate, draw a big red line between us and them, show that not all gay people, not all trans people want to hurt children,” she says.
She pushes back against the idea that pornographic materials in school are important to “normalize” LGBTQ individuals.
“I’d say that we already feel normalized,” she says. “We are so welcome in society, we’ve overdosed on tolerance. You see every major corporation panders to us, bends the knee to us, every major politician on the Left.”
“No, children don’t need to learn how to become inclusive by reading pornographic material,” Michell adds. “No, they don’t need to see a man dressed scantily, nearly nude, with fake breasts, to learn about tolerance and acceptance.”
“Our community has been hijacked, they’re using us to push this pornographic filth in our name,” she says.
Although many on the left end of the political spectrum suggest that conservative Christians pose the greatest threat to LGBTQ individuals, Michell says the Left itself poses a far worse threat.
“What the gay alphabet mob is doing is hurting us more than even the Westboro Baptist Church could hope to,” she says, referring to a church that is notorious for obnoxious protests of military funerals, LGBTQ events, and political gatherings.
Due to recent activism, “people are equating all gay people, all trans people, with child predators,” Michell laments. “Gay people fought for a very long time to rid themselves of that stigma. I truly believe that they’re hurting us more than even the most extreme bigots could ever dream to.”
She argues that the SPLC and ADL attacks have put a target on their backs.
“Our inbox is filled with death threats,” Michell says. “I’ve been doxxed, which worries me. … Is today the day I’ve got to use the Second Amendment?”
