Opinion: Gays Against Groomers Earns Its Acronym, GAG

At first it seemed just a misdirected email from something called Gays Against Groomers, or GAG — which was also my initial reaction to what it was pushing: the elimination of trans rights for teens, doing away with drag queen story time and ending kids' participation in drag shows and Pride events. GAG was announcing an October 5 rally in front of the Capitol — the sort of thing I wouldn't attend except perhaps to counter-protest.

I almost deleted the email, but something nagged at me: Why would a self-described LGBTQ+ organization embrace a term like "groomers," which has historically and unfairly been leveled at gays? According to its website, GAG is a 501(c)4 nonprofit made up of "gays, lesbians, and others in the community who oppose the sexualization, indoctrination, and mutilation of children under the guise of radical “LGBTQIA+” activism." Members claim to be just a bunch of "moms and dads, couples, siblings, husbands and wives, families and friends, typical gay American men and women who live our lives just like everyone else."

But Media Matters calls GAG founder Jaimee Michell a "grifter gay," with "a long history of slinging baseless accusations of pedophilia and abuse against political opponents." She began her career as a right-wing talking head by working as a content creator and lead designer for Arsenal Media, a deeply conservative media organization specializing in creating viral content. It was in that spirit — and in the interests of guest spots on red-meat ridiculousness like Tucker Carlson and the like — that she founded GAG on Twitter in mid-2022.

To learn more about the group, I reached out to the author of the email, not expecting a reply.

I was wrong: Dr. Rich Guggenheim, a gay man and former professor of molecular pathology at the University of Idaho who now serves as GAG's national director of legislation, responded right away.

"A friend of mine and I were sitting on the curb watching the [Denver] Pride parade when he said to me, 'Remember when Pride was full of hot, shirtless, muscular men on floats? Now there’s children on the floats.' Sadly, he hit the nail on the head," Guggenheim wrote of the start of his involvement with GAG. "Gay Pride, as it used to be called, was a weekend. Mostly gay men and lesbian women came to Denver (or a handful of other major cities) for a weekend to celebrate, relax and recommit ourselves to the fight for equal rights. But something happened. A movement has been appropriated."

That appropriation of what, as a gay man, he considered his history bothered him. "If I wanted to hang out in a crowd of people with a bunch of woke white moms pushing double-wide strollers full of children around, and spend $140, I'd go to Disneyland," he said. "I just don't appreciate that people have come to the point that they feel entitled enough to appropriate our community and reduce us to a stereotype."

Whatmade it worse was that kids were involved: "Drag queens gyrating in front of children, books that contain explicit materials placed in front of them in school classrooms...seeing children at Pride where naked body parts and toys were laid out at eye level for them to see. [Pride] is now where naked men and women march — proudly — in front of children and see nothing wrong with this."

Despite some cringe-inducing labeling of people as "woke," Guggenheim had something of a point. At some level, most people can identify with the core idea of protecting kids from something they're not ready for. Too, GAG's position on transgender rights for youth starts with some valid concerns about the permanence of the decisions being made both socially and surgically. But then GAG takes it far afield, using purposefully inflammatory language like "mutilation," "indoctrination" and "the sexualization of children."

"There's a lot of science out there that shows there are serious issues here," Guggenheim said in defense of the group. "A lot of times, there are underlying medical mental health problems not being addressed. We have to deal with that first. When we see an increase in the rate of suicidal ideology and an increased rate of severe depressive disorders literally going from 13 percent pre-transition to 80 percent post-transition, we have to hit the pause button."

Guggenheim didn't provide a source for those stats, and according to the National Library of Medicine, there's actually "a reduction in suicidality following gender-affirming treatment." And a study by the University of Texas's Stephen Russell suggests that any rates of depression aren't traceable back to transitioning itself. "We found that gender identity is not the primary driver of mental health," Russell wrote. "Being a transgender young person does not lead to depression on its own, but the social environment that many of these young people experience does."

Guggenheim does part ways with GAG on at least one issue: gender-neutral bathrooms in schools. While the GAG FAQ page specifies that the group believes "public spaces like schools should maintain the binary bathroom model to reduce possible harm to minors," Guggenheim sees their value. "Gender-neutral bathrooms serve more purposes than just being gender-neutral," he said, mentioning their use by children with disabilities as one example. "Personally, I welcome them."

Still, Guggenheim sticks with the GAG script on most other positions, including the seemingly internally-inconsistent name of the group, which he defends as gay-culture reclamation. "We get so hung up on words," he said. "I'm old enough to remember when the term 'queer' was a slur. I find the re-appropriation of that term is deeply insulting." In fact, throughout our conversation, when Guggenheim mentioned the alphabetics of the LGBTQIA+ movement, he stopped at either T or even B. "And I'm sorry, I'm going to be blunt: we have this younger generation that's entitled enough not to care about how that term might affect older people," he said. "It's disrespectful."

Guggenheim doesn't like the term "groomer," he said...at first. "I'd rather describe the behavior that's happening," he explained, then immediately pivoted: "But honestly, a lot of what we're seeing is groomer-like behavior. People might see that as incendiary, but they're not looking at the idea that we need to take a moment and self-reflect as a community and say, 'No, this isn't right.'"

That's whataboutism, of course — distraction from the central question."We're using the word to object to what's being done in our name, in our community," he continued. "We're saying no. You might be conservative and want to call gay people a bunch of groomers, but no, we actually oppose that. You don't get to do that anymore."

I asked Guggenheim if he sees it as problematic that he's equating pedophiles with people who are doing things that he might find objectionable — drag shows and the support of transgender choice in minors — but are definitely not pedophiles. That the continuation of the pejorative might feed the wrong impulses of some in American society, that someone with an anti-gay agenda might see the name of the group and consider it a concession to the idea that some portion of the LGBTQIA+ community is, in fact, pedophiliac? "If the shoe fits," Guggenheim shrugged. "It's like if you name a group White People Against White Nationalism. That's incendiary. Is it part of White culture? Absolutely. Is it something we should shun and be ashamed of? Absolutely. But calling it out isn't the problem."

Guggenheim insists he considers himself left-of-center politically. "I've never, ever aligned myself with Republican ideals," he said, "because some of their rhetoric can be harmful. But what I also see as harmful is where they [progressives] have moved this idea of being 'inclusive' is to a point where it's starting to harm us as gay men. Our voices are starting to be canceled by the very community that preaches a message of being tolerant and welcoming for everybody. There's a gay bar here in Denver that has banned me from going there because they do not respect my values. The threat to our rights right now I believe is coming from the left. They don't care to have the conversation. I sometimes find myself in these rooms with — I'm sorry, mainly straight white women — and they're trying to talk over me and silence me and put me back in the closet because they don't agree with my ideas."

Guggenheim also pushes back on the suggestion that former president Donald Trump is in any way against the LGBTQIA+ community. "He was the first president inaugurated into office who supported same-sex marriage," he said. "He put in four members of his cabinet who were gay men. He hosts at Mar-a-Lago many same-sex marriages. Clarence Thomas [who has openly advocated for a revisiting of the issue of gay marriage] is not Donald Trump, and he was not appointed by Donald Trump. The assault on LGB rights are coming from inside the house. They're coming from the Democrats." He added that he's spoken with Lara Trump, Marjorie Taylor-Greene and Lauren Boebert, all of whom were very supportive of him as a gay man.

A gay man working with a group that several outside agencies define as anti-LGBTQIA+? The support of far-right politicians...well, it may not be coming from a good place. But we all see what we want to see to some degree. Like this article, which I realize Guggenheim might see as a "hit piece," as he put it. I hope he doesn't; I hope he sees it as an attempt to understand other perspectives while maintaining respect for one's own. We're all rightfully tired of knee-jerk reactions to things we as Americans are invited to see as inherently deplorable.

So I'm glad that I accidentally got on some media list for Gays Against Groomers, even though it was clearly meant to go out to the group's base, and I'm definitely not that. I work to be an ally to the LGBTQIA+ community. Many people I love — family, friends, colleagues, students — are members of that community. I say that I "work to be an ally" purposefully; it's a process for us CIS white guys who grew up in an intolerant era in terms of sex and gender, who casually used the term "f-g" (I can't even type it anymore) as a generic insult to our friends. While I can clearly see the damage of that, some three decades removed, I have recognized that while I didn't mean harm, I was doing harm, or at least participating in cultural cruelty. It's a process.

And this is no happy-happy-joy-joy story, either. Neither Guggenheim not I had an epiphany; no minds or positions or hearts were changed. If there was a positive outcome, it's that I was able to have a civil and relatively friendly conversation with a guy with whom I disagree on some things. Maybe a lot of things?

Still, we met on level ground, even if some of the rhetoric was shaky, and I saw Guggenheim for who he is — a Disney fan going to Gay Days later that very week. Is that important? Not in terms of what GAG intends, and what I hope on a personal and societal level it doess not achieve. But in terms of starting those conversations again, of fighting the polarization we've been led into by technology and isolation and the predatory agendas of extremists? It's a step.

Gays Against Groomers a rally at 10 a.m. Saturday, October 5, on the steps of the Colorado Capitol. All Interested parties — in favor of the group, or very much against it — are welcome to attend.