Billboards and 'hate mail' with anti-LGBTQ+ messages target Texas candidates

Earlier this fall, a billboard stood tall above the highway right outside downtown Fort Worth. Alongside a photo of Beto O’Rourke, the Democratic candidate for governor, the billboard said: “STOP GROOMING OUR CHILDREN. VOTE NO TO BETO!” The word “grooming” is used to describe the manipulation process a sexual abuser uses to coerce young victims. More recently, some conservatives have equated LGBTQ+ people, as well as conversations about gender and sexuality, with grooming. Those false narratives have permeated Texas elections and the political process nationwide. The grooming accusations are a new way of packaging an old tale, said Johnathan Gooch, the communications director for the statewide LGBTQ+ advocacy group Equality Texas: that LGBTQ+ people are sexual predators. “It was popular in the ’90s when people were trying to prevent lesbian and gay couples from adopting children,” Gooch said. “And here we are, 30 years later."

Voters in El Paso also recently received transphobic mailers in Spanish, paid for by the America First Legal Foundation. That organization is led by Stephen Miller, an advisor to former president Donald Trump. The mailers accused President Joe Biden and Democrats of “indoctrinating” kids and described gender affirming care as dangerous medical experimentation. Experts with organizations like the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Medical Association agree that gender affirming care is safe and necessary to the well-being of trans kids who seek it. Local elected officials and LGBTQ+ advocates condemned the mailers at a press conference on Tuesday, the El Paso Times reported. "What we are seeing in our country is an attack on truth, and we are seeing a deep radicalization of American citizens," said U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar, D-El Paso.