Last Saturday, a rally by Gays Against Groomers (GaG), a group that believes any form of gender-affirming healthcare is child abuse or ‘grooming’, was met with counterprotests. GaG, which was founded by a pro-Trump, conservative media specialist with ties to the ‘Stop the Steal’ movement, has held similar events, which it calls the “Stop the War On Children” rally, in Colorado before and across the country.
As Whitney Houston’s “Greatest Love of All” wafted from the speakers and set the tone for the day’s event, a series of speakers assembled to address the sparse crowd. The rally featured the founder of GaG’s Colorado chapter Rich Guggenheim, Colorado State Rep. Ken DeGraaf (R-Colorado Springs), Rep. Brandi Bradley (R-Larkspur), Republican candidate for Congress Valdamar Archuleta, and anti-Trans advocates like Erin Lee, Adam Vena, and Jennifer Sey.
Archuleta, who is running against Congresswoman Diana DeGette (D-CO) in this year’s congressional race, was the first to address the crowd.
“I think it’s important for people to know that there are LGBT people in our larger community who do no agree with a lot of the things happening to children in our country in our name,” Archuleta told Colorado Times Recorder. “I see things where children are being taught sexual things when they’re too young and I think that that’s a problem. It doesn’t matter whether it’s LGBT or straight, whatever, we need to allow children to be children and retain their innocence for as long as possible. There is also the issue of them [activists] doing medical treatments for children in the name of ‘gender-affirming care’ where they are giving them hormone treatments and medical procedures. I’m not saying that happens all the time, but it’s not good for children when it does happen. For children, there are consequences for some of these medical and hormonal treatments that I think are dangerous.”
Archuleta clarified he was referring to treatments like hormone blockers, also called gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) analogues. Over 20 American medical associations, including the American Psychiatric Association, American Osteopathic Association, and the Mayo Clinic, support access to gender-affirming care for minors, including hormone blockers which are FDA-approved and reversible. When asked how reconciles the medical consensus on gender-affirming care with his support of his ban, Archuleta argued that it was simply ‘not true’ that hormone blockers are reversible.
Archuleta further pushed back at the allegations that Gays Against Groomers and Moms for Liberty (a co-organizer of the rally) were anti-LGBTQ+ hate groups. The Southern Poverty Law Center has identified Moms for Liberty as an anti-LGBT and anti-government hate group that has been helping to fund GaG’s efforts. “The Southern Poverty Law organization has unfortunately gone wayward recently. They are more about politics than actually protecting people. They don’t like Moms for Liberty because they don’t like the politics behind it. I am not a member of Moms for Liberty, so I can’t speak for them,” Archuleta said. “I did speak at one of their events. They invited me there as an openly gay man, I was accepted and everyone was friendly, loving, and kind. I have no problems with them and they had no problems with me being gay.”
Archuleta added: “No one here has said that [that trans people are child molestors], we’re not saying all gay people are groomers, we’re not saying all trans people are groomers, some of the biggest proponents of what we’re talking about aren’t even in the LGBT community, but they are individuals outside the community who use our community to gain sympathy and support to push political agendas and narratives. It’s not who we are. I think the trans community has been hurt by this more than anybody else, I know many trans individuals who feel the same way we do. They don’t want their name to be used to push different things.”
One of the speakers after Archuleta alleged that the “alphabet mafia” was putting porn in school libraries. ‘Alphabet mafia’ is a variation of a derogatory term for the queer community.
Archuleta was, however, concerned about the ideological bend of the people who came to counter-protest. “You can see down there, they have a Marxist flag, they have the sickle and hammer,” he said. “That’s part of the agenda, it’s hard to say that they [the counter-protestors] are not pushing a socialist agenda when they have the flag and they’re holding it up right next to a trans flag. I know a lot of trans people would not be happy about that.”
GaG’s rally was met with counter-protestors who gathered on Lincoln Street opposite of the Capital. Among the counter-protestors was Anna Lilith Miller, who helped organize the groups. “The people up at the capitol decided to come and have what they call a ‘Stop the War on Kids’ rally, basically to say that things like puberty blockers and gender-affirming healthcare are hurting our children and that trans adults are groomers that are forcing kids to be transgender. This will literally get trans adults killed,” Miller told Colorado Times Recorder. “Puberty blockers are deemed safe by the scientific and medical communities, so we’re here today to let them know that they aren’t welcome here. We don’t want their hate, we don’t want our trans kids or any kids to feel that they’re wrong for being transgender. I’m 42 years old, I didn’t come out until I was 40. I spent 40 years of my life living in utter hell that I should never have gone through. The lies they [GaG] are spreading, they just sending children through the same hell that me and so many other trans people have gone through.”
The counter-protest was comprised of both individuals and a coalition of leftist groups. According to Miller, Denver Communists, Revolutionary Communists of America, Housekeys Action Network Denver (HAND), Mutual Aid Monday, Lunch Punks, and Colorado Solidarity for Palestine were all part of the coalition. Miller indicated that there were people who just wanted to show solidarity with Colorado’s transgender community who came out to protest GaG’s event.
GaG invited anti-trans activists Erin Lee and Adam Vena to address the attendees about their experience with their children. Lee has garnered a following among cultural conservatives over her claims that her child was lured into a “gender and sexuality awareness” (possibly referring to a gender and sexuality alliance) club by her school’s art teacher.
“Her art teacher recruited her [our daughter] into a secret gender and sexuality club where predatory activists were invited in to groom the kids. They told her that if she was not completely comfortable in her body, that meant she is transgender. They love bombed her when she announced was queer,” Lee told the audience, providing no evidence of the alleged predators being secretly brought into schools. “When we spoke up to the school, they involved Child Protective Services. Everyone from the art teacher, to the school board, was proud of what happened and vilified me for not going along with it.”
Lee went on to refer to “gender ideology” as a social contagion and made unsubstantiated claims of criminal activity of LGBTQ+ advocacy groups. “I’ve spoken with parents of children who have been lured on the Trevor Project and sex trafficked, stopped talking to their loving families, mutilated themselves, or been driven to suicide,” she said. “Even in my own community of Larimer County, Colorado, little girls have been trafficked by my child’s groomer and are still missing.”
Lee and her husband had filed a lawsuit, which has since been dismissed, against the Poudre School District claiming that the district had violated their parental rights. Lee has of course previously accused the guest speaker invited to the GAS event of being a “groomer” and stated that anyone who brooches queer issues with children are child predators. The Trevor Project is a non-profit that offers a toll-free counseling line with licensed counselors for queer youth.
Adam Vena, another anti-trans activist, claims that his child’s ‘indoctrination’ started at two years old when he discovered his child in a pink dress. Vena claims he responded by telling his wife, from whom he is now separated, “He’s a boy, not a girl, stop dressing my son in girls’ clothes.”
Vena claims he has been persecuted for speaking out against his child’s gender expression. “I have been criminalized since the first day I spoke out against this,” he said. “I sent out a group of text messages basically saying, with no threats, no violence, that ‘He’s a boy, not a girl, stop doing this to my son.’ In California, she [my ex-wife] was able to get a temporary restraining order put on me. That temporary restraining order kept me away from my son and kept my son away from everybody, including his grandparents, who have done nothing to deserve this treatment. As soon as I was put on this restraining order, all my rights as a father and my parental rights were cut from me. The judge ordered two face-time visits with my son, I had to sit there on these face-time conversations with my son with earrings, nails painted, at three and half or four years old and I was not allowed to say anything to my son.”
Left out from Vena’s version of events are the allegations of abuse from his ex-wife that the Los Angeles Times reported on — abuse that allegedly began prior to the couple’s disagreement over their child’s gender expression. The L.A. Times reviewed voicemails Vena left for his ex, screaming that she was a “stupid, ignorant f—” and a “stupid f— c—.”
According to the same report, Vena had a history of outbursts in court, with five court deputies having to be called in to ensure courtroom safety.
The rally also featured two elected Republican state representatives, Ken DeGraaf of Colorado Springs and Brandi Bradley of Larkspur. DeGraaf proudly proclaimed that they would take their fight against ‘radical gender ideology’ to the state capital.
Rep. Stephanie Vigil (D-Colorado Springs), an openly queer elected official who has previously been the target of online vitriol by right-wing activists like Moms for Liberty and LibsOfTikTok, spoke out against her colleagues attending the GaG rally.
“This has unfortunately become a routine tactic for the far right: one culture war after another, and little in the way of constructive policies that would make life better for Coloradans. They claim to vehemently support parental rights, but that passion evaporates once we’re talking about a parent who accepts and affirms their own transgender kid. They claim to champion family values but constantly disparage families that don’t look like theirs,” Vigil told Colorado Times Recorder. “It can make the working environment at the Capitol rather strained, though thankfully many of my colleagues across the aisle show up ready to work collaboratively and get things done for our great state. It would be nice if the more extreme members of the minority didn’t spend so much of their time and energy rage-tweeting about me and some of my colleagues, but I don’t let it stop me from passing good bills, and that’s how I’ll proceed in 2025 and beyond.”
GaG held the event with Moms For Liberty, which the Southern Poverty Law Center identifies as being an anti-government extremist group. State law enforcement at the rally told the Colorado Times Recorder that extra security had been requested for the event. There were no apparent altercations between rally-goers and counter-protestors at the event.
