Gays Against Groomers
Gays Against Groomers (GAG) is an American far-right and anti-LGBT organization known for campaigning against gender-affirming care for minors, protesting school curriculum content with LGBT themes, and criticizing Drag Queen Story Hour events. A spokesperson for the LGBT advocacy group GLAAD has claimed that the group uses the slur "groomer" along with ambiguous messaging to perpetuate the LGBT grooming conspiracy theory. GAG helped organize an anti-LGBTQ rally in Florida, alongside other far-right and anti-LGBTQ organizations such as Moms for Liberty, which was attended by the Proud Boys.

GAG began in June 2022 as a Twitter account created by Jaimee Michell, who had previously been employed by right-wing communications firms Arsenal Media and X Strategies and posted similar content on her personal account. The account is known for posting anti-trans rhetoric and has been compared to Libs of TikTok. Michell filed incorporation papers for GAG in September. GAG has been banned from multiple social media and payment platforms for violating rules on hate speech; they have been promoted by right-wing media outlets such as Fox News, One America News Network (OANN), and InfoWars.

History 
GAG was founded by Jaimee Michell, at the time a content creator and lead designer at marketing company Arsenal Media, a conservative media organization specializing in creating viral content. The group began by being active on social media. GAG's Instagram account was created by Michell on June 6, 2022. Their Twitter account described itself as a "coalition of gays against the sexualization and indoctrination of children", with the purpose "to protect children from harm being done in our name and by those who have hijacked our community". The Twitter account gained 90,000 followers in a few months.

In September 2022, Michell filed incorporation papers for GAG.  The group also launched a partner coalition called Trans Against Groomers.

Michell has denied that anyone is funding the account, and has said the organization is a non-profit. Its application for tax exemption as a 501(c)(4) non-profit was approved in March 2023. Imara Jones speculated that The Heritage Foundation was funding them, suggesting they must have a budget of close to a million dollars and stating it could not have come organically from the community.

By August 2022, Twitter had suspended and reinstated the social media account four times. Before Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter, the website's rules prohibited the use of "groomer" as an insult based on gender identity or expression under their hate speech policy. GAG responded by using code terms such as "broomer" and "gr__mer" and changing its screen name to "Gays Against Grewmers". Twitter user Chad Loder suggested that someone at Twitter was manually and repeatedly overriding the suspensions.

When Elon Musk bought Twitter, GAG reverted to its old name and tweeted "OK GROOMER". They purchased a verified badge. In October 2022, the account directly thanked Musk. In a study of hate speech by Montclair State University on Twitter, before Musk's purchase, tweets using one specific hate term averaged 84 uses per hour. After the purchase, users tweeted the term 4,778 times from midnight to noon on October 28. A report from the Human Rights Campaign found that retweets of the GAG Twitter account's posts using the word "groomer" had grown by 300% when comparing the two months before and after Musk's purchase.

PayPal and Venmo have banned the group from raising funds on their platforms due to their Acceptable use policy. GAG continued to use the fundraising platform Donorbox.  GAG was banned by Google the next day.

Activities

Protests and rallies 
In September of 2022, a California School Board approved a student initiated plan to paint Progress Pride flags on every school in the district. In response, Gays Against Groomers announced their California chapter would attend a protest of the school board meeting on social media, and encouraged others to join.
A protestor interviewed by ABC7News denied they were trying to foster a non-inclusive environment and said "I feel like we've been forced to talk to our kids, our young children especially about things we aren't ready to talk to them about."

Also in September 2022, the Miami-Dade School Board was considering declaring October LGBTQ+ History Month as they had the year before. Before the school board meeting, Gays against Groomers had trucks drive around the city claiming the district teaches "radical gender ideology." The truck was also parked outside the board district meeting during the vote. Ultimately, the school board decided against declaring October LGBTQ+ History Month, due to concerns it conflicted with the state’s Parental Rights in Education bill.

On December 3, 2022, a "Protect the Children" rally was held in Fort Lauderdale, Miami. It was organized by the groups Gays Against Groomers and featured Moms for Liberty and Florida Fathers for Freedom. Antifa protestors planned to attend, requesting attendees bring "masks, signs, and rage". Jordan Toste was one of the scheduled speakers. Both rally and counter protest were attended by elected officials. Equality Florida Senior Political Director Joe Saunders claimed high school student Jack Petocz organized the counter protest, and was taunted with the words "Where's Jack"? Equality Florida blamed such rallies on Governor Ron DeSantis' anti-LGBT politics and rhetoric.

Legislation 
On August 19, 2022, Michell told OANN that they are working toward a federal ban on gender-affirming care for minors.

In January 2023, the head of the Arizona chapter of GAG, Robert Wallace, voiced his support for Arizona Senate Bill 1001, which would prohibit teachers and school officials from using students' preferred pronouns if they do not match their gender assigned at birth without written permission from parents. It would also permit school employees to ignore pronoun preferences if it would otherwise violate their "religious and moral convictions". The group was cited by Arizona lawmakers in support of Arizona Senate Bill 1030, which targets drag performances. Similar legislation restricting drag performances has been introduced in at least 11 states as of February 2023.

The same month, Ryan Woods, a drag artist also known as Lady MAGA USA, represented GAG in support of a ban on gender-affirming care for minors in Utah, saying children were being groomed and referring to Chloe Cole, who also spoke in favor of the bill.

Other

Harassment of individuals 

In December, GAG also retweeted footage of Rep. Katie Porter which had been doctored to claim she supported pedophilia. Porter had spoken out against how Twitter had been used to falsely label people as pedophiles.

Other appearances 

In the suburbs of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, a local school board debated and passed a human growth and development curriculum. Scarlett Johnson of Moms for Liberty from a nearby Milwaukee suburb attended those meetings. On a following school board meeting for Wauwatosa School District, she attended and spoke against the curriculum during open comments at the board meeting. Jaimee Mitchell, a Milwaukee resident, also attended and spoke out. Several parents spoke up in support of the curriculum and against outside interference in their school district. 64.5% of the school district strongly supported the suggested curriculum, which would start in kindergarten and teach gender, gender identity, the proper name of body parts, and informed consent.

Reception

Criticism 
Alejandra Caraballo, a clinical instructor at Harvard, described GAG as "a conservative funded propaganda account to push the groomer libel". GAG used Caraballo's name as a discount code to sell anti-trans merchandise. Them.us described it as a "Great Value version of the notoriously toxic Libs of TikTok". GAG has been accused of fueling stochastic terrorism, the public condemnation of a group that leads to violent acts against the group, by Columnist Wajahat Ali.

A spokesperson from GLAAD stated "they are coming from a place of anti-LGBT animus and bigotry" and that they characterize the "LGBTQ+ people as pedophiles falsely and maliciously with the absolutely clear intent of driving fear", perpetuating the LGBT grooming conspiracy theory. The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) described them as "an anti-LGBTQ+ extremist coalition" and stated "while GAG claims that they cannot be anti-gay or anti-lesbian as they themselves identify as gay or lesbian, ADL's definition of anti-LGBTQ+ extremism includes any person who pushes false claims and conspiracy theories about all or parts of the LGBTQ+ community, regardless of how they personally identify".

The Southern Poverty Law Center calls Gays Against Groomers "anti-transgender" and an "extremist group". According to the SPLC, "GAG leadership, including the group's director of chapters Mario "Presents" Estrada, has been tied to the hate group the Proud Boys, members of which have previously rallied with GAG's Florida chapter leadership."

Criticism of Jaimee Michell

Much criticism of Gays Against Groomers has focused on Jaime Michell, the groups founder, focusing on her work history and social media use.

At the time GAG was founded, Jaimee Michell was a content creator and lead designer at marketing company Arsenal Media, a conservative media organization specializing in creating viral content. 

Before the creation of the Gays Against Groomers account, Michell allegedly had a history of sharing far-right content across multiple platforms on personal social media accounts. Media Matters for America described her as gaining a following on her personal Instagram by "branding herself as an outspoken right-wing lesbian and pushing anti-trans rhetoric."   

Michell's website featured examples of her work for conservative candidates and activists. Michell had previously been on the advisory board to Donald Trump's "Trump Pride coalition", and described Trump as a "pro-gay" politician. Leading up to the 2020 United States presidential election, Michell was involved in the "Stop the Steal" movement, to promote conspiracy theories that the election had been "stolen".

Appearances in conservative and far-right media 

In an August 2022 interview with OANN, the group's founder compared gender-affirming care to the experiments on Auschwitz prisoners by the Nazi SS doctor Joseph Mengele. Writing in LGBTQ Nation, Alex Bollinger criticized these comments, noting that the Nazis destroyed Magnus Hirschfeld's Institute of Sexology, which "did pioneering work on understanding LGBTQ identities, including transgender people".

On November 8, Michell blamed the Colorado Springs nightclub shooting – where a gunman killed five people, including two trans people, and injured over a dozen more – on gender-affirming care. Appearing on Tucker Carlson Tonight, Michell called the shooting "expected and predictable", saying that "I don't think [the violence is] gonna stop until we end this evil agenda that is attacking children". Brandon Wolf, a survivor of the Orlando nightclub shooting and press secretary of the LGBTQ+ rights group Equality Florida, wrote "here's Gays Against Groomers founder on Fox with a crystal clear threat: 'The mass murders will continue until you do as you're told.

References 

American conspiracy theorists
Anti-drag sentiment
Conservative media in the United States
Conspiracist media
Disinformation operations
Drag events
Far-right organizations in the United States
Internet-based activism
LGBT conservatism in the United States
LGBT political advocacy groups in the United States
LGBT youth
LGBT-related controversies in the United States
Organizations that oppose LGBT rights in the United States
Political extremism in the United States
Social media accounts
Organizations that oppose transgender rights in the United States
Twitter accounts
Twitter controversies