Moms for Liberty Brings its Bad Parenting to D.C.
Washington, D.C. closes out the summer with a transphobic Moms for Liberty summit.
Following several brutally oppressive weeks of summer heat in D.C., it’s so surprising that recent days have had temps back in the 70s. Certainly, this false-autumn weather will soon be gone. Summer still has weeks to go, even if we’re coming to its traditional close, Labor Day Weekend.
That means “back to school” season. So, let’s think about the kids! I don’t have any, granted, but I know some. I even was one, long ago. And come Labor Day weekend, some folks who say they care about kids above all else will be settling into the J.W. Marriott downtown at 14th Street and Freedom Plaza, from Aug. 29 to Sept. 1. Is it our beloved PFLAG — the parents, friends and family of LGBTQ folks? That would be grand!
Sadly, no. Instead, we get the misleadingly named Moms for Liberty, in town for their “Joyful Warriors National Summit.” As I’ve stated a million times, the phrase “joyful warrior” belonged to Kamala Harris (please see her 2019 memoir, The Truths We Hold, page 281) before M4L, founded in 2021, stole it. While they may be embracing the liberty to steal, who can blame them for trying to appropriate a bit of Harris’s glorious spirit?
The group should keep looking, however, for more accurate language to describe themselves. Moms for Banning Books? Moms for Excluding Trans Kids? Moms for Burying Uncomfortable History About Race? Moms for Harassment? There’s a long list of accomplishments, but I’ll be damned if I can find any relating to liberty.
The person most infamously associated with M4L is one of its founding moms, Bridget Ziegler. After she, a former Sarasota School Board member, and her husband, Christian, former chair of the Florida Republican Party, were disgraced in a bisexual sex scandal that included an accusation of rape, M4L disassociated itself. There will be no liberty for Bridget the hypocrite, as far as M4L is concerned. I genuinely hope the Zieglers’ children are permitted to live several more years before they become aware of any of this.
Ridding themselves of the Zieglers, however, hardly means the organization is disavowing bad parents or even folks decent people would not want near children.
Who’s providing the laughs for the moms’ confab? Rob Schneider, of course. With his Saturday Night Live glory days now a dusty memory, Schneider now feeds stand-up audiences a stream of cruel comedy. His anti-Trans, anti-vaccines material must be his saving grace with the moms, as it’s unlikely he’ll be winning any parenting awards.
“I disagree with a lot of the things that he says,” performer Elle King says of Schneider, her father, as reported earlier this month in New York magazine’s The Cut. “You’re talking out of your ass and you’re talking shit about drag and, you know, anti-gay rights. And it’s like, get fucked.”
But it’s not all strained laughs and strained relationships at M4L’s D.C. summit this month. There will be super-fun politicking with former Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard! Nobody marked the end of Gabbard’s Democratic congressional career as succinctly as the inspiring Mara Keisling, founding and former executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality.
“Rep. Gabbard’s play for attention is embarrassing,” Keisling said in December 2020, as shared by Advocates for Trans Equality, in a report on Gabbard sponsoring a dead-on-arrival bill to deny Title IX protections to Transgender youth. “She should be ashamed of trying to burnish her right-wing credentials with attacks on transgender student-athletes. Gabbard is on her way out of Congress and this legislation has no chance to become law or even reach the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives. It’s just a hurtful attempt to get on TV without any regard to the damage such rhetoric does to transgender kids.”
If I had a transgender child, I certainly wouldn’t want them spending time in Gabbard’s company. Same goes for another peculiar politico in the M4L lineup, Maud Maron. Granted, Maron’s elected spot on a Manhattan Community Education Council was hardly as high-falutin’ as Gabbard’s, but the transphobia was arguably more intense.
“There is no such thing as trans kids [because] there is no such thing as transition i.e. changing your sex,” Maron wrote to a Brooklyn parent in 2022, according to The 74, a nonprofit outlet reporting on America’s education system.
Truly, there’s a buffet of shady suspects filling out the M4L speakers roster. Despite our best efforts, who can forget the flashiest fringe fop of the Trump era, Sebastian Gorka? He offers Transphobia and Islamophobia in seemingly equal parts.
James Lindsay, who likes to think of himself as the guy who resurrected the oldie-but-obnoxious “groomer” epithet, co-author of The Queering of the American Child: How a New School Religious Cult Poisons the Minds and Bodies of Normal Kids, is in a weird, lamentable league of his own.
Have you seen those ugly “CHRISTIAN?” ads whizzing around on Metrobuses? You can thank the organization WallBuilders, whose spokesperson, Rick Green, will be swimming in the M4L swamp. WallBuilders, by the way, is leading the way in dismantling the separation of church and state. Green, meanwhile, is gunning to make June “Family Pride Month.” For his sort of family, not yours.
There’s good ol’ Glenn Beck, who gladly attacks gender-affirming care as readily as he denies climate science. Will his kids be able to visit his grave if it’s underwater? So sad.
Altogether, the Moms for Liberty summit is an offensive farce that fuels itself not by securing liberty, but by attacking Queer kids — particularly Trans youth — and parents who don’t want to raise their children with M4L’s small-minded brand of bigotry. I’ll look on the bright side and be grateful for anyone coming to D.C. to spend money. But if there’s anything that makes me look forward to the other side of Labor Day, it’s that this mob of mean moms will be gone.
Will O’Bryan is a former Metro Weekly managing editor, living in D.C. with his husband. He is online at www.LifeInFlights.com.
Support Metro Weekly’s Journalism
These are challenging times for news organizations. And yet it’s crucial we stay active and provide vital resources and information to both our local readers and the world. So won’t you please take a moment and consider supporting Metro Weekly with a membership? For as little as $5 a month, you can help ensure Metro Weekly magazine and MetroWeekly.com remain free, viable resources as we provide the best, most diverse, culturally-resonant LGBTQ coverage in both the D.C. region and around the world. Memberships come with exclusive perks and discounts, your own personal digital delivery of each week’s magazine (and an archive), access to our Member's Lounge when it launches this fall, and exclusive members-only items like Metro Weekly Membership Mugs and Tote Bags! Check out all our membership levels here and please join us today!
You must be logged in to post a comment.