A trend has emerged in California where ads run on behalf of Republican congressional candidates have attacked Democrats for their links to LGBTQ rights group Equality California.

The ads claim Equality California supports “pedophiles.”

According to the Los Angeles Times, several Republicans are employing these tactics across California, which features at least ten congressional races whose outcomes could determine which party controls Congress after this November’s elections.

One 30-second from the National Republican Congressional Committee attacks George Whitesides, the Democrat and former NASA chief of staff who is challenging Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Garcia in the state’s 27th Congressional District, located in Antelope Valley, just north of Los Angeles.

Because Whitesides has no political background, the NRCC has instead focused on his financial support of, and donations to, Equality California, seeking to employ guilt-by-association tactics to tie him to a controversial bill backed by the organization.

The ad features piano music playing over images of an upturned bicycle and a set of empty playground swings. The camera cuts to a computer tablet displaying a messaging app.

“I’m literally the next block over. Come chill!” writes a user nicknamed SKTRDUDE293. “ON MY WAY!!!” responds a girl, who looks about 12, with the user name SWIFFTIEE661.

The camera lingers on the girl’s face before cutting to a photograph of her, taped to a wall, next to pictures of other kids in a dark, dingy-looking room where a laptop — presumably belonging to a child predator, although no adult appears in the ad — has the same chat open.

“George Whitesides funded a group opposing pedophiles registering as sex offenders,” the text on the ad says. “Don’t allow George Whitesides into Congress.”

The ad’s chief charge — a nod to the bill backed by Equality California — refers to a 2020 law, signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom, that the organization backed, along with the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office, known as Senate Bill 145. 

The bill intended to end discrimination against LGBTQ people in terms of being forced to register as sex offenders when a teenager engages in sex with a person over the age of 18 who is within 10 years of their age, such as when a 17-year-old dates a 19-year-old.

Many states have laws governing such behavior, often referred to as “Romeo and Juliet” laws, with varying penalties for the older person in the relationship.

Prior to the passage of SB 145, in cases where a same-sex couple engaged in oral or anal sex, the older partner was automatically added to the state’s sex offender registry. The older partner in a heterosexual relationship caught engaging in the exact same behavior was not required to register (though they might be punished with jail time).

Backers of SB 145 argued that the law was unfair, and was a remnant of California’s since-repealed anti-sodomy laws that criminalized any form of same-sex conduct, even between two consenting adults.

With the law’s passage, older partners will still face prison time, but individual judges may use their discretion to determine, on a case-by-case basis, whether the older partner should register as a sex offender.

Republicans — never too timid to capitalize on an issue where they could accuse Democrats of being “soft on crime” — opposed the law, claiming that the state was legalizing pedophilia. With a bunch of contested congressional seats at stake, Republicans have revived their attacks.

Republicans have also attacked Equality California for endorsing a 2020 ballot measure — which failed — that sought to end the use of cash bail in California.

Ben Petersen, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, said in a statement that Whitesides “might not like voters hearing he bankrolled soft-on-crime groups, but the facts are clear as day. From zero cash bail to lower penalties for criminals including sex offenders, Whitesides’ money backed it all.”

In a written statement to the Times, Garcia said his campaign “has no control over third-party commercials, but voters are now finding out the real George Whitesides.”

Whitesides has also been attacked for his support of Equality California in a second, separate ad, this one from the Congressional Leadership Fund, which backs Republican candidates.

In it, a woman says, “I just learned today that [Whitesides is] a major donor of a group that sponsored legislation to lower penalties for pedophiles.”

In California’s 47th Congressional District, in Orange County, another ad from the Congressional Leadership Fund targets State Sen. Dave Min (D-Irvine), seeking the open seat being vacated by U.S. Rep. Katie Porter. The ad claims that Min supported “a law that makes it harder for police to investigate sex crimes.”

The ad claims that because of the law, “sex predators, including the creeps that victimize children, roam free,” and refers to Equality California, which has endorsed Min, as a “group that helps sex offenders.”

The law referenced in the commercial, SB 357, repeals provisions of a California law that criminalized loitering with the intent of engaging in sex work.

The new law does not decriminalize soliciting or engaging in sex work, but does prevent police from abusing an anti-loitering provision that they were allegedly using to falsely accuse and charge people with intending to engage in sex work based on their race, gender identity, or other personal characteristics.

Critics of the anti-loitering provision claimed that police were disproportionately criminalizing transgender people and Black and Brown women for existing.

Min noted that he was endorsed by police officers and deputy sheriffs in his race. In a statement, he said he was “proud of my strong record on public safety as a state senator, including authoring more than a dozen bills to protect survivors of sexual assault and abuse.” He also accused the Republican-aligned groups of “lying about my legislative record” and said the advertisement was “especially odious in that it uses my endorsement from Equality California … to propagate the bigoted and hateful myth that gay people are child predators and groomers.”

Jon Fleischman, a spokesman for Republican Scott Baugh’s campaign, declined to comment on the ad, saying that “we do not control outside group spending.”

Courtney Parella, a spokeswoman for the Congressional Leadership Fund, defended the anti-Min ad, saying in a statement, “These California liberals may be upset they got caught funding extreme political groups and backing radical policies, but the fact remains — these measures weakened penalties for sex offenders, put minors at risk, and made it harder for law enforcement to do their jobs.”

In California’s 41st Congressional District, covering Riverside County and the LGBTQ-friendly city of Palm Springs, an attack ad against Will Rollins, a gay Democrat and former prosecutor running against U.S. Rep. Ken Calvert, claims Rollins is “backed by radicals who gave billions in taxpayer-funded stimulus checks to convicted felons including terrorists and pedophiles.”

The ad, sponsored by the Americans 4 Security PAC, funded by the oil and gas industry, refers to federal pandemic-era relief bills that resulted in stimulus checks being sent to prisoners.

Although Democrats and Republicans voted for those bills, Republicans later proposed an amendment — defeated on a party vote — that would have denied payments to incarcerated people. Democrats opposed the move because it would deny relief funds to the dependents and families of incarcerated people.

Coby Eiss, Rollins’ campaign manager, accused “Republican super PACs in Washington” of lying about the candidate’s prosecutorial record. 

Equality California is incensed by the ads suggesting the organization supports pedophilia, accusing Republicans of reviving decades-old tropes of LGBTQ people as sexually-driven predators who are dangerous to straight people, families, and children.

“This is the same playbook that right-wing extremists and their allies have used for decades, perpetuating the harmless and baseless stereotype that LGBTQ+ folks are inherently pedophiles,” Tony Hoang, the executive director of Equality California, told the Times.