Right-Winger Accuses Gay Dad of “Criminal Sexual Conduct”
José Rolón is speaking out against a right-winger's accusation that he is sexualizing his children by exposing them to LGBTQ culture.
José Rolón, who has 150,000 followers on Instagram and over 500,000 followers on TikTok under the user name @nycgaydad, found himself bombarded with threats from right-wing users after conservative commentator Stew Peters tagged him in an Instagram video.
In the video, Peters called Rolón a “creep” and a “pervert homo,” and called for his public execution. He also accused Rolón of “criminal sexual conduct,” tagging the New York Police Department and urging them to investigate the gay widower.
“Some pervert homo has access to at least four kids around the clock all the time,” Peters said, misstating the number of Rolón’s children. “He can take them to drag conventions and then post the evidence, post pictures and videos of criminal sexual conduct … and somehow not end up in jail, or better yet, the gallows.”
The video has since been removed from the platform.
The “sexual conduct” Peters appeared to be referring to is a post in which Rolón took his children to RuPaul’s Drag Con and bought what he thought were rainbow-colored bracelets, only to realize that they were in fact cock rings.
Rolón made a video about the incident, saying he was “mortified” by his mistake. He also claimed to have spoken with the vendor, who he said tried to warn him but didn’t know how, because his children were so excited by the “bracelets.”
Peters expressed outrage that “this homosexual” takes his children to drag shows and allows them to see “cross-dressing wigs” in his closet
He aired a clip from one of Rolón’s videos, in which the children joked that they have rainbows and disco balls over their house.
Rolón was horrified by Peters’ commentary. “I just couldn’t believe the things that were coming out of his mouth,” he told The Advocate. “He tagged the NYPD and requested for them to investigate me for not only sex crimes, but also [for me to] be met at the gallows. That, to me, is the line that was [most] shocking. … This man is actually calling for my hanging in public.”
Rolón began getting threats and was deluged with negative comments accusing him of “grooming” his children by exposing his children to LGBTQ content.
In an Instagram video, he accused Peters of spreading “misinformation,” and called him a “D-list version of Tucker Carlson.” “It’s people like you that are destroying this country,” he says in the post.
Rolón told The Advocate he struggled with the idea of speaking out against Peters, but felt he needed to respond publicly to ensure his own children’s safety and dispel misconceptions about gay parents.
“In our community, we’re often faced with this question of do we ignore it so that we don’t give this person a voice, or make it so that people are aware of the kind of people that are out there spreading misinformation about our community,” Rolón said. “I made the decision to talk about it because I think it’s important.”
While Peters blurred the faces of Rolón’s children in his Instagram clip, he did not do so in the full segment on Rumble, a video-hosting platform popular among conservatives.
The full video, which runs more than 50 minutes and targets LGBTQ parents as unfit to raise children, covers a significant amount of time criticizing Rolón’s parenting and shows his children’s faces, without safeguarding their identities.
Rolón told The Advocate he is seeking legal advice and weighing whether to take legal action against Peters and Rumble for not blurring his children’s faces in the longer video.
He also noted that he has had to take measures, including changing his schedule to ensure only he can pick up his children from school in order to protect them.
“My kids were initially allowed to self-dismiss from their school, and they are no longer able to self-dismiss,” Rolón said. “It’s forcing us to be a little bit more vigilant and just take extra precaution. These are the things that our community is constantly having to deal with.”
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