Conservative Media Elevated and Enabled a Ranting, Rage-Filled Anti-Trans Dad in California

Adam Vena swore at and berated the mother of his 5-year-old trans daughter. To the right, his rage filled outbursts, including some in family court, are inconvenient details to be papered over.

Opinion, by Evan Urquhart

The first time Alexia Carbone’s daughter saw a gender specialist she was too overwhelmed by emotion to even answer questions about gender or the way she preferred dressing. Over time, as the courts gave her and her mother more protection from the explosive outbursts of her father, she received a diagnosis of gender dysphoria. In a deeply reported story by the Los Angeles Times, the right wing narrative about Carbone, her transgender daughter “A,” and the girl’s father, Adam Vena were meticulously picked apart. The picture left is of a family terrorized by a man unable to control his angry outbursts and a right-wing ecosystem willing to ignore all that to push a fable about parents losing custody because they won’t accept their children’s gender.

Vena is just one of a handful of parent’s conservative influencers have presented as evidence that family courts in blue states are unjustly depriving non-affirming parents of their children. Other examples have come from Montana, Texas, Indiana. Each of these stories has proved to be far more complicated than right-wing narratives would indicate, but none have been as troubling as this story, where a father credibly accused of domestic violence, whose temper is so uncontrolled he raved and ranted in open court, has been enabled by conservatives who claim their culture war on the trans community comes out of concern for women and children’s safety.

A sympathetic video of Vena meeting the anti-trans activist known as “Billboard Chris” has been shared by the Daily Caller on Facebook and was positively interacted with (and boosted) by Elon Musk on Twitter. These are just the most prominent examples of conservatives taking on Vena’s crusade to regain access to his daughter and force her to return to a masculine identity and presentation, even as court records show that Vena’s uncontrolled temper, name-calling, repeated harassing messages and phone calls, and violations of court orders were the central issue in a custody dispute falsely portrayed by Vena and the right being centered on his daughter’s gender identity.

screenshot from the LA Times

The LAT story is a sensitive and much-needed corrective and fact check for Vena’s story, but as long as the right are willing to act as enablers for Vena the family and those around them are in danger. According to the LAT, the far-right has begun targeting court hearings involving the family for protests, and doctors and court officials involved in the case have been targeted with online harassment. The false narrative of an upstanding father whose child was taken from him over his beliefs about gender provide a potent confirmation for the fears and paranoia on the right over transgender children. Until the fever of anti-trans hate breaks, people who become central to false and misleading narratives like this one are at risk of harassment and even violence.