Daily Femail: Hate Group Lies About Being Endorsed by Colorado Governor.
Gays Against Groomers requests an honorary flag from a Colorado Government program and falsely claims it was personally granted by Governor Jared Polis.
by Mira Lazine
Daily Femail is Assigned Media’s newest column, offering real opinions delivered with a satirical tone to address last week’s biggest news stories. Written by Mira Lazine, the column aims to humorously mock right-wing tabloids while also providing quality reporting every Tuesday.
Anti-LGBTQ+ hate group Gays Against Groomers raised alarmbells last week when they released a post on Twitter/X/The Site We All Need To Leave Please Dear God I Hate It Here claiming that Colorado Governor Jared Polis personally honored them with a state flag for their “hard work” to “protect all children.” They further showed a letter which claimed this flag to have been flown over the capitol in their honor.
Their full Tweet reads, “Gays Against Groomers would like to thank Colorado Governor @jaredpolis (@GovofCO) for his public recognition for our hard work in protecting children across the state. It means so much to us. We are just getting started!”
Proponents of trans rights were immediately shocked by this. Polis, the first openly gay man to be elected to a Governor position, has been one of the staunchest allies for trans rights throughout his tenure. He has signed legislation that allows an “X” marker on driver’s licenses and banned conversion therapy for minors within the state. This would mark a shocking and sudden turnaround in his policies that was not seen before. Of course, it should come as no surprise that Gays Against Groomers’ claim is entirely false.
In fact, it’s so false that even Polis himself didn’t know of this happening until the uproar it caused on social media. In a statement given to Daily Femail, Eric Maruyama, the Deputy Press Secretary for the Governor’s office, said:
“Hate has no place in Colorado, and Governor Polis denounces hate in all its forms. Governor Polis is striving to build a Colorado For All, where everyone, no matter who you are, who you love or how you identify can thrive. The Governor does not endorse the positions of groups who request honorary flags. The Governor was not aware of this request, just as he is not involved in the other flag requests that come through the Department of Personnel and Administration. The administration is taking active internal steps to ensure more vetting is conducted on these types of requests today and in the future.”
This response illuminates exactly what happened. Up until a few days ago, Colorado had a state website run through the Department of Personnel and Administration where individuals and organizations could request an honorary state flag and a generic letter from the Governor directed to their organization. The only barriers to entry were $26 to $29 and a 150-word narrative to highlight what the organization does.
This program was managed entirely separately from the Governor’s office, and as such was not looked over by Gov. Polis. However, readers may be wondering how this made it through the DPA - surely someone would be able to answer as to what happened?
The long and short of it is that the DPA messed up big time. In a statement given to Daily Femail, Doug Platt - the Communications Manager with the DPA Executive Director’s Office - said, “Regrettably, this request was not appropriately vetted by the Department of Personnel & Administration (DPA), and the Governor’s Office was never made aware of this request… DPA did not do its sufficient due diligence on this request. As a result, we subsequently fulfilled their order.”
That’s one hell of a mistake. Fortunately, the DPA is doing everything they can to rectify what happened. Platt continued:
“We are taking internal steps to ensure that a more thorough vetting occurs going forward. The Department of Personnel & Administration apologizes for this unfortunate misstep and is developing immediate changes to our process to ensure such situations do not happen again. The flag flown was not the group’s flag. There was a Colorado flag and U.S. flag that were flown as part of an honorary flag-flying program.”
“DPA temporarily paused the flag program and form until changes could be made to the program to keep these instances from happening in the future while ensuring members of the public are able to use the program appropriately. The program is still active. We will now provide a certificate of authenticity rather than a letter. Additionally, we will add layers of approval for requests to ensure they are all properly vetted. The flag program has existed in one form or another in Colorado for more than 20 years.”
Platt describes how the program was traditionally used by “private citizens, public officials, veterans, law enforcement officers, and community organizations.” Platt emphasized that Polis does not endorse the flag nor was he involved in the flying of the honorary flag at the capitol - this was entirely the DPA’s fault. This website was also taken down in the hours following media coverage.
The Executive Director of the DPA, Tony Gherardini, also sent a letter containing similar information to the Colorado General Assembly in which she says on behalf of the DPA that she “apologizes for this unfortunate misstep and is developing immediate changes to our process to ensure such situations do not happen again.”
Daily Femail will leave it up to readers to decide whether this apology makes up for implicitly endorsing a Southern Poverty Law Center-designated hate group that runs not only against the policies of the Polis administration, but against the rights of an extremely marginalized group of people.
There is one bit of solace to take in this though - Gays Against Groomers is furious they were called out and, after media coverage, stormed Twitter in an outrage. They said in another post:
”BREAKING: Colorado has SUSPENDED their honorary flag program after Democrat Colorado governer @jaredpolis signed a letter of recognition honoring our hard work to protect children! They said that they didn’t fully vet us and realized later that we were a “designated hate group” by the SPLC and ADL 🤣 News flash: Wanting to ensure children grow up without being sterilized or having their body parts cut off is not hateful! We’ll file this as another common Gays Against Groomers W 🏆”
Seethe and cope, we don’t need to hear from the peanut gallery.
Mira Lazine is a freelance journalist covering transgender issues, politics, and science. She can be found on Twitter, Mastodon, and BlueSky, @MiraLazine