This Week in Barrel Scraping (TWIBS) is Assigned Media’s oldest column! Every Friday, Alyssa Steinsiek digs deep from the well of transphobia and finds the most obnoxious, goofy thing transphobes have said or obsessed over during the week and tears it to shreds.
Governor of Georgia Brian Kemp’s association with a creepy conservative lobbyist weirdo has been outed in an article by R.G. Cravens, writing for the Southern Poverty Law Center and reporting on emails sent to Kemp’s office, and oh boy does the content of these emails look absolutely horrific.
Cole Muzio is the creepy conservative lobbyist weirdo in question. Muzio is the president of anti-LGBTQ+ hate group Frontline Policy Council (FPC), and the list of his freaky transgressions is long indeed. In a February 2022 email to Kemp’s office, he described trans kids participating in sports as a greater threat than critical race theory (another goofy right-wing talking point of the last few years) or parental rights. Dealing with those evil athletic trans kids, Muzio felt, was “where the Governor needs to devote the most political capital inside the building to bring to fruition.”
“The first gift [God] gave to man was woman,” Muzio also said, creepily, while characterizing transgender people as “the left’s ultimate attempt to shake their fist at God.”
Can you believe how fucking cool these people make us sound?!
Muzio isn’t the only conservative lobbyist whispering in Kemp’s ear, mind you. According to emails sent to Kemp’s office, the governor had at least two meetings with a group of far-right lunatics including Muzio, on February 21, 2022, and February 15, 2023. The primary focus of these meetings was, apparently, destroying the trans community, and included representatives from FPC, the Faith and Freedom Coalition, Americans for Prosperity, and the anti-choice Georgia Life Alliance.
Sort of an anti-Justice League of evil fundie dickheads in Georgia, if you will.
The SPLC article alleges more than one instance of FPC actively influencing Georgia politics with money, including foreknowledge of a transphobic rider that would later be attached to an unrelated bill and a staggering $350,000 contribution to help Kemp influence a state Supreme Court election. And while all of this corrupt maneuvering being done out in the open without any concern for being caught or punished is terrifying to witness, it isn’t the first time we’ve heard about something like this, is it?
Back in March of 2023, a Mother Jones article exposed South Dakota State Representative Fred Deutsch as a hapless political puppet for fundamentalist leaders who were easily influencing his lame ass via group emails. Besides counseling Deutsch to propose legislation prepared by these evil influencers, the emails also contained a really startling amount of religious extremist language that should make any normal human being deeply uncomfortable.
I mean, this stuff is ripped straight out of Margaret Atwood’s work, right? How deeply creepy is that?
And there’s plenty of evidence to suggest that, like Deutsch, Kemp was easily influenced by this cabal of freaky assholes. Following his 2022 meeting, which as far as we know didn’t involve any cross burnings, Kemp signed into law a bill that created an athletics committee designed specifically to target and ruin the lives of trans athletes. After his 2023 meeting, which again we have absolutely no proof involved any burning crosses, robes or pointy hats, Kemp signed into law a boilerplate gender-affirming care ban.
So it’s pretty clear that there are shadowy groups of conservative lobbyists and money men quietly compelling and guiding red state lawmakers to be as evil as possible where trans people are concerned. I don’t know about you, but that sure does make me feel powerless. In fact, it scares the crap out of me!
I don’t have a happy ending lined up for this one, TWIBSies. I’m really sorry about that. Find the nearest trans person you can and, with their consent, give them a big hug, because man do we all need that right about now!
Alyssa Steinsiek is a professional writer who spends too much time playing video games!
A big hug from a trans sister here. It feels like blow after blow, with the 11th Circuit Court ruling and the Title IX Supreme Court ruling, along with hate groups openly running policy.
Because I’m a nerd, it makes me think of two quotes from Lord of the Rings:
"I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.
"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."
"What can men do against such reckless hate?"
"Ride out."
Scary shit! They’ve actually made another committee! My colleagues and I fought back the expanded sports ban bill earlier this year, so they formed another committee to publish a report to "legitimize" the bigotry of their failed anti-trans bills to try again in 2025. We had our first meeting with the "study" committee, which hosted Riley Gaines! There were proposals made ranging from a total sports ban (K-12, college, and pro) to a bathroom ban, going as far as a legal derecognition (however, the suggestion of reviving the failed "Georgia Women’s Bill of Rights" did not seem to gain much favorable response).
Wow, just wow. The link to "contained a really startling amount of religious extremist language" gave me the feeling that we are seeing a worldwide, dark-money funded push to turn back the clock about 100 years.
In Europe, there’s the superultraconservative, religious-extremist organisation Ordo Iuris. A daughtercompany of them is called Civitas Christiana who in turn has a daughter-organisation/company/movement called "FamilyInDanger" (In Dutch their website is "GezinInGevaar.nl").
They’ve acknowledged in a personal email that they are fighting a holy war against transpeople. That in itself is severely troubling, obviously.
But the more scarier thing? Openly acknowledging that should cis-people die because of advocating for the ban of endocrinological care MERELY because transchildren or transpeople ALSO take the same medication, that’s considered a "justified form of collateral damage."
Cis-people need to be killed just because they so viciously hate transpeople…
And then to think The Netherlands banked hard extreme-right in 2023 after disastrous elections and we now have a party on number 1 that holds scarily identical views to the NSDAP of Adolf Hitler. The second being heavily anti-democratic as well, and 2 others who are also heavily anti-trans by now.
Worse: The number 2 party has been finding extreme-right and ultra-conservative bystanders in it’s holy war on sexual diversity who used to be religious hardcore idiots in the margins of politics in The Netherlands.
And surprise surprise: A hatecampaign called GenderDoubt surfaced when getting rid of a self-ID law proposal. Without any shame the member of this party (that loves to tout how they are in favor of respectful, careful politics) called transchildren serial rapists.