Furious Texas students show anti-trans Republicans exactly where to go: ‘F**k these fascists’
Jeffrey Younger (L) spoke at a university event in Texas only to be heckled by students. (Jeffrey Younger/Twitter)
Texas students showed exactly how the world should respond to anti-trans bigots after Republican Jeffrey Younger, who lost custody of his trans child, spoke at a university event.
On Wednesday (2 March) evening, the University of North Texas chapter of the Young Conservatives of Texas, who are just as lame as you’d expect them to be, held an event titled: “Criminalise Child Transitions.”
Speaking at the event was Jeffrey Younger, a Republican who recently lost a child custody battle with his ex-wife after he refused to affirm his trans daughter Luna’s gender identity – he wrote on his campaign website that his child is not trans but was “misdiagnosed”. Luna Younger’s mother, however, fully supports her.
Younger is running for the Texas House of Representatives for House District 63 on the platform of outlawing gender-affirming healthcare for trans youth. According to a Facebook event page for his speech, he spoke about the “threat of leftist ideology” and cautioned attendees that he “expects protests from campus leftists”.
And protest they did. At around 7pm, pro-trans students packed the Curry Hall, a building of the campus in Denton.
Around 100 people, according to witness estimates, crowded outside, leaving cardboard signs reading “Trans Kids Are A Gift To This World”, “Trans Care Is Suicide Prevention” and “Jeffrey Younger is a Deadbeat”, a reference to a court order last year that granted full custody of his children to his former spouse. The judge wrote that Younger “failed to timely make the payments for child support”, a claim he has denied.
Inside the campus lecture room, the mood bristled with tension as Younger spoke in front of around 50 protesters and a small number of people who actually agreed with him. Footage from protesters showed them shouting Younger down with a cavalcade of air horns, middle fingers, boos and chants of “deadbeat dad” and “f**k these fascists” for half an hour.
Jeff stood at the front of the classroom for 45 minutes without starting his 63-slide presentation. Instead, he taunted students, with comments like "My God, your women are outperforming you, you communist slackers!" –
— Denton Possum (@DentonPossum) March 3, 2022
Younger allegedly taunted students and misgendered his daughter and protesters, at one point saying, “there is no such thing as a trans person,” and referring to demonstrators as “snowflakes” and “communists” during his speech until, at around 8pm, campus police arrived to evacuate him. He cut the speech short after just 40 minutes.
Attendees of the conference reportedly kicked protesters’ placards only to be escorted by campus law enforcement to the “cheers” of students. But police also targeted protesters, “grabbing a protester by the ankle and pulling them.”
After Jeffrey Younger was escorted off campus, a campus police vehicle reportedly ran over student protesters, according to mobile phone footage. The vehicle was speeding Kelly Neidert, of the Young Conservatives of Texas who had been hiding in a janitor’s closet, away from the protest and “accelerated towards the crowd rapidly,” a witness wrote.
The protestor was looked after by an onsite medic, a cursory look suggested a sprained ankle. They were eventually taken to the hospital by EMS and are doing ok. After this, the crowd slowly dissipated and police eventually left.— Denton Possum (@DentonPossum) March 3, 2022
NEW: @theflutternater captured the moments when a cop car with the organizer of the event inside sped away, potentially hitting a protester on the way outhttps://t.co/cHCR16ghmi pic.twitter.com/Uoy507qhBo— steven monacelli (@stevanzetti) March 3, 2022
“A protester was unable to back away fast enough, and was struck by the front of the vehicle.”. A petition circulated around campus saw more than 18,000 call for Neidert, who organised the event, to be expelled for “harassment towards the trans community“.
The Young Conservatives of Texas, a so-called “non-partisan” conservative youth organisation, recently praised Republican Greg Abbott’s “excellent” order last week for state officials to investigate and prosecute parents and guardians of trans youth as “child abusers” if found to be giving them gender-affirming healthcare.
The governor’s directive came not long after attorney general Ken Paxton’s opinion that claimed that gender-affirming healthcare for trans youth can be considered “child abuse” under current Texas law.
Abbott has since been sued by the American Civil Liberties Union in an effort to stop state officials from investigating families of trans teens for child abuse.
But the trans community found an ally in the UNT’s president, Neal Smatresk, who last week condemned such “intolerant views of a handful of campus members”.
“Our views, or our very existence, might be challenged in ways that feel incredibly hurtful,” Samtresk wrote in a statement on the UNT website. “Especially in those moments, I want you to know that you are a valued member of our Mean Green Family.”
Jeffrey Younger said that Abbott and Paxton are promoting how “children have a fundamental liberty interest in procreation”. Yes, really.
“The fact that I want to maintain traditional social norms and won’t accept the arbitrary identities that people assign themselves in their mind is fascist,” Younger said in a statement to the National Review.
PinkNews contacted the University of North Texas Police Department for comment.
