LGBTQ people in San Antonio are boycotting a gay bar after its Trump-supporting owner announced his bid for Congress.
Mauro Garza, owner of Pegasus nightclub in San Antonio, will seek the Republican nomination in Congressional District 20 — after previously failing to get elected in a different district in 2018.
Garza, who is gay, a member of the Log Cabin Republicans, and identifies as a conservative, previously campaigned on his support for Trump, wearing a red cap in 2018 that said “Make TX-21 Greater.”
Should Garza succeed in his bid for the nomination, he would face LGBTQ ally Rep. Joaquin Castro in the general election.
But in the wake of boycotts against companies that cater to LGBTQ people while their owners support Donald Trump — whose administration has worked to dilute or rollback LGBTQ rights — the local LGBTQ community of San Antonio is fighting back.
A Twitter account, Protest the Peg, is imploring LGBTQ people to boycott Pegasus, LGBTQ Nation reports.
Protest the Peg slammed Garza for “[escalating] his support for the anti-LGBTQIA+ Republican platform” and for using his social media accounts to “share posts from nationalist media attacking immigrants and the transgender community.”
“We must stand together to ensure that political attacks on our community are denounced,” Protest the Peg said in a statement posted to Twitter. “We must work in unison to curtail monetary support of anti-LGBTQIA+ movements. Every time we spend our hard-earned dollars at Pegasus Nightclub, we are paying to support our oppression.”
On Fri, Aug. 9, @Mauro4Texas announced his @GOP run for @USCongress#TX20. His club, The Pegasus, books drag performers from around the nation, we are calling for a nationwide boycott in an effort to defund his contributions to anti-LGBTQIA+ politicians/platforms. #ProtestThePegpic.twitter.com/hEoUG0ctmE
The organization’s Twitter account has also been sharing examples of Garza’s social media activity where he supports anti-LGBTQ Sen. Ted Cruz, shares anti-immigrant memes, and seems to endorse Trump’s ban on transgender people serving openly in the military.
Protest the Peg are demanding that Garza sell Pegasus to ensure that “LGBTQ money no longer goes to supporting xenophobic, racist, misogynistic, and anti-LGBTQ ideologies.”
We demand @Mauro4Texas sell Pegasus & the property itself so that #LGBTQ money no longer goes to supporting xenophobic, racist, misogynistic, and anti-LGBTQ ideologies.
The group also criticized RuPaul’s Drag Race star Kennedy Davenport for performing at Pegasus last month and not publicly supporting the boycott.
“We understand there are many artists who rely on the entertainment industry as their source of income,” they said. “We are fully aware of the limits systemic oppression can impose on us to secure employment and meet our needs. We recognize that our spaces are the safest for LGBTQIA+ talent to work.
“However, the LGBTQIA+ entertainment industry provides different platforms that reach large audiences. We ask that you use those platforms responsibly and refrain from contracting talent to attend or perform at Pegasus Nightclub.”
In a letter to House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), 213 Democratic U.S. representatives, as well as Delegates Stacey Plaskett (Virgin Islands), Eleanor Holmes Norton (D.C.), and Resident Commissioner Pablo José Hernández (Puerto Rico), are demanding that Johnson rebuke Republican lawmakers for using "demonizing and dehumanizing" language when speaking about the transgender community.
"We write to you to strongly condemn the rise in anti-transgender rhetoric, including from members of Congress, and to urge you to ensure members of Congress are following rules of decorum and not using their platforms to demonize and scapegoat any marginalized community, including the transgender community," the Democrats' letter reads.
The Alabama Public Library Service Board of Directors, which oversees the state’s public libraries, has voted to remove books discussing transgender identities from teen and children’s sections statewide.
On November 20 -- which coincided with Transgender Day of Remembrance -- the board approved an addition to an existing rule requiring youth sections to be free of "sexually explicit or other material deemed inappropriate." The amended rule now specifies that materials discussing "transgender procedures, gender ideology, or the concept of more than two biological genders" are inappropriate for library sections aimed at children and teens.
In late November, the University of Oklahoma placed Mel Curth on administrative leave after the transgender graduate teaching assistant gave a student a zero on an essay about gender roles.
The essay cited the Bible to defend traditional gender roles and described transgender people as "demonic." Curth and the course's instructor, Megan Waldron, said the paper failed to meet basic academic standards due to a lack of empirical evidence. Both noted that the paper cited no scholarly sources and failed to offer an evidence-based critique of the assigned article, which argued that children who do not conform to rigid gender stereotypes are more likely to face bullying and negative mental health outcomes.
These are challenging times for news organizations. And yet it’s crucial we stay active and provide vital resources and information to both our local readers and the world. So won’t you please take a moment and consider supporting Metro Weekly with a membership? For as little as $5 a month, you can help ensure Metro Weekly magazine and MetroWeekly.com remain free, viable resources as we provide the best, most diverse, culturally-resonant LGBTQ coverage in both the D.C. region and around the world. Memberships come with exclusive perks and discounts, your own personal digital delivery of each week’s magazine (and an archive), access to our Member's Lounge when it launches this fall, and exclusive members-only items like Metro Weekly Membership Mugs and Tote Bags! Check out all our membership levels here and please join us today!
You must be logged in to post a comment.