MAGA candidate releases video calling LGBTQ+ people “fa***ts”

A Republican candidate for Missouri secretary of state is now using slurs on social media to talk about LGBTQ+ people.

Candidate Valentina Gomez is among the many conservatives outraged at the Olympics for allowing Algerian boxer Imane Khelif to participate, even though she is a cis woman who has, according to the International Olympic Committee (IOC), met the eligibility requirements for the 2024 Olympic games. This year’s strict eligibility rules have prevented any trans woman from participating in the Olympics.

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Valentina Gomez claims on her website that she is a “woman of intellect.”

“These fa***ts should get their own fa***t category because before if a man hit a woman, it used to land him in jail. Now, it gets you a gold medal at the Olympics,” Gomez said, wearing an Olympic sweater.

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“Let me remind you: there’s no such thing as a chick with a d**k,” she concluded. “Keep women’s sports female.”

Khelif was assigned female at birth and identifies as a woman, making her cisgender. She was treated as a girl in her rural community when she was growing up, and it’s unlikely that a trans child in rural Algeria would have been raised as a gender that didn’t match their outward appearance.

But many on the right have latched on to a statement last year from International Boxing Association (IBA) president Umar Kremlev, who said that DNA tests had “proved they had XY chromosomes and were thus excluded” from competing at IBA events. He also said that countries were recruiting cis men to compete in women’s sports. There is no evidence of that.

Kremlev has long been criticized as an ally of Russian leader Vladimir Putin, using the IBA to extend Russian soft power. Putin has been using its anti-LGBTQ+ policies to differentiate Russia from Ukraine and the West, which he believes support LGBTQ+ rights because of U.S. brainwashing.

Even if Kremlev’s statement is true, though, XY chromosomes don’t mean that Khelif is a “man” or that she was assigned male at birth. Women with XY chromosomes have even been known to give birth.

Khelif said last year that she was excluded by the IBA because she’s Algerian: “People have conspired against Algeria so that its flag doesn’t get raised and it doesn’t win the gold medal.”

Unlike the IBA, the IOC is permitting Khelif to compete but isn’t commenting on the results of gender testing, genetics, or the hormone levels of individual competitors other than to say that they meet the IOC’s eligibility rules. The IOC pulled recognition of the IBA last year due to a lack of financial transparency, which means that the IBA–unlike other individual sports organizations–has “no involvement in either the qualification for or the organization of” boxing at the 2024 Olympics.

“I repeat that all the competitors comply with the eligibility rules,” said IOC spokesperson Mark Adams. “But what I would say is that this involves real people.”

“And, by the way, this is not a transgender issue. I should make this absolutely clear.”

After the controversy took over social media yesterday, the IOC released another statement denouncing “the current aggression against these two athletes,” referring to Taiwanese boxer Lin Yu‑ting and Khelif. The statement also says that the IBA doesn’t have a “clear procedure on gender testing” and criticized the decision to exclude Khelif as being “initially taken solely by the IBA Secretary General and CEO” and “contrary to good governance.”

Joint Paris 2024 Boxing Unit/IOC Statementhttps://t.co/22yVzxFuLd pic.twitter.com/fZvgsW8OOi

— IOC MEDIA (@iocmedia) August 1, 2024

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