Fox News is promoting swastika-wielding gay teacher Ray Shelton as the network’s latest anti-trans culture warrior.
The fifth-grade teacher from Glendale, California — where a riot broke out last week over the school board’s determination to pass a Pride Month resolution — was put on leave in April after he showed up to an earlier board meeting to protest policies supportive of trans students, and flashed an anti-trans meme.
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Anti-LGBTQ+ protestors attack outside of school board meeting over Pride Month resolution
The Proud Boys were among the anti-LGBTQ+ protestors who chanted, “Whose kids? Our kids!”
Before the meeting started, Shelton waved a swastika composed of Progress Pride flags at a Jewish teacher in attendance. She complained to school district staff, and a Glendale police officer confiscated the Nazi-inspired anti-trans emblem from Shelton.
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Despite the hateful display, Shelton was allowed to share his views in public comments.
“Two plus two equals four,” Shelton began, enlisting facts in a line of reasoning that would soon enough be shrouded in fiction.
“The world is not flat. Boys have penises; girls have vaginas. Gender is binary and cannot be changed. Biology is not bigotry. Heterosexuality is not hate. Gender confusion and gender delusion are deep psychological disorders. No caring professional or loving parent would ever support the chemical poisoning or surgical mutilation of a child’s genitalia.”
Then Shelton personified “transgender ideology,” adding, it “is anti-gay, it is anti-woman, and it is anti-human. It wants to take away women’s sports, women’s rights, women’s achievements — it is misogyny writ large.”
“And I can also say this as a gay man, the gay people…”
With that, the microphone went silent and Shelton was told his time expired.
According to Glendale parents group GUSD Parents for Public Schools, Shelton made his double-barreled attack on trans people and Jews on Yom Ha’Shoah, the day dedicated to honoring the Jewish victims of the Holocaust.
Two days later, Shelton appeared on an episode of Dr. Phil — taped last August — in which he confronted a panel of trans men and women and methodically denied their existence, employing the same specious mix of facts and fiction that he did at the school board meeting.
Monday on Fox, as footage of rioters battling in Glendale played behind him, host Jesse Watters elevated Shelton to right-wing martyrdom for taking one for the anti-trans team, despite the fact it was later revealed that Shelton had already announced his retirement from the district this school year before he was suspended pending an investigation.
Watters lauded the former fifth-grade teacher and his cowboy-hatted lawyer appearing with him with his own distortion of the facts for “saying what 70% of the country believes and what 100% of science believes” about trans people.
“Speaking scientific facts is hate speech,” Watters asked Shelton rhetorically.
Yes, they all agreed.