GOP school board candidate caught discussing “fire-breathing” lesbians, “grooming”

Leaked chat logs from an anti-LGBTQ+ education server, co-founded by Colorado school board candidate Derrick Wilburn, have reportedly revealed Wilburn railing against “fire-breathing” lesbians, encouraging the dismantling of student gay-straight-transgender alliance (GTSA) groups, and rallying the support of churches that have ties to QAnon conspiracy theorists and anti-LGBTQ+ Christian nationalists.

The chat logs came from the Discord server of Advocates for D20 Kids, a Colorado Springs-based group that opposes LGBTQ+-inclusive policies and books. The server, whose logs were published at DerrickWilburn.com, was used to coordinate the group’s efforts.

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In an April 2023 post, Wilburn reportedly responded to a user who called trans healthcare a “death cult” and LGBT-affirming policies “child abuse” by writing that he and his campaign’s registered agent “stands in complete agreement with you on the topic of LBGT grooming & the dangers it presents.”

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In a December 2022 post, Wilburn reportedly warned that “Every lesbian in El Paso county is going to show up at tomorrow night’s BOE [board of education] meeting breathing fire.” He added, “If ever there was a time for you to personally get in the game, this is it.”

In an August 2022 post, Wilburn asked the server’s users to sign a petition asking the school board to ban GSTA clubs.

The accompanying letter that Wilburn reportedly posted server said, “[GTSA] flyers discussing gender and/or sexuality have no place in our schools and certainly should not be placed in hallways for all to see and read. Many of our children have expressed strong feelings of unease over such materials being displayed, thus their sense of ‘belonging’ is being threatened. As a result, the schools are creating comfort for some students at the expense of others.”

In a June 2022 post, he reportedly referred to El Paso County Democratic Party 1st Vice Chair Rob Rogers as “lying, cheating, immoral, satan-worshipping [son of a b**ch].”

The server’s chat logs reportedly showed that Wilburn had courted local churches to support his school board campaign, including a church called The Road. The Road held a “Hold the Line” event hosted by anti-LGBTQ+ Christian activist Sean Feucht which included a speech from Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO), a Christian Nationalist who is the third most responsible person for driving anti-LGBTQ hate speech on Twitter.

One of the other churches Wilburn listed, the Church For All Nations, hosted a panel discussion featuring former Rep. Steve King (R-IA) who has echoed white supremacist rhetoric and voiced support for rape and incest. Wilburn also mentioned having the support of the Charis Christian Center, which hosted a national tour of MAGA QAnon supporters — some QAnon supporters consider queer people as child sex traffickers. Wilburn also mentioned the Church at Briargate, whose pastor Scott Bottoms believes that trans-inclusive policies are a “demonic” form of “pedophilia” that can convince “a six or seven-year-old girl to go mutilate herself.”

Wilburn hosts the podcast Uncle Tom Talks for The Conservative Daily, a website owned by an election denier named Joe Oltmann. Oltmann thinks public school teachers “recruit kids to be gay” and that LGBTQ+-affirming teachers should be “dragged behind a car until their limbs fall off,” according to the Colorado Times Recorder.

In addition to Wilburn, the Advocates for D20 Kids server’s users reportedly included two sitting members of the school board, Tom LaValley and Nicole Konz; a former member of the anti-LGBTQ+ “extremist” group Moms for Liberty, Darcy Schoening; an activist supporting the anti-woke Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism (FAIR), Joseph Boyle; and others.

Colorado Springs is home to the long-running anti-LGBTQ+ group Focus on the Family and to the Club Q bar which was the site of a November 2022 anti-LGBTQ+ shooting. The election for Colorado’s D20 school board is scheduled for November 7.