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| A volatile sex scandal involving one of its founders in 2023 (as seen here by one of the mocking responses on social member) as well as member disillusionment is one of the many reasons anti-LGBTQ group Moms for Liberty is having major problems even as its remaining national leaders seek constant White House interaction. |
According to LGBTQNation, the anti-LGBTQ group Moms for Liberty may have Donald Trump's ear, but that doesn't mean that it's retaining power. Several scandals, leaders chasing White House status, complaints of "toxic extremism, and member disillusionment are combining to spell trouble for the organization.
. . while the group made national headlines by shouting about “pornography” and “Marxist indoctrination” at poorly attended school board meetings, winning seats in low-turnout school board elections, and sharing a stage with wannabe Republican presidential nominees, Joe Saunders, the executive director of Equality Florida Action PAC, noticed a few suspicious things about M4L early on, he told LGBTQ Nation.For one, fewer M4L-endorsed candidates won their school board races in 2023 than in 2022. Secondly, he noted that a majority of M4L candidates in Florida didn’t actually have kids currently enrolled in the state’s public schools. Third, while the group bills itself as a “grassroots organization of moms,” a significant portion of its 2022 funding came from two national anti-LGBTQ+ nonprofits: the Heritage Foundation (the authors of the very anti-LGBTQ+ Project 2025) and the George Jenkins Foundation (which is solely funded by Publix supermarket chain heiress Julie Fancelli).. . . “It was always our sense that [M4L’s founders] were politicians in search of attention, that they were looking for a stage to stand on… for momentum, clicks, and more power,” Saunders said, noting that the group emerged “overnight” with a “really sophisticated” and well-branded website, signage, and T-shirts. However, he called all of this a “short-term,” “PR focus[ed]” “manufactured momentum,” adding, “The only reason they haven’t been more successful is because their own incompetence or scandal or corruption has gotten in the way.”He may be right. By 2023, the group had gained a reputation for shouting at, intimidating, and threatening education officials, community advocates, and opposing groups – even baselessly leveling charges of child abuse and pedophilia against its opponents. In June 2023, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) certified M4L as an “extremist group. That same month, an M4L chapter in Indiana made national headlines for quoting Nazi leader Adolf Hitler in its inaugural newsletter. Christian Ziegler told the organization that it never should have apologized for the quote because “apologizing makes you weak.”However, by December 2023 – the same month that M4L was identified as one of the three main groups behind 86% of the nation’s book bans – the Zieglers found themselves embroiled in an embarrassing sex scandal after the woman they regularly had threesomes with accused Christian Ziegler of sexual assault. He was later cleared of the charge, but within a month, the conservative Leadership Institute quietly removed Brideget Ziegler as the director of its School Board Leadership Program, and the Sarasota School Board voted unanimously for her to resign (though she refused to do so).That year, only 50 of the 139 M4L-endorsed school board candidates won their races. The following January, the state Republican Party voted out Christian Ziegler as its chair.
And that's simply a prelude. You can read the entire article here.