Meet Mario Presents (or Mario Estrada) the bizarre gay, anti-trans activist Senator Kauth invited to testify for LB574

Meet Mario Estrada, a Gays Against Groomers gadfly who swooped into Lincoln February 8th to testify for LB574, Kathleen Kauth's bill to stop physicians from performing gender alteration procedures on anyone under 19 or even referring patients to someone who will, under penalty of a review by Nebraska's medical licensing board.

     The bill also allows a parent or guardian to bring civil action against any such doctor and prohibits state funds for any hospital that performs transgender care.

     Estrada did not identify himself as Estrada in his testimony, but as "Mario Presents."

     Estrada, of Chilean extraction, likes to wear a T-shirt depicting people executed by being thrown out of a helicopter, a favorite means of dispatching argumentative Chileans by dictator Augusto Pinochet, who ruled Chile between 1973 and 1990, when an estimated 3,200 people were murdered and another 28,000 tortured by the state.

     In a video, wearing said shirt, Estrada disingenuously declared, "Pinochet, if you didn't know, was in Chile and he protected people from an overreaching government. Yes, he didn't like homosexuals"

Below: Estrada crowing about how easily he thinks it is to trigger liberals in Nebraska.

From Wikipedia:

Gays Against Groomers (GAG) is a far-right anti-LGBTQ organization that started as a Twitter account created by Jaimee Michell known for posting anti-trans rhetoric. The collective has harassed school board meetings and hospitals, attended and held anti-LGBTQ rallies alongside far-right organizations, and has been banned from multiple platforms for hate speech. They are known for their use of the slur "groomer" to portray their critics and parents and supporters of LGBTQ youth as pedophiles and have been compared to Libs of TikTok. The organization refers to transgender, queer, intersex, and asexual people as "infiltrators" and opposes gender-affirming care and Drag Queen Story Hour Events. It is widely promoted by right-wing media such as One America News Network (OANN) and Fox News. GAG has been accused of fueling stochastic terrorism, the public condemnation of a group that leads to violent acts against the group.

Left to right: Mario flashing White Power gesture with companion,
defending a murderous Chilean dictator, and posing with Sen. Kauth

     Twitter has suspended the account four times, some of which were supposed to be permanent, but kept reinstating it. Before Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter, the website's rules prohibited the use of "groomer" as an insult based on gender identity or expression under their hate speech policy. GAG responded by using code terms such as "broomer" and "gr__mer" and changing its screen name to "Gays Against Grewmers". Some hypothesized that someone at Twitter was manually and repeatedly overriding the suspensions.

 
   When Elon Musk bought Twitter, GAG reverted to its old name, tweeted "OK GROOMER", and purchased a verified badge. In October 2022, the account directly thanked Musk for helping them further their agenda. Before Musk's purchase, tweets using hate terms averaged at most 84 per hour over a week. After the purchase, users tweeted hate speech 4,778 times from midnight to noon. A report from the Human Rights Campaign found that the GAG Twitter account had seen an increase of nearly 300% in their use of the slur "groomer" when comparing the two months before and after Musk's purchase.

     Venmo, PayPal, and Google have banned the group from raising funds on their platforms due to their policies prohibiting hate speech. As a result, GAG began to use the fundraising platform Donorbox.

     Gays Against Groomers may not need much fundraising. Imara Jones hypothesized that The Heritage Foundation was funding them, noting they have a budget of close to a million dollars and stating it could not have come organically from the community. Founder Jaimee Michell has denied that anyone is funding the account and claims the organization is a non-profit, though its application has not been approved. In September 2022, the group filed as a corporation. 

Above: The LB584 hearing, brought to you by the Nebraska Progressive Legislative Study Group and Nebraska Public Media.

Such a cavalcade of amazing facts from the LB574 proponents!

First up was Kathleen Kauth (in red), introducing her bill to the Unicameral's politically lopsided  Human and Health Services at the hearing. She represents district 31 (Millard and South Omaha).

• "These novel and irreversible procedures lack sufficient long-term research...
• One of the most disturbing aspects of the current trend with gender dysphoric youth is the risk of suicide. Parents and children are being told that a young person experiencing gender dysphoria is more likely to commit suicide. The studies that are cited are rife with flaws and weaknesses in study design. A new analysis shows rather than solving the problem, medical interventions make the risk of suicide worse, once all the surgeries are completed. A 30-year study out of Sweden documents how individuals who have complete gender altering surgery are 19 times more likely to kill themselves...
• YOU WILL HEAR THAT THE VAST MAJORITY--MORE THAN 85%!--OF KIDS WITH GENDER DYSPHORIA WILL DESIST IF LEFT ALONE IN A PROCESS CALLED WATCHFUL WAITING...
• I called on every group I could think of. I called on the Nebraska Family Alliance [virulently homophobic], the Nebraska Catholic Conference [guess what their position might be]..."

Next up was Scott Newgent, a dissatisfied former lesbian and current trans male who also describes himself as a mother.

• "I'm here today to put an end to the idea that medically transitioning children is about human rights. It is not. It's about money... THE LEADING COUNTRY [SIC] IN SWEDEN HAS SHUT DOWN ALL MEDICAL TRANSITIONING...
• I still have infections. These infections will shorten my life because these procedures are experimental... I'VE TALKED TO HUNDREDS OF TRANSGENDER PEOPLE. Don't do this to kids!
• ...I went to a therapist. A transgender woman therapist... Within 5 minutes she looked at me and said "How long have you been wearing male clothing? I was a business sales executive. I looked like Jillian Anderson. Nobody would think that I was a man. But that sentence, at 42 absolutely changed my life. I won't get to meet my grandkids... These infections will kill me. That one sentence changed the whole trajectory of my LIFE!

     Most trans people aren't changed by a sentence and don't want to wait until they are 42 to escape the life of a sex that their brains are genetically wired to reject. They almost always know this before they enter kindergarten—not in middle age via Evil Transgender Therapists.

     Third at bat was the non-frivolous version of fascist-friendly, white power gesturing Mario Whatever, reading a script that sounded like it certainly could have been written for him by the Heritage Foundation.

     One wag has suggested that instead of hawking Gays Against Groomers merch, Mario might more honestly sell tees which say Roaches For Raid.