A few days ago, right wing news organizations like Fox and the New York Post reported an anti-LGBTQ story that had all of the hallmarks of the recent conservative attack on educators and schools and trans children. On Monday, March 6, in Concord, New Hampshire, a man showed up at a school board meeting to make the claim that the public school system of New Hampshire was sowing the seeds of “gender confusion.” What made this a splashy right-wing story is that the man, identified as Michael Guglielmo, like other ludicrous people before him, dressed up as a character of sorts: Ancient history’s Julius Caesar.
Like most people willing to publicly humiliate themselves to make an incoherent anti-trans point, Guglielmo’s short speech was also … an incoherent anti-trans point. “I am Caesar. Julius Caesar of Rome, the emperor. I am also a female. Does anybody here believe that? That I am Julius Caesar? Anybody believe that? No, of course not. It’s ridiculous,” Guglielmo said while standing and pacing back and forth. He then pulled off his Halloween helmet, and to make sure you understood he was being sarcastic, he added, “I’m not Caesar. I’m not a woman either.”
Guglielmo then called for the suspension of Christa McAuliffe Elementary’s art teacher, Silas Allard, for allegedly wearing what Guglielmo “deemed to be feminine clothing.” Allard was on paid leave during an investigation by the school board after Guglielmo, with the help of a shadowy anti-trans group that the Boston Globe called “a ‘liberty minded’ political group,” said Allard’s clothing choices, as well as his allegiance with the LGBTQ community and social media posts from when Allard was a teenager “that included sexually suggestive material and references to marijuana.”
It turns out the only person needing an investigation seems to be Mr. Julius Caesar himself, Michael Guglielmo.
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Numerous non-conservative propaganda outlets have reported that Mr. Guglielmo has a long and distressing history—much longer and more distressing than anything the 24-year-old art teacher has had time to accomplish. For example, Mr. Guglielmo served more than 17 years in state prison following an incident back in 1985, when he got into an armed standoff with SWAT officers in Manchester, New Hampshire. At the time, Guglielmo fired more than 200 rounds from a machine gun.
In October 2015, Guglielmo was arrested for allegedly “grabbing a juvenile at a Concord restaurant in a sexual manner,” according to WMUR. Patch.com reports that this arrest included “sexual assault – forcible fondling, simple assault, criminal threatening, and two counts of disorderly conduct from Oct. 5, 2015, at O Steak and Seafood on South Main Street.”
In 2019, Guglielmo was arrested for physically assaulting a woman while driving under the influence. The Union Leader writes that the woman told police that after Guglielmo pulled over, “Guglielmo threatened to kill her and that she hit and scratched him before she finally threw the car keys out of the car and escaped, calling 911.” For that, Guglielmo was reportedly charged with “simple assault, criminal threatening, obstructing the report of a crime, and aggravated DWI.”
Meanwhile, the complaint against art teacher Silas Allard included a photo, taken by Guglielmo, in which Allard is seen wearing “baggy pink pants, open-toe sandals, a light blue sweater vest over a white shirt, and pink sunglasses.”
You can see the photo of Allard that bent these faketriots out of shape here. What’s particularly wild is that it isn’t even gender anything. Superintendent Kathleen Murphy, who investigated Allard, called the accusations “unsubstantiated.” She also said the school district’s investigation into Allard did not include his clothing, just his social media posts, saying, “The dress was never an issue.”
After being sidelined for a week, Allard returned to happy children. One parent wrote on a Facebook page set up in support of Allard, “My child came bursting through the door all smiles excited to tell me Mr. Allard was FINALLY back today.” Another parent, whose two children are in Allard’s art class, told the Globe that children aren’t as confused about clothing and gender as someone like Mr. Guglielmo might be.
“On any given day, I might wear steel toed boots, Carhartt work pants, a flannel shirt and a baseball hat or a hard hat to work. And the next day I wear a dress and high heels. There’s nothing wrong with that. That’s who I am and I have the freedom to do that at work. I’m just as much myself in the masculine outfit as the feminine outfit. My kids don’t find anything confusing about that,” she said. “I think our teachers also deserve the same respect and freedom to be who they are and to feel safe being who they are at work. This whole situation has been a disturbance that our kids and teachers don’t deserve.”
Guglielmo’s appearance at the school board meeting comes after Allard had to file a protective order against the cosplaying parent. Allard wrote, “The father of one of my students comes to school when I am outside and bullies me, being aggressive and homophobic. For the past few months, he’s shown up wearing clothes with guns and profanity and giving me menacing looks.”
Whether or not Allard knew anything of Mr. Guglielmo’s long history of violence and harassment is not known. However, Mr. Allard’s characterization of his interactions with Guglielmo ring very true when considering that history. But history and understanding the context with which things re happening in the news are verboten at Fox News and in the greater conservative movement at large. To recognize history and context might force its viewership to have the tiniest of critical thoughts. The tiniest of critical thoughts might lead to searching the internet with the simplest of questions. The simplest of questions could lead one into a rabbit hole of truth.
Instead, Fox News, like so many others in the conservative space, is all in on a fantasy of agrievement that will effectively leave its audience impotent. Fox News is weathering a billion-dollar defamation lawsuit storm for lying in this exact way about our elections. In order to do that, the fake news outlet is proceeding deeper into their sewage-filled lie and pumping out a firehose of fear mongering. The two-pronged attack of the conservative movement is bigotry and … bigotry. On the one hand, you have racism and anti-immigration racism, while on the other hand, you have homophobia and transphobia. The latter attack is not a particularly new one, and the angle of attack is as old as puritanism in America.
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Progressives have had tremendous success passing all sorts of reforms at the ballot box in recent years, including measures that have expanded Medicaid, increased the minimum wage, and created independent redistricting commissions. How have Republicans responded? By making it harder to qualify measures for the ballot.
Daily Kos Elections' own Stephen Wolf joins us on this week's episode of The Downballot for a deep dive on the GOP's war on ballot initiatives, which includes burdensome signature requirements that disproportionately impact liberals; ramping up the threshold for passage for citizen-backed measures but not those referred by legislatures; and simply repealing voter-passed laws Republicans don't like. But Republican power is not unfettered, and Stephen explains how progressives can fight back by defeating efforts to curtail ballot measures—many of which voters themselves would first have to approve.
