The anti-gay rhetoric of right-wing group Moms for Liberty is coming back to bite them.
Moms for Liberty decries novels that include LGBTQ individuals as “pornographic” and claims that merely acknowledging gender identity and/or sexuality in schools is “grooming.”
They say they’re all about protecting kids from exposure to sexual immorality — so why do they keep getting caught in it?
Florida GOP Chair Christian Ziegler is the husband of Moms for Liberty co-founder Bridget Zeigler. He’s also an accused rapist and the reason that at least one local chapter of the group has decided to no longer associate with the national organization.
Moreover, Zeigler’s alleged victim is a woman who says that she and both Zeiglers engaged in sexual activity as a threesome — the sort of thing that groups of consenting adults do every day, but also the sort of thing that Moms for Liberty and their fellow conservatives tend to criticize as “deviant.”
The unnamed victim says that she engaged in a triad with Zeigler and his wife, and had scheduled a second encounter early in October, but canceled when she learned that only the male half of the couple would be present, saying she was “mostly in for” Bridget.
Then, she says, Zeigler came to her apartment anyway and raped her. The Washington Post reports:
“Christian Ziegler later told detectives that he had consensual sex with the woman, and that he had video-recorded it and uploaded the video to Google Drive, according to the affidavit, but police were not able to locate the video. Sarasota police served a search warrant to Google last month, the affidavit says.”
In other words, while denying the criminal allegation, Zeigler admitted openly to extramarital sex — an act that his wife’s organization and a significant percentage of his party’s voters — would find immoral.
He’s not the first man connected to the far-right group to face such allegations, either — as previously reported, Phillip Fisher Jr., a Moms for Liberty organizer and pastor who has been allowed to work with children pled guilty in 2012 to sexually abusing a 14-year-old boy.
Fisher is a registered sex offender who linked himself to the anti-LGBTQ hate group that claims to be fighting to protect children.
Now the organization is beginning to splinter, as some of the folks connected to it realize that Moms for Liberty doesn’t embody its own (claimed) ideals.
In Pennsylvania, the Northumberland County chapter of Moms for Liberty is breaking away from the national group, chapter chair Clarissa Paige says. News Item reported:
“It’s hard to advocate for parental rights when the co-founder is caught up in the scandal,” Paige said. “Our values are not aligning with the national organization.”
Zeigler and Fisher both proclaim their innocence, and Fisher says he does not plan to resign his political seat.
