How Far-Right Extremists Are Targeting Pro-LGBT Schools

A crowd that clashed with LGBT allies at a violent rally outside the Glendale Unified School District board meeting outside Los Angeles on Tuesday included a number of Jan. 6 rioters and members of the alt-right Proud Boys.

Right-wing activists Tony Moon and Josh Fulfer were present during the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. On Tuesday, they attended the Glendale rally alongside Proud Boy-affiliated Adam Kiefer and mingled with concerned parents angry about LGBTQ+ content in their children’s curriculum.

Three people at the protest were arrested for “unlawful use of pepper spray and willfully obstructing officers in the course of their duties,” according to Glendale Police. The identities of those arrested have not been released.

Rev. Mike Kinman, a rector at All Saints Church in nearby Pasadena, was one of those pepper-sprayed during the protest. Kinman, who was active during protests against police violence in Ferguson following the killing of Michael Brown in 2014, told The Daily Beast that the protest outside the Glendale school board meeting was one of the most violent he has seen.

“I was trying to pull away people from our side who were being beaten and kicked,” he said. “The things that were being said to [pro-LGBT protesters] were just horrific.”

The rally was organized by a group called GUSD Parents Voices to protest, among other things, the district’s support of Pride Month, which has been passed without issue for the last five years.

Rev. Marianne McPherson said of the 50 or so people who spoke at the board meeting there were “maybe three who had issues” with the LGBT initiatives.

However, outside the school, hundreds of protesters gathered and clashes broke out. The violence came only days after another protest at Saticoy Elementary School in North Hollywood, where one person was left unresponsive on the ground during a demonstration against a Pride assembly.

None of the far-right protesters The Daily Beast identified have children in the Glendale school district, or even live in Glendale.

Josh Fulfer, a far-right livestreamer, traveled over 200 miles from Fresno to film the Glendale protest, dressed in a “End Trans Terror” T-shirt. Fulfer was pictured with Devin Nunes in 2018, apparently flashing a “white power” sign. Fulfer has also attended protests outside school board meetings in Redlands, California, where a group of parents have been organizing against far-right activists who have mounted a campaign to reshape public schools based on their extremist ideals. Fulfer did not respond to a request for comment.

Moon, a self-described “Christian patriot” and “antifa hunter,” also attended the Glendale protests and posted a video from Saticoy Elementary on his Instagram. He was present at the Jan. 6 riot, although he has not been arrested in relation to the insurrection and told the Daily Mail he did not go inside the Capitol. Moon was filmed attacking a journalist at an anti-vaccine protest in August 2021, while yelling, “Unmask them all!” Moon did not respond to a request for comment.

Keifer, a trucker from Southern California with well-documented links to the Proud Boys (although he has denied being a member), was also outside the Glendale school board meeting. In April, Keifer was filmed outside a Chino Valley School District school board meeting, calling photographer Kelly Stuart a series of slurs, including “tr---y-loving, demon c--t.”

Keifer did not respond to a request for comment about his attendance at either the Glendale school board protests or school board meetings in Chino Valley.

Also present at Glendale were other far-right activists like Shiva Bagheri. Videos of the Beverly Hills mother yelling at parents about how masking their children was equivalent to “rape” went viral in 2021. She told The Daily Beast at the time that her anti-vaccine and anti-mask activism was a mission “from God.”

Angela Givant, a parent who organizes with the group GUSD Parents for Public Schools, and supports the inclusion of LGBTQ+ materials in the curriculum, told The Daily Beast right-wing agitators from outside the district have been involving themselves in local Glendale issues for at least two years but have escalated their involvement in the past two months.

“They do seem to have found ways to overlap with some of the white nationalist, Christian nationalist groups that we’ve seen in other places,” Givant says.

The anti-LGBT parent faction has been led by a man called Jordan Henry, Givant says.

Henry, who ran for Glendale City Council in 2022 but was not elected, moved to the district in 2021. He does not have children enrolled in local schools, but has made frequent public comments at school board meetings, speaking against “cultural Marxism,” critical race theory, and LGBTQ inclusive programs.

Over the last two years, Henry has rallied a group of parents to his side. But he is also frequently tags national right-wing groups such as Gays Against Groomers and Libs of TikTok in his social media posts, who in turn have amplified information about battles within the Glendale school district.

In the last two months, Givant says, the situation in Glendale has become increasingly heated as right-wing influencers and activists from outside have become interested in the anti-LGBT organizing by Glendale parents.

“I don’t think Jordan Henry started off thinking he would be leading Proud Boys through the streets,” she says. “I think he was trying to cultivate right-wing social media personality status for himself. But it’s got out of control,” she added.

McPherson says the crusade in liberal Los Angeles is “not something that you expect… but then again, when you think in terms of how all this started to roll out after Jan. 6 and the Proud Boys were talking about how they were doing to take over school boards…”

“What I’m seeing is that their promise is filtering across the U.S.,” she said.