The chapter leader for Georgia Gays Against Groomers (GAG) centered her argument on the safety of children. The interview was recorded for review by the GAG board of directors – held on Zoom to screen potential members. The chapter leader explained that GAG is against the medical transition of kids 18 and under. She described young girls in her life who she wants to protect from “the downward spiral … of trans ideology.” This is the basis of anti-trans rhetoric and policies that affect Georgians in myriad ways.

Trans kids, according to GAG, “can’t make that conscious decision yet. They can’t really consent because they don’t know what it really means for their bodies.”

Ann Vitale facilitates a “Parents of Trans Kids” support group through the Parents, Families, and Friends of Atlanta’s LGBTQ Community (PFLAG). After years of experience with the organization, Vitale heard the question: How can children “decide” to be trans? She answers, “They’re not deciding. They’re becoming aware. They’re learning a word for what’s there. They’re understanding and feeling the differences.”

Over time, she’s noticed fewer parents of young children in the support group and credits that age shift to greater acceptance of transgender and non-binary identity, “They’re getting the words for it at a younger age.”

“… And That Feels Worse.”

Noah Grigni is a 27-year-old children’s book illustrator and author from Atlanta whose parents attended PFLAG support meetings when they came out as trans at age 14.

They remember when they came out, they were met with “genuine ignorance.”

“Some things feel harder now than they were 10 years ago,” they said. Anti-trans legislation is introduced and passed across the United States, including SB 140 in Georgia, which prohibits gender-affirming care for transgender youth. “I feel like conservatives 10 years ago didn’t know trans people existed,” Grigni said. “Now they’re obsessed with us, and that feels worse.” In the 2024 presidential race, The spending crept over 200 million dollars on anti-trans political advertisements.

Vitale also recognizes the relatively sudden uptick in anti-trans politicizing. “Five years ago, no one cared. And now this is like a danger to the human race.”

“People protest “[our event] without ever having been to a Drag Storytime.”

GAG is a group that uses the term “groomer” to refer to the LGBTQ community, according to The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), as “pedophiles, sexual predators, and threats to children.” In May 2024, The Georgia GAG chapter posted an Instagram video to “expose” the monthly Drag Storytime event at Mister John’s Music School in Avondale Estates.

“Introducing children to LGBTQIA ideas and concepts that they can’t understand is inappropriate and a form of grooming,” the chapter leader said in the video, accompanied by footage of drag story time taken by “undercover” members of GAG.

Coloring in the Lines

John Francisco is the founder and CEO of Mister John’s, a cisgender gay man raised in Jones County, Georgia. Though he found GAG’s infiltration to be “despicable and hurtful,” the publicity meant the next month’s drag story time was “free and jam-packed.”

Growing up in Georgia was lonely for Francisco. “The narratives that I created as a child were that if I were my authentic self, I would be ostracized,” he said. That wasn’t true, but even so, it took Francisco “years to come to terms with a sense of self-value.”

The mission of Mister John’s Music, initially founded in Philadelphia and now with multiple locations in Georgia, is to teach value of the self and others. Drag Storytime is part of Mister John’s mission of “acknowledging that everybody who walks into the room … belongs and should be celebrated for what makes them wonderful.”

Francisco observes that the audience in Atlanta is slower-growing than his location in Philadelphia, which he partly credits to the city’s Southern Christian culture. “That can be very divisive,” Francisco said, who was raised Catholic. He made an “active choice” to bring his difference, which he defines as his “superpower,” back to his home state. People protest “[our event] without ever having been to a Drag Storytime,” he said. This reminds him of people with negative opinions about trans athletes.  “I’m like …You neither care about sports nor do you actually know a single trans person.”

Grigni’s work aims to center the voices of trans people, especially trans kids. “I am really passionate about making books … that trans kids can see themselves in,” they said. Grigni illustrated It Feels Good to Be Yourself and The Everybody Book, which “filled a void in the landscape of books for kids.” Going through puberty, Grigni didn’t have books that explored the body beyond “bio-essentialist” discussions of body parts. They visited classrooms and had conversations with kids who “grasped pretty intuitively … gender identity is different from sex and that people have different gender identities,” they said.

Adults sometimes found Grigni’s books “radical” or were “uncomfortable” with their presence in schools. “I see so many people talking about trans kids without talking to them,” Grigni said. Their 2022 “Protect Trans Dreams” exhibition at the Boston Children’s Museum featured portraits of 7 trans kids celebrating their full personhood and futures. There was some backlash from parents, Grigni said, “but I don’t think any of these people actually went to the show or looked at the paintings.”

Grigni moved back to Atlanta, where opportunity is scarcer. “I think it’s been harder in Georgia to do anything involving talking to kids about gender identity because there’s so much aggressive anti-trans lobbying.”

Trans-rights are Healthcare

Jack Turban is the director of the Gender Psychiatry Program at the University of California who wrote Free to Be, published in 2024, aimed at transitioning kids and their families. He references the rise of the term “rapid onset gender dysphoria” as an unscientific theory. Instead, he promotes gender-affirming hormones for transgender youth. He debunks the fear of medical procedures being performed on kids.

“Gender-affirming genital surgery is rarely performed on minors and never on young children,” Turban wrote. He highlights that gender-affirming care isn’t “experimental.” “Over a dozen studies have linked treatments such as pubertal suppression and gender-affirming hormones to better mental health outcomes for adolescents.”

Donald Trump, set to be inaugurated for his second Presidential term in January 2025, spoke at a conference with “Moms For Liberty” and said that a trans kid “goes to school and comes home a few days later with an operation.” This rhetoric is part of the false notion of a “transgender craze” spread in politics and media.

Elon Musk, Tesla Billionaire, member of Trump’s presidential cabinet, and owner of the social media platform X, made headlines when he publicly called out his transgender daughter as a victim of the “woke mind virus.” Since Musk purchased Twitter and renamed it X, anti-LGBTQ slurs like “groomer” have spiked on the site. X makes millions in ad revenue from accounts that weaponize the grooming narrative, like GAG.

Musk responded to GAG in a tweet about his daughter Vivian, who attempted to frame his child’s transition as a “side effect” of autism. There is research to suggest a correlation between autism diagnosis and gender-expansive identities. Vitale notices this in her PFLAG support groups. “There’s never, ever been a session where we didn’t have at least one kid that was both on the gender spectrum and the autism spectrum,” Vitale said. She frames these differences not as “symptoms” of an illness but as potential strengths. Because an autistic person has fewer societal constraints, “maybe they’re freer to come forward” as non-binary or transgender.

Turban’s key idea in Free to Be is “that we listen to kids and let them be themselves. When we do, they thrive.” Grigni illustrated the sequel to The Everybody Book, The Everybody Book of Consent, written by Rachel Simon. The book defines grooming as “some people out there who might take time to build your trust and then use it to behave in bad or unsafe ways.” Their bright illustrations represent bodies along the gender spectrum. The key idea in the book is to respect others’ agency, understanding that “we don’t live in a culture that prioritizes our own bodies or their needs.” Grigni’s art acknowledges that “it’s actually good for all kids and also all adults … to realize that … we have bodily autonomy.”

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When GAG Georgia chapter members went undercover at Mister John’s, they didn’t have a child with them. Francisco said his teacher let them in any way because “why wouldn’t you want to come to a Drag Storytime? It’s an incredibly joyful room to be in.”

GAG’s Instagram video concluded with a request that Mister John’s Music School cancel Drag StoryTime and with the statement, “Thank you for understanding and helping us protect the innocence of children in the future.”

Francisco continues to host Drag Storytime at Mister John’s in Avondale Estates. As founder of the school, his mission is to create “a sense of belonging and community. Frankly, something I was chasing as a child all the time.” Grigni’s forthcoming children’s book Mama Moon is a tender portrait of life with a parent’s mental health struggles.

Grigni’s work aims to protect the “inner child” of trans adults, “to access a little healing. ‘Cause these are things we didn’t get growing up, and we should have. We deserve to dream and to see ourselves represented joyfully.”

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Zoey Laird

Zoey is a writer from Atlanta, Georgia. She grew up in Decatur and has lived in Gresham Park, College Park, and now Grant Park. Her writing about the Stop Cop City Movement was published in Scalawag and Mainline Magazine. ANI (Atlanta Narrative Imagination) is a project she created as an outlet for creative energy to be shared in many different mediums. She believes that the stories we tell shape the way we see the world.