Wiener rips activist for homophobic tweets
San Francisco state Sen. Scott Wiener called out far-right activist Charlie Kirk on Tuesday, calling him “one of the biggest attention-seeking liars” around and a spreader of misinformation after Kirk referred to Wiener with a homophobic trope and mischaracterized the senator's legislative record.
The Democrat roared back against Kirk's Twitter remarks, tweeting in response, “These are the lies bigots have always spread about LGBTQ people — lies that lead to violence against our community.”
Kirk, president and founder of Turning Point USA, a rightwing group, falsely accused Wiener of sponsoring legislation that will cause “thousands of pedophiles” to be released from jail.
The tweet mischaracterized legislation that Wiener carried in 2020 to eliminate a disparity in the state's statutory rape laws that treated LGBTQ young people differently than their straight peers for sex acts between teenagers and young adults.
Wiener's bill, SB145, took effect in 2021 and gave judges discretion over whether to require sex-offender registration in cases involving a person age 14 to 17 and an adult who is less than 10 years older. Prior law allowed a judge to decide whether to place a man who has vaginal intercourse with an underage teenage girl on the sex offender registry based on the facts of the case. But if anal or oral sex occurred, the adult was automatically registered as a sex offender.
Wiener said young gay couples were being treated differently than straight couples because of a relic in the California penal code that criminalized gay sex until 1975, even between consenting adults. He said his bill treats all sex acts the same and didn't alter how much time sex offenders serve in prison. Though minors cannot legally consent, the law was meant to prevent sex-offender registration for voluntary relationships in which there is only a small age difference involved.
“I have authored aggressive bills to protect the civil rights, equality and dignity of LGBTQ people, and I'm proud of that work,” Wiener said.
“Kirk is a scum-bucket grifter who just wants attention in the right-wing MAGA world,” Wiener added.
This is the second time is two weeks that homophobic rhetoric has been thrown Wiener's way. Last week, U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene took to Twitter to refer to Wiener as a “communist groomer” after Wiener warned about the rise of anti-LGBTQ rhetoric in the wake of the massacre at Club Q in Colorado Springs, where a gunman killed five people and injured at least 17 others. In recent years, the far-right has increasingly adopted language like “groomer,” a term for pedophiles, to pejoratively refer to LGBTQ people.
“He's targeting me in a very disgusting way, you know, totally slandering me and trying to encourage people to come and harm me or kill me,” Wiener said. “He's demonizing the entire community.”
In his Twitter thread, Kirk continued, “If there's some horrifying idea related to modern gender and sex ideology, Wiener has probably written and passed a bill about it in California.”
Wiener was notably the face of SB107, set to take effect Jan. 1, 2023, which will make California a refuge for families with transgender kids seeking gender-affirming health care that has been banned and criminalized in red states such as Texas.
The state senator has been a frequent target of hate-filled rhetoric and violent threats. In June, officers with bomb-sniffing dogs searched his home after he received a written death threat with hateful language. Wiener said he was proud of the coalition he helped build in the Legislature to end discrimination against the LGBTQ community.
Despite the threats, Wiener said his approach to his job remains unchanged.
“I didn't get elected to avoid making waves,” he said. “I will never apologize or back away from fighting for what's right.”