Valentina Gomez, who went viral in May for a video calling on people not to be “weak and gay,” lost the Republican primary for Missouri Secretary of State earlier this month, coming in sixth place out of a field of right.
She is taking the news with her customary equanimity and grace, posting a string of Instagram videos in recent days bashing gay people over the Olympics, monkeypox, and the Democratic party, including using derogatory slurs.
Last night, she brandished a handgun and said she would provide the bullets to former President Donald Trump to execute pedophiles, “especially those hiding under the Pride flag.”
GLAAD, which monitors media for defamation against gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer people, flagged at least five posts where she used the slur “f****t” to describe gay people.
In a post from Aug. 16, Gomez calls to “keep these f***ts out of women’s sports,” a reference to the Algerian women’s boxing competitor Imane Khelif. The post appears to have been removed after GLAAD reported it to Meta.
A bevy of anti-trans activists falsely accused Khelif of being transgender. She responded by filing a cyberbullying complaint in a Paris court.
But another post Gomez made on Aug. 19 about the Democratic National Convention—saying that convention would feature “the f****ts, the vaccinated, the illegals, the little terrorists, and the baby terrorists”—is still live.
Gomez added a bleep to her video right after she used the slur, though it is still clearly audible
Gomez said these Democratic constituencies would be competing in the “woke Olympics,” and that her money was on illegal immigrants, who have “everything to lose.”
“But don’t worry: Darwinism, border patrol, or Monkeypox are coming sooner rather than later,” she added. Monkeypox predominantly affected gay and bisexual men when it initially spread in 2022, and the World Health Organization warns that men who have sex with men are at the highest risk of infection.
In screenshots shared by GLAAD, Gomez repeatedly used the slur as the image still for the videos on her page, though she appears to have censored or changed it.
Another post from Aug. 1, also using the slur, is no longer up.
Gomez rose to online infamy with her gay-bashing videos and statements and campaigned as the avatar of the most extreme segment of the reactionary, anti-gay online far-right. In February she torched a pile of LGBTQ-inclusive books she said were from a Missouri public library.
“This is what I will do to the grooming books when I become secretary of state,” Gomez said. “When I’m in office, they will burn.”
“Meta’s ongoing weak mitigation of such an extreme anti-LGBTQ slur is truly shocking and is an absolutely disgusting abandonment of the company’s supposed commitment to protecting LGBTQ users from hate,” GLAAD said in a statement about the posts.
Meta bans hate speech that includes slurs directed at protected classes of people. However, Meta allows a “newsworthy” exemption for offensive content when published by politicians, granting them greater leeway.
Given, though, that Valentina lost her election, whether her status as a politician still allows her speech carveouts is unknown.
Meta didn’t immediately respond to questions about its moderation process.
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