The newly formed Turning Point USA chapter at Fort Lewis College hosted its first guest speaker Thursday, with 18 law enforcement officers present as a precaution after controversy over the group’s launch earlier this month on campus.
Nearly 40 people attended the talk by Rich Guggenheim, a gay, anti-transgender rights activist. The event, held on campus, included FLC students and community members.
Guggenheim is the author of “Escaping the Rainbow Plantation.”
The heavy police presence – including officers and deputies from the Durango Police Department and the La Plata County Sheriff’s Office – ultimately proved unnecessary. There were no protests, disruptions or visible opponents, and the event proceeded without incident.
Guggenheim’s hourlong talk criticized mainstream gender-identity concepts and gender-affirming care – particularly for minors – describing the transgender-rights movement as a social contagion, unsupported by rigorous scientific research and an infringement on the rights of women, gay men and lesbians.
“If you can tell me that a man belongs in women's spaces and then a man can take the spot of a woman on a sports team, what else are we allowed to have a man tell a woman that they cannot do?” Guggenheim said. “When I look at trans-rights, I see misogyny, and I see homophobia.”
He spent much of the presentation focused on what he framed as the loss of productive debate across political and ideological divides.
“I think that’s important, and that’s one of the most important things that I hope we can take away from this tonight,” Guggenheim said. “We need to learn to have conversations and disagree with each other again.”
He provided a “road map” for engaging in discussions about gender-affirming care and transgender issues with people who hold opposing views.
Those who allow and promote “genital mutilation and sterilization of minors,” he said, often rely on logical fallacies such as ad hominem attacks, red herrings and false dichotomies. He urged the audience to counter those fallacies with “logic and facts.”
Audience members described feeling persecution from the broader liberal community.
Guggenheim repeatedly referenced names he and others have been called for their views – including “bigot,” “Nazi,” “fascist” and “transphobe.” The labels were mentioned both seriously and jokingly, often prompting laughter, sighs and nods from the crowd.
“It’s designed to rally the mob and induce shame,” he said. “Remember that labels are only words. So when they call you those things, lean into them, because you know the truth and you need to speak it. They call me a transphobe, so you know what I started doing? I started introducing myself as Colorado's favorite transphobe. It disarms them.”
One woman in the crowd expressed serious emotional distress at her daughter and sister ostracizing her for her beliefs, and never being allowed to finish a sentence when she attempted to engage them and other family members in conversation.
She asked what to do when family members shut her down and talk over her.
Guggenheim’s advice: “If they cut you off like that, you just ask them, ‘So you don't want me to speak? Do you support the mutilation and sterilization of children?’”
Jonah Flynn, the student who leads the Turning Point USA chapter and advocated for its admittance to the college, said he felt good about the event and turnout, though he wished more students had attended.
“I think a lot of them are mad about it and don’t want to have any part of it whatsoever,” he said. “But I think a lot of the other ones are just a little bit nervous to even be associated with it and are still a little bit nervous to show up. But it's grown. I think I'm feeling good about it. I think it's just going to keep growing, and eventually it will just become a normal part of campus.”
Turning Point USA has now hosted three events on campus, moving quickly to establish itself as a registered student organization after the Associated Students of Fort Lewis College reversed its initial rejection of the group’s application on Nov. 8.
Conversations of the group’s establishment on campus were tense and emotional. The debate expanded off-campus and into the broader community, where the story received national attention.
But the chapter’s visibility has come with some personal cost for Flynn.
“I’ve had a surprising amount of friends who were my close friends, who have actually publicly distanced themselves from me,” Flynn said.
He described one recent instance in which someone refused to shake his hand, and said several people he considered good friends no longer want to speak with him or be seen with him.
“I’ll be honest, that does get to me,” Flynn said. “It honestly sounds a little bit juvenile – like they don’t want to sit next to me at lunch – but that actually does hurt my feelings.”
jbowman@durangoherald.com
