Dan Haar: Flyers in CT town target pediatricians, calling gender affirming care ‘mutilation’

CT Insider – Wednesday, November 20, 2024
By Dan Haar

Four days after a group known as the Nationalist Social Club left dozens, perhaps hundreds of flyers on West Hartford lawns attacking pediatricians for their work in gender affirming care with youths, police were still investigating. They were not calling the incident a hate crime.

Whether and how much the targeted distribution was charged up by the election of a candidate for president whose campaign used attacks on transgender people, and on gender affirming care for youths, is a matter of speculation. People hearing about the incident in a large, liberal town are doing just that, two weeks after former President Donald Trump won the White House for the second time.

The two-sided flyers, all or most in plastic bags with small stones, took aim at three physicians who are or were affiliated with Connecticut Children’s, the Hartford-based pediatric medical center and network.

They were left on front lawns and driveways late Saturday night, in the streets around where the doctors live, according to sources familiar with the incident who requested anonymity either because they were not authorized to discuss the incident or they feared retribution by the people who distributed the flyers.

Pictures of the flyers were sent to me and at least one colleague at CT Insider. “Warning,” the flyers read in large white letters against a red banner on one side. “Community Alert — A child mutilator lives amongst us.”

The flyers named the physicians, showed photos of them and, on the reverse, elaborated on what they called “gender dysphoria,” mocking gender affirming care as corrupt science.

Gender affirming care is a general phrase that can mean anything from calling a person by the pronoun he or she or they prefer, to medical treatment. The standard of care for gender affirmation among youths calls for extreme caution with any invasive treatment, only after lengthy examination — always with parents’ involvement and never including genital surgery for people under age 18.

Local police, the FBI and the state police have all been involved in the case but authorities are saying little about it.

“The West Hartford Police are actively investigating a report of flyers posted around town,” the local police department said in a brief statement, not elaborating.

The sources said at least two of the physicians are retired and none were employed by Connecticut Children’s. Their names had appeared on a web page at the medical center, apparently describing their work in gender affirming care; the web pages were removed according to the sources.

Connecticut Childen’s issued a statement late Tuesday which read:

“Connecticut Children’s is aware of harassing flyers targeting several community pediatricians and is deeply saddened by the hateful treatment these dedicated physicians have endured. We remain steadfast in our commitment to advocating for a world where everyone is treated with dignity, respect, and compassion… Hate has no place in our communities, and we will continue to support efforts to foster an environment where all individuals feel safe and valued.”

A spokesperson for the center did not elaborate when I asked her to confirm details.

Multiple sources told me all three doctors targeted were Jewish, raising questions about whether the incident could be considered a hate crime based on religion. But without confirming that, Riddick, the police chief, said police had no information leading to a conclusion that the action was based on anything other than the pediatricians’ professional roles.

The flyers reflected misinformation that was rampant during the presidential campaign about treatment of youths who identify as a fluid gender or as a gender other than the one they were born into. They referred to trans people using slurs and attacks and implied that youths receive “genital mutilation surgery.”

This issue was at the heart of the culture war that Trump succeeded in waging as he and his supporters falsely accused Vice President Kamala Harris of campaigning on aggressive care for transgender people at public expense.

As of two years ago, the Anti-Defamation League classified the Nationalist Social Club, also known as NSC-131, as “a neo-Nazi group based in the New England region. Members consider themselves soldiers at war with a hostile, Jewish-controlled system that is deliberately plotting the extinction of the white race.”

I did not receive a response Wednesday to a message I sent to an email address listed on the flyers, asking about the group’s motivation and history.

The flyer drop happened the night before an LGBTQ Pride rally at West Hartford’s Blue Back Square, which attracted hundreds of people.

Speakers apparently did not mention the incident.

Dan Barrett, legal director of the ACLU in Connecticut, was not aware of the incident Tuesday and could not judge whether it fit the definition of a hate crime, an act that harms someone of deprives them of their rights based on a “foundational attribute” such as ethnicity, race, gender or religion. And he said, the standard for criminal harassment and intimidation charges is high.

Now that Trump has won, we might expect extremist supporters of causes he espoused — saying immigrants from predominantly non-white countries are “poisoning the blood of our country,” for example — to act more freely. Elections have consequences; this might be one of them. Or it might just be part of the long history of attacks based on hatred and fear.

Wednesday was Transgender Remembrance Day in honor of trans people who have been killed because of who they are. U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., marked the day by announcing that use of all single-sex bathrooms at the Capitol must be based on a person’s gender at birth.

It’s a political party doing this, not just one person. But the one person is the chief cultural warrior.

Trump’s campaign, Barrett said, “punched down on transgender people nationwide and took cheap shots at people who are protected under our law here in Connecticut…It emboldens people who have views like these to drive around in the dead of night and leave noxious flyers on people’s lawns.”

He added, “What we should be on guard for here in Connecticut are moves to withdraw protections from transgender people, or for any retrenchment from the progress we’ve made over the last 20 years.”

Dan Haar is columnist and senior editor at Hearst Connecticut Media Group, writing about the intersection of business, public policy and politics and how the issues affect the people of Connecticut.

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