Texas Democrat running to unseat Ted Cruz secured $1M for group that hosts drag shows for youth
Fox News
A Texas-based organization that promotes gender transitions for minors and hosts weekly queer sex ed programs for kids has a champion in Rep. Colin Allred, a review of the Lone Star State Democrat’s social media postings and official House website shows.
In recent years, Allred has publicly praised and made multiple appearances with the group, known as the Resource Center. What’s more, Allred requested and ultimately secured the group a grant of $1 million in taxpayer funds for a housing project, according to a “Community Project Funding Requests” page on his official House website.
Allred, who represents Texas’ 32nd Congressional District in the House of Representatives, announced earlier this year a 2024 challenge to unseat incumbent GOP Sen. Ted Cruz.
Publicly supporting the group, Allred wrote in an August 2018 post to Facebook about his experience attending a Resource Center fundraising event.
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“It was great to be among so many LGBTQ community leaders last night at Resource Center’s Back to School Fundraising event! The event supports Youth First, a group that creates safe spaces for LGBTQ youth in North Texas.”
Three days prior to that post, Youth First, a part of the Resource Center that the fundraising event benefited, posted a photo to Instagram of an individual in drag that said, “I Think That Drag Is The Artform Of The Queer Imagination.”
The post advertised “Open Drag Night,” and the caption stated, “Come explore your own QUEER IMAGINATION at Open Drag Night this Saturday … Any youth ages 12-18 can come perform, whether it is your first time ever or you are a seasoned drag monster. Youth, friends, and family are also welcome to come watch and cheer the performers on!”
The following year, in 2019, Allred spoke at a “Champions for Change” event hosted by the Resource Center.
As part of his fiscal year 2022 Community Project Funding Requests, Allred asked for $1,000,000 in taxpayer dollars to go to the Resource Center for “senior housing.”
“To meet the growing demand for care and services for the aging LGBTQ population in the Dallas community, Resource Center (the Center) proposes a $4 million capital campaign for the construction of an LGBTQ-friendly affordable senior housing facility,” Allred’s office noted at the time of the request.
The funding was ultimately secured, and Allred took to social media to celebrate, writing in a thread, “To meet the growing demand for care and services for the aging LGBTQ population in North Texas, @ResourceCtr was allocated $1,000,000 for the construction of an LGBTQ-friendly affordable senior housing facility.”
In an August 2022 post to X, formerly Twitter, Allred said the group does “critical work to support LGBTQ North Texans” and insisted he was “so proud” to be able to “secure federal funds so they can build housing for seniors.”
Furthering his support for the group in May, Allred wrote in an X post, “Folks at the @ResourceCtr work hard to ensure our LGBTQ community in North Texas has the resources they need. That’s why I worked hard to secure $1 million in funds for their senior housing project, and I am so excited that they are now breaking ground.”
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Despite the work it’s doing for senior LGBTQ community members, the Resource Center has also prioritized teens ages 12-18 through its Youth First programs.
One program, Queer Sex Ed, is a regular meeting Youth First hosts.
“For many LGBTQIA+ people, the sex ed that they experience at school or at home (if they receive any education at all) is very heteronormative. So, we created Queer Sex Ed so that we could have a space to talk about things not always talked about in conventional sex ed like trans anatomy, consent and more,” the group says online.
The program is advertised as “not your average sex ed, but a more inclusive sex ed that focuses on LGBTQ sexual health and positive advocacy.” Other advertisements for the program instruct students to “Take Pride in Sex Ed” and say that the program will educate children on “what they won’t teach you in school …”
In the past, the group has also hosted “Gender Identity Night,” another regular meeting hosted by Youth First that involves children as young as 12. The program has been hosted since 2014, but a recent link shared to the website was removed. An internet archive of the webpage was saved, however. Topics at past meetings have included “transition products” and “recent anti-LGBTQIA+ legislation in Texas,” according to the group’s Instagram.
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Another internet archive from the group’s website revealed a number of “resources” for inquiring minds. Two such resources that were linked from the website were GENECIS, a Dallas-based program that provided hormone replacement therapy and puberty blockers to children, and DFW Trans Kids and Families, a Dallas-Forth Worth-based group with “youth in the group [ranging] from children affirming as young as 6 years old and on up to college ages and beyond.”
GENECIS, which stood for GENder Education and Care, Interdisciplinary Support, was a clinic that offered “services” for children who were as young as 5. The program reportedly stopped receiving new patients due to “political pressure.”
Youth First also hosts book club meetings for youths ages 12 to 18 that feature pro-LGBTQ reading materials. The group has also hosted several events, including one that featured a performance by Dark Circles Contemporary Dance Company. The advertisement for the event on Youth First’s Instagram shows adult male performers dressed in revealing clothing.
Youth First also hosted an event in 2020, “Summer Social: Dungeons & Drag Queens,” where 12-year-olds were encouraged to “dress up in your best drag getup or favorite cosplay costume” to come play a game of Dungeons and Dragons.
Other past events hosted by the group include “Gaybingo: Naughty or Nice” and occasions where drag performers appeared in front of children.
Neither Allred’s Senate campaign nor House office responded to Fox News Digital’s request for comment. The Resource Center also did not respond to a request for comment.
Allred, a former NFL linebacker, worked in President Obama’s administration before defeating Republican Rep. Pete Sessions in 2018 in Texas’s 32nd Congressional District. In May, he became the first major Democrat to jump into the 2024 Senate race against Cruz, who is running for a third six-year term.
Fox News’ Paul Steinhauser contributed to this report.