Gays Against Groomers, an organization that describes itself as a “coalition of gays against the sexualization, indoctrination, and medicalization of children,” has been banned from the payment processing platform PayPal and its subsidiary Venmo.
In an early morning email on September 20, PayPal informed Gays Against Groomers that after a “review” of their account activity, the company had determined that the organization’s use was “in violation of PayPal’s Acceptable Use Policy.” As a result, their account was “permanently limited, with no further ability to send or receive funds.”
Minutes later, PayPal’s daughter company Venmo sent them a similar email that was more explicit, stating, “Due to the nature of your activities, we have chosen to discontinue service to you in accordance with Venmo’s User Agreement.”
Gays Against Groomers tweeted out a screenshot of these emails, decrying the move by the world’s two largest payment processing platforms.
“We are an organization that consists entirely of gay people whose only mission is to safeguard children from abuse,” it said. “Woke homophobia is real, folks.”
In a statement to The Advocate, PayPal confirmed it had stopped service to the organization. Defending its actions, it said, “PayPal’s policy is not to allow our services to be used for activities that promote hate, violence, or discriminatory intolerance. We base our reviews of accounts on these parameters, taking action when we deem that individuals or organizations have violated this policy.”
In an interview with Tucker Carlson on these moves by PayPal and Venmo, Jaime Mitchell, founder of Gays Against Groomers, said her organization is “just trying to fight this evil that is happening in the name of LGBTQIA … the whole alphabet mafia now. We’re just trying to stand up against it, and we’re being punished for that.”
In July 2021, PayPal formed an official partnership with the activist group the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) to “fight extremism and hate through the financial industry and across at-risk communities.”
“All of us, including in the private sector, have a critical role to play in fighting the spread of extremism and hate. With this new initiative, we’re setting a new standard for companies to bring their expertise to critical social issues,” said Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of ADL.
A lifelong Democrat, Greenblatt previously served as special assistant to President Obama and as director of the office of social innovation and civic participation from 2011 to 2014. Under his leadership, which began in 2015, ADL has been accused of advocating for internet censorship against conservative groups and seeking to strip their access to the financial system.
Recently PayPal intervened in the operations of the non-profit organization Moms for Liberty, a group “dedicated to fighting for the survival of America by unifying, educating, and empowering parents to defend their parental rights at all levels of government” by obstructing their flow of money. The organization had received thousands of donations before the company unexpectedly froze its account.
Tina Descovich, a co-founder of the group, said, “PayPal continued to allow the donations to come in, but they did not allow us to withdraw those funds. It brought our organization to a screeching halt.”
The move caused Florida Governor Ron DeSantis to announce that he would be working to address what he called “woke banking” in the months ahead.
DeSantis pledged that he would “prohibit Wall Street banks, credit card companies, and money transmitters like PayPal from discriminating against customers for their religious, political, or social beliefs.”
The Dallas Express reached out to PayPal and Venmo to ask them about their banning of the LGBT group but received no response at the time of press.