‘Thankfully campus police gave it five minutes and they started escorting everybody out,’ YAF campus leader said
Activists at the University of Utah disrupted and canceled a screening of a documentary on child transgender procedures, “Damaged: The Transing of America’s Kids,” sponsored by the university’s Young Americans for Freedom chapter.
“Hey, hey, go home, transphobia has got to go,” protesters shouted in video posted by The Daily Caller of the Wednesday event.
“[The protesters] let us do the introduction, say where they can learn more,” YAF campus Vice Chairman Everett Lopez told the publication. “They’re all respectful, but until the moment the movie started playing, then the disruption started.”
“We tried, you know, fighting through so we shut the lights off, put subtitles on,” Lopez continued. “Since we’re so small, we all go to the front and try to watch it. Thankfully campus police gave it five minutes and they started escorting everybody out, anybody who wasn’t supporting the event.”
.@YAFUofU's screening of "Damaged" documentary exposing gender ideology interrupted by leftist protesters pic.twitter.com/Bah3T7azVq
— YAF (@yaf) November 2, 2023
A spokesperson for the University of Utah wrote in a statement, “A group of protestors was escorted from a conference room at the University of Utah’s Marriott Library during a film screening on the evening of Nov. 1, 2023.”
“Protestors were escorted from the library by University of Utah Police and no arrests were made,” the university stated, according to The Daily Caller.
“The event was canceled following the protest out of an abundance of caution,” the university wrote. “University police officers also escorted attendees of the film screening safely from the building. University Police and administrators have been in contact with both groups.”
The university’s YAF group had advertised the event on its Instagram as a “YAF Watch Party” and put up flyers around campus stating, “The transgender movement harms women” and “Men shouldn’t be in women’s bathroms.”
The Daily Caller documentary “Damaged,” featuring detransitioners Chloe Cole, Abel Garcia, and Cat Cattinson, describes “the lives of transgender people who wish they could go back,” according to the video’s website.
The film “detailed the immense and irreversible changes their bodies suffer from the treatments they say they were too young to receive,” The Daily Caller reported Thursday.
Cole, who started puberty-blocking drugs at 13 and had a double mastectomy at 15, spoke at the University of Iowa Oct. 16 in a YAF-sponsored event despite dozens of protesters, The College Fix reported at the time.
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IMAGE: @YAF/Twitter
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