Mark Cunningham, a radio host in Lubbock, Texas, got a mailer for “Students Of The Cunningham Family,” which was a bit of a problem. “My wife and I don’t currently have kids,” he wrote on a local station’s website, “so that’s at least one piece of postage that missed its intended audience.”
It’s an eight-panel fold-out titled “Texas Trans & LGBTQ+ Student Resource Guide,” and a lot of other Texas households have gotten one since the weekend. The cover says “You are not alone.” Much of it is a plug for a real organization, the Transgender Education Network of Texas (TENT, for short): its website, its resources, its fall tour. There’s also a panel headed “WHAT TO DO IF YOUR PARENTS DON’T SUPPORT YOU” and sections on emancipation, hormones and out-of-state care. It came from a “Texas Transgender Student Union” at 1611 W. Airport Blvd. in Meadows Place. “It isn’t a valid address, according to a USPS lookup tool,” KXAN reported.
TENT didn’t send it, the group says. “These text messages and mailers were not authored, authorized, approved, or distributed by TENT and are not affiliated with our organization,” reads the statement that’s now the only thing on its website. The texts were sent earlier this month, and also directed people to go to TENT’s site. TENT has since demanded that the people behind this be identified. The only “Texas Transgender Student Union” anyone has found is a Wyoming LLC set up on September 2. Its filing names an organizer and no owner. Both Ken Paxton’s and James Talarico’s Senate campaigns told CBS News Texas they weren’t involved. Early voting started October 19.
Nobody knows who sent it. Okay. What I find interesting is how quickly a lot of the people most outraged about receiving these mailers stopped caring who sent it and started pushing the line that whoever mailed it, this is what trans groups are all about, and isn’t that terrible. If that’s the argument, the mailer is a success (assuming that “success” means sparking anti-trans outrage) no matter who gets caught. And the advice to kids they were angriest about isn’t in TENT’s toolkit or on its website.