MassResistance has spent the last 30 years attempting to cast LGBTQ+ people as dangerous to society, themselves and children. This group traffics in anti-LGBTQ+ pseudoscience that links homosexuality to pedophilia, violence and disease and portrays trans women as sexual predators. Founder Brian Camenker has a history of infiltrating LGBTQ+ events to record and film participants, reportedly without their knowledge or consent. This organization spreads disinformation to incite outrage and hysteria around LGBTQ+ events and public policy.
In Their Own Words
“Homosexual conduct is inherently destructive, putting aside religious sentiment or traditional aspirations. Two men were not designed to be abusing each other. Two women were not designed to be abusing each other. And the fact that the pro-family movement ignored these fundamental physical and physiological realities is why the whole gay rights and trans rights — really, tyranny movements have ensued. People have bought into this idea since the late 1960s [saying]: ‘Well, they’re just two adults. They just love each other like everybody else. Love is love, right?’ Wrong. We don’t drink water out of a toilet. We don’t drink — we don’t drink sewage.” — Arthur Schaper, field director for MassResistance, “DO NOT TALK with Arthur Schaper” interview with CharLee Simons on Rumble, Feb. 5, 2025
“I’m glad that you do talk about these issues, not just politics and religion, but speaking against the whole LGBT agenda. All the alphabet, the whole alphabet of perversion, must be confronted.” — Arthur Schaper, “DO NOT TALK with Arthur Schaper” interview with CharLee Simons on Rumble, Feb. 5, 2025
“They’re pushing pride flags. They’re pushing Satanism. They’re pushing all this grooming. They’re not teaching.” — Arthur Schaper, “DO NOT TALK with Arthur Schaper” interview with CharLee Simons on Rumble, Feb. 5, 2025
“There are no trans kids. There are no gay kids. There are no trans adults. There are no gay adults. The entire LGBT agenda of sexual deviancy and destruction as civil rights must be rejected.” — MassResistance X post, Dec. 30, 2024
“Stigma is essential[sic] to stop destruction. #LGBT behaviors harm the individuals and the societies which enable them.” — Arthur Schaper X post, Dec. 16, 2024
“I just, I don’t care how good of a person a sex mimic [trans person] is. They’re doing something that I think is profoundly harmful, what they’re putting out in society.”
— Tracy Shannon, director of Mass Resistance Texas, “My ‘Trans’ Husband Tried to Become Me,” Dec. 9, 2024
“Well, I’m not a sexologist, but I think that, you know, if anything exists on a spectrum, it’s perversion, and this is a form of perversion.” — Tracy Shannon, director of Mass Resistance Texas, “My ‘Trans’ Husband Tried to Become Me,” Dec. 9, 2024
“All these sex mimics say they were just terrified to be seen by their friends or coworkers or family in a dress for the first time. It’s because they know they are cheap imitations. They are afraid to be seen for the con artists that they are. Still, there’s an ocean of empathy for the men who do this. All they have to do is say they are scared.” — Tracy Shannon, Director of Texas chapter MassResistance, X post, Jan. 26, 2025
“Really these things that happen coming out of the LGBTQ community, they’re saying it’s representation — it’s child sexual grooming, let’s call it what it is.” — Tracy Shannon presenting to the True Texas Project, “TTP NW Harris County (March): Tracy Shannon & Marlene McMillian,” March 22, 2022
“Really these things that happen coming out of the LGBTQ community, they’re saying it’s representation — it’s child sexual grooming, let’s call it what it is.” — Tracy Shannon presenting to the True Texas Project, “TTP NW Harris County (March): Tracy Shannon & Marlene McMillian,” March 22, 2022
“We are the international pro-family group that makes the difference. We have had parents contacting us all over the country about these perverse programs. I mean, the bottom line is this: You have adult homosexual men, adult entertainers going into a public library, reading to children. I mean, that alone should not only be sending off alarms, but people should be, you know, demanding this to be canceled even before it starts. We’re not talking about diversity here. We’re talking about deviance. We’re talking about perverse and destructive lifestyles being animated or advertised to children as if it’s normal.” — Arthur Schaper on “The Ingraham Angle,” June 2019, Fox News
Background
Initially founded by Brian Camenker as the Parents’ Rights Coalition in 1995, MassResistance bills itself as “the leading pro-family grassroots activist group in Massachusetts.” Camenker changed the name in 2003 to Article 8 Alliance and then finally to MassResistance (MR) in 2006. Camenker has vocally opposed “the homosexual agenda” since 1992, claiming he was shown a teaching guide for Newton, Massachusetts, middle schoolers that contained “disgusting descriptions of gay sex.” In 1996, the Interfaith Coalition of Massachusetts, which Camenker also led, promoted a bill to require schools to inform parents of sex-education courses offered and allow parents to stop their children from participating in the course. That same year, Camenker railed against suicide-prevention programs for gay youth, stating they were “put together by homosexual activists to normalize homosexuality.”
In 2000 a member of MR, when it was still Parents’ Rights Coalition, attended a GLSEN “TeachOut” conference at Tufts University sponsored by the Massachusetts Department of Education. The workshop allowed students to anonymously submit questions on sex and receive answers. Local Massachusetts LGBTQ+ paper Bay Windows reported that at least one question may have been planted by MassResistance infiltrators Camenker and Scott Whiteman.
During the conference, a student asked a question about a specific sexual activity in a workshop where Camenker and Whiteman had infiltrated and were recording audio. Camenker published the audio in a report he titled “Fistgate.” The coverage resulted in the firing of two state employees, one of whom was reinstated later. Camenker and Whiteman were sued for distributing the recording without consent. Both men settled out of court. The episode was later sensationalized in 2009 to degrade President Barack Obama’s “safe schools czar,” Kevin Jennings, who was a chief organizer of the conference but was not present or involved in the workshop.
In 2004, Camenker and Kim Cariani were confronted by the principal of Newton North High School for attempting to videotape a student session raising awareness about LGBTQ+ identities, without consent of students, faculty and other participants. The principal asked that they hand over the recording or leave, allegedly threatening to charge them with trespassing if they returned.
In 2008, MR staffer Michael Olivio appeared at an Andover, Massachusetts, middle school and started snapping photos of the young students. was supposed to be taking a picture of the nearby high school, reportedly at Camenker’s request. After being confronted, Olivio ran to the high school. When law enforcement confronted Olivio, he claimed to being taking pictures for a documentary and refused to elaborate further.
Police ordered him to leave the area, but he became erratic and ran through several private yards in a local neighborhood and stripped off his clothes. After Olivio’s arrest, Camenker told the press the group was considering legal action on Olivio’s behalf against the police, however nothing seems to have come of this threat.
Also in 2008, Camenker castigated the General Court of Massachusetts (state legislature) for repealing a 1913 law used to keep the state from legally recognizing same-sex marriages performed out of state. Camenker decried the repeal, saying, “There’s no more democracy in Massachusetts; no constitutional government” and claiming the legislature was “completely being run by the homosexual lobby.”
In 2011, MR submitted written testimony to the Commission on Bullying Prevention in Massachusetts, after filing a bill to repeal anti-bullying laws. MR wrote that the law was “borrowed from a homosexual activist website” and wrongly claimed, “Behavioral experts almost universally agree that bullying is not done based on a ‘category’ of people, and that diversity training (or whatever ‘gay’ school programs they are seeking) will alleviate nothing.” The bill ultimately passed.
In a 2012 interview on Jim Schneider’s “Crosstalk”radio show, Camenker made a conspiratorial claim that the FBI was an “out homosexual organization.” Participating in Pride events, welcoming openly LGBTQ+ agents, and allowing LGBTQ+ solidarity groups, Camenker claimed, was “encouraging homosexual activists to report hate crimes and working with them against pro-family groups.” Camenker suggested that the FBI would partner with LGBTQ+ groups to “do a lot of damage.” Over the course of 2014 through 2015, MR continued to push back against marriage-equality efforts. Camenker was even named the “#1 top pro-family hero in America for 2015” by anti-LGBTQ+ activist Scott Lively of Abiding Truth Ministries. Lively is best known for his pseudo-history Holocaust revisionist book, The Pink Swastika. This book claimed that World War II Nazis weren’t anti-gay because men in Hitler’s inner circle responsible for the Holocaust were gay.
By 2017 Camenker published his own pseudoscience book called The Health Hazards of Homosexuality, which Amazon banned in 2021 for wrongly portraying LGBTQ+ people as mentally ill. MR still sells this book, and it has been endorsed by the American College of Pediatricians’ former executive director, Michelle Cretella. The book claims to be exposing the dangers of homosexuality and the risk of “adopting a ‘gay,’ lesbian or bisexual identity.” Cretella writes that the sexual revolution kicked off the ills of homosexuality, which ACPeds calls a kink culture, and conflates the BDSM community with homosexuality.
In 2020, MassResistance took a stance against the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement in a statement rife with racist dog whistles, comparing the movement to Nazi Germany. The blog post announcing this stance asserted that BLM’s real goal was the destruction of the family and said it was in league with “LGBTQ agenda, open borders, plus racist doctrine.” In October 2020, MassResistance attacked BLM again for showing solidarity with LGBTQ+ people, alleging the BLM curriculum was invading schools across the country. The blog likens BLM’s efforts to uplift the struggles of Black and Brown Americans to “racist poison that one race is more ‘special’ or ‘deserving’ or ‘better’ than the others.”
MassResistance decried DEI as an “indoctrination agenda” in 2022 and has worked alongside Concerned Christian Citizens, another anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-abortion group, for several years to halt any attempt to institute DEI policies in Temple, Texas. An MR article about their activity in Temple took issue with those appointed to the local DEI commission and explicitly stated they were not selected because of merit or knowledge but picked “purposefully based on race, sex, and ‘sexual orientation’ (all are black, female, or ‘LGBT’).” The group has also advocated banning Pride flags from local municipal buildings and succeeded in its effort to ban the flag in Downey, California, in 2024.
MR is connected to polarizing figures who are known to spout anti-LGBTQ+ hate and antisemitism. In a blog post from November 2020, MR bragged that Georgia chapter member Majorie Taylor Greene was elected to Congress. The blog post defended Greene against accusations of racism and antisemitism by framing her comments about Jewish philanthropist George Soros as not actually antisemitic because “Soros helped the Nazis confiscate Jewish property.”
MassResistance also advocates for banning books. A September 2022 report by PEN America connected MR and ally groups, such as Moms for Liberty, to at least 20% of local book challenges in the United States. MassResistance uses a common trope that equates LGBTQ+ identity and sexual education with pornography to claim it doesn’t ban books but rather pornography. Group members often find and read sexually graphic and explicit excerpts of literature at library boards, schools boards and city council meetings to provoke outrage.
Chapter activity
In Texas, MR member Jeff Younger made headlines after adamantly rejecting his trans daughter’s gender transition. His opposition led to a long custody dispute with his ex-wife, during which Younger refused to pay child support and refused to acknowledge his daughter’s gender identity. Younger’s ex-wife was eventually awarded full custody of both their children. Younger was only allowed to have supervised visits with his daughter and her twin brother.
MR first gained notoriety in Texas for their protests of drag queen story hour (DQSH) events in 2019, when Tracy Shannon, head of the MR Houston chapter, coordinated an effort with local pastor Steve Hotze to shut down DQSH events held at local libraries. Shannon discovered one of the DQSH event participants was listed on the Texas sex offender registry. In a public apology, the local library admitted it hadn’t followed its own policy on background checking for anyone entertaining kids. Following this event, more MR chapters began protesting drag queen story hours across the country using Shannon’s “exposé” to condemn all DQSH events nationwide.
MR’s intimidation campaigns are generally followed by protests at local drag events and LGBTQ+ events, particularly at childhood literacy programs hosted by drag performers at local libraries. MassResistance has attempted to shutdown Drag Queen Story events using email and phone campaigns in locations where they do not have active chapters.
In Michigan, Nevada, Georgia, Idaho and Nevada, MR members have used flyers to spread disinformation about drag events, typically parroting pseudoscience from Camenker’s book. The flyers and associated blog posts often expose contact information of local librarians, city officials and performers, calling supporters to inundate these targets with calls and emails. MassResistance in Wyoming has used this style of campaigning to get library personnel fired.
In recent years, MassResistance has coordinated its efforts with Moms for Liberty. However, unlike Moms for Liberty, MR members have refused to work with anti-LGBTQ+ hate group Gays Against Groomers (GAG), with MR field director Arthur Schaper retweeting a post suggesting GAG members are “groomers” — a slur anti-LGBTQ+ groups use to perpetuate the false notion that LGBTQ+ people harm children.
Prior to his role leading the California MR chapter, Schaper had ties with white nationalists and anti-immigrant groups. Schaper has an extensive history of anti-immigrant activism as a member of We the People Rising, an anti-immigrant group. In 2017, Schaper and fellow anti-immigrant activists shouted down a Riverside speech by California Senate leader Kevin de Léon with screams of “anchor baby.” Schaper referred to supporters of sanctuary cities as “Brown Nazis” and has reportedly complained about “welfare for illegals” despite collecting unemployment himself.
Schaper previously wrote for a white nationalist website, The Red Elephants, and debated Nick Fuentes at one point. Schaper also spoke after Jared Taylor at the 2018 American Renaissance conference in Tennessee. In April 2021, Schaper attended a town hall about an ethnic studies course being taught in Los Alamitos Unified School District in California, where he said: “This is filth that needs to be removed entirely. We need angry parents and relentless troublesome citizens that won’t settle for concessions. You need to confront these people outside the school board. We don’t take the high road. You need to be confrontational.”
Image at top: MassResistance founder Brian Camenker in Waltham, Massachusetts, in a photo from June 28, 2006. (Credit: AP Photo/William B. Plowman)