Pitman Councilman-Elect shares transphobic photos on social media account
Pride Alliance of Pitman teams up with the Pitman Anti-Racist Collective and demands accountability from elected Councillor, Vincent Kelly.
PITMAN, NJ-The Pride Alliance of Pitman (PAP) is joining forces with the Pitman Anti-Racist Collective to speak out against problematic content in Vince Kelly’s Facebook posts. PAP discovered transphobic content shared by councilor-elect Vince Kelly in several posts.
These posts include a photo of an individual with an invitation to make fun of and ridicule them for their appearance and a demeaning message to people who are “confused” about gender. PAP finds Vince Kelly’s sharing of this content to be violent, dehumanizing, morally repugnant and a direct threat to transgender and gender non-conforming people.
Transgender and gender non-conforming people face extraordinary levels of violence and discrimination every day. According to The Trevor Project: In the past year, 35% of transgender youth have attempted suicide, 31% have been victims of violence, and 27% have felt unsafe at school in the past 30 days. Vincent Kelly and people who share and promote similar beliefs play a significant role in compounding these problems.
We are a city that views moral strength as an important part of the foundation on which Pitman was built 116 years ago. This must include protecting the human rights of transgender and gender non-conforming people within our community by ensuring their right to safety, prosperity, joy and inclusion everywhere.
The Pride Alliance of Pitman will not allow this attack on the transgender community to go unchallenged.
“Our city’s motto is that everyone loves Pitman. That won’t be true until Pitman loves everyone,” said PAP member Michael Grillo. “Vince Kelly’s posts represent the struggle for acceptance at our city’s transgender community faces. His messages are a relic of an era society is leaving behind. I have no confidence that Kelly will fairly represent our transgender community or help continue the incredible progress Pitman has made towards becoming a city that loves “everyone”. I want a Pitman where young LGBTQIA+ people, including my own daughter, can thrive instead of anxiously waiting until they can move to a safer place. “
In Vince Kelly’s recent speech regarding his past blackface appearance, he explained that “we live in very different times.” Blackface was well known for being offensive decades before Vince Kelly’s 2015 post. His transphobic posts were published as recently as August this year. This pattern of behavior shows an alarming lack of empathy for marginalized and underrepresented people.
In solidarity with The Pitman Anti-Racist collective, we urge Vince Kelly to apologize to the transgender and gender non-conforming community and undergo training on diversity, equity and inclusion. If that minimum demand is not met, he must resign, and we urge the Republican Pitman Committee to do a better job of selecting the candidates chosen to replace him now and with all future candidates.
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Pride Alliance of Pitman is a group of local residents, business owners, and community leaders within the LGBTQIA+ community and their allies, who are dedicated to fostering a safe community where all LGBTQIA+ people in Pitman can live authentically.
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