Maggie Rose Macar: George Santos is a bad role model for the LGBTQ+ community
Share this post:
The 118th Congress, who have finally been sworn in after a nightmarish House speaker election, is composed of more LGBTQ+ lawmakers than at any time in history — 13 — including two senators and 11 representatives.
Unfortunately, in the midst of what is set to be a record-breaking and glass-ceiling-shattering moment for the LGBTQ+ community, one of these members-elect has had a post-campaign season plagued by controversy.
His name is George Santos, a Republican and openly gay man who was recently sworn in as the congressional representative for New York’s 3rd District. He’s probably more well known, however, as the member-elect who was recently exposed to have falsified most of his resume — including where he lives, his personal history, his education and so much more; it’s actually quite baffling how much he has been accused of that has been confirmed.
The lies range from easily provable non-sequiturs (claiming he attended the prestigious private Horace Mann School), to predatory on the trauma of New Yorkers (claiming his mother died as a result of 9/11), to downright despicable (claiming that four former employees were murdered during the mass shooting at Orlando’s Pulse nightclub in 2016). With so many lies under his belt, Santos has truly been speed-running what seems like a political downfall.
Despite this self-destructively compulsive lying streak, his party has remained surprisingly quiet on the issue, including new House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. Santos has, essentially, been enabled to not only profit and gain power from his lies, but off the manipulation of so many communities, even beyond LGBTQ+ people.
The list of the new representative’s untruths is as extensive as it is transgressive to the very core of what it is to be an American.
From the very beginning, Santos lied about where he attended school, both high school and college. He claimed to have attended prestigious institutions like Horace Mann School, Baruch College and New York University, but he never even attended any college.
He claimed his maternal grandparents had “fled the devastation of World War II Europe” in an archived version of his webpage, and called himself a “proud American Jew” in a campaign paper regarding Israel. As has become a pattern with Santos, this, too, was a lie. He then distastefully attempted to renege on his claims by joking that he was not Jewish, but “Jew-ish.”
The facade kept crumbling when he — trying to run in New York City of all places — seemed to have lied about his mother’s death, which he claimed was a result of the 9/11 attacks. He had said in a 2021 tweet that 9/11 “claimed (his) mother’s life”; however, a few months later (also in a tweet), he said that it was the fifth anniversary of her death, a fact which checks out.
Even without acknowledging the callous disregard he displayed for an entire region’s generational trauma, this was a highly inappropriate claim to make in context of any tragedy, even one’s own mother’s death. The fact that he chose to misrepresent his past proves that he is not fit to represent either the vibrant LGBTQ+ community or New York’s 3rd District.
All this renewed scrutiny being applied to Santos’ career, education and personal history has reopened a few old wounds for the new congressman; a court in Brazil has revived a case regarding fraudulent checks sent by Santos — from all the way back in 2008 — that had been suspended because they couldn’t find him.
So what is being done about Santos’ complete fabrication of his life? Aside from the previously mentioned Brazil fraud case, it seems that he is already under official investigation by the Federal Election Commission after a complaint from the Campaign Legal Center, as well as one from two New York Democratic colleagues, Ritchie Torres and Dan Goldman.
Santos has managed to smear his credibility all over the place; he lied about everything from his education to his religion to his place of residency (he lives outside his district). Young activists and members of the LGBTQ+ community are so vital to our democracy. We can’t fail our future leaders by giving them bad role models — and George Santos is just not a good person to look up to.
Maggie Rose Macar is founder and CEO of the mental health service zant.