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LGBTQ - Disgraced former Congressman George Santos (R-NY) is willing to say anything to make a buck. He even made a video celebrating NAMBLA, the National Man/Boy Love Association, an organization that promoted pedophilia in the U.S.
When he was called out on social media for supporting the harmful group, he was outraged… at the woman who pointed it out.
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“Hi, NAMBLA! I just wanted to stop by to offer you my full support and that I am here for you if you need anything,” Santos said in a Cameo video. Cameo is an app where people can pay celebrities – or even notorious former elected officials – to create a message of encouragement or a greeting. Santos has said that he has made over a thousand videos for hundreds of dollars apiece on the platform.
“I wanna congratulate you on your success and on your anniversary this past December,” Santos continued. “I just wanted you to know you’re doing a great job and you’re doing great things and the world is a better place because of you.”
“We all love you and I love you, NAMBLA,” he concluded, blowing a kiss to the camera. “All the best!”
“Just when you think George Santos couldn’t possibly look any worse than he already did, enter… Cameo,” popular progressive influencer Jo Carducci posted to X with the video.
Santos replied to Carducci, saying that he thought he was making a video for a person named “Nambla.” But instead of just admitting his mistake, he lashed out at Carducci with misogynist invective.
“Try again @JoJoFromJerz you’re [sic] c**ty ways and BS doesn’t scare me,” Santos replied to Carducci. “Bring it on you dumb ratchet b**ch!”
He then said that he got pranked just like he did with late night host Jimmy Kimmel – the comedian also paid Santos to say embarrassing things on Cameo – and threatened to sue whoever requested the NAMBLA video. He posted the request for the video.
The comparison to Kimmel’s prank is telling. Kimmel’s segment, in which he showed the videos he ordered from Santos, was called “Will Santos Say It,” a commentary on how Santos is willing to say just about anything if he can make money.
Shortly after Santos was elected to Congress in 2022, news organizations broke several stories that showed that his entire biography was a series of lies. He lied about his educational background, his previous jobs, and his family background and made up quite a few anecdotes that made him seem heroic. He was also accused by several people in his past of either stealing from them or scamming them.
Santos currently faces a total of 23 federal criminal charges related to various alleged schemes to enrich himself at the expense of taxpayers and campaign donors.
NAMBLA was founded in December 1978 and advocated for the abolition of age-of-consent laws in order to legalize child sex abuse. The group attempted to march in several Pride celebrations in the 1980s but was frequently banned and protested by LGBTQ+ people.
Nevertheless, conservatives often said that NAMBLA was part of the LGBTQ+ movement at the time. Far-right pundit Pat Buchanan said in 2011 that NAMBLA “marches in the gay pride parade in New York” and said that’s why “homosexual marriage is not the civil rights cause of the decade.”
In 1994, when Stonewall 25 in New York City banned NAMBLA, GLAAD released a statement saying that it “deplores the North American Man Boy Love Association’s (NAMBLA) goals, which include advocacy for sex between adult men and boys and the removal of legal protections for children. These goals constitute a form of child abuse and are repugnant to GLAAD.”
“NGLTF condemns all abuse of minors, both sexual and any other kind, perpetrated by adults,” the National LGBTQ Task Force said in a resolution it voted to adopt that year. “Accordingly, NGLTF condemns the organizational goals of NAMBLA and any other such organization.”
In 1997, HRC said that NAMBLA is “not part of our community and we thoroughly reject their efforts to insinuate that pedophilia is an issue related to gay and lesbian civil rights.”
Worried about police infiltration, the group told members not to form local chapters and hasn’t held national meetings in decades. In 2016, Vice published an article declaring the organization almost dead.
(Alex Bollinger has been working in LGBTQ media for over a decade and has a Masters degree from the Paris School of Economics. He lives in Paris with his partner. Follow @alexpbollinger on Twitter. This article was first published in LGBTQ Nation.)
