Digitally altered pride parade photo fuels anti-LGBTQ rhetoric

"'We're not after children, we just want to live our lives,'" said one June 7, 2023 tweet, which accumulated thousands of retweets.

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Screenshot from Twitter taken June 7, 2023

The tweet was subsequently deleted, but other posts spreading the same picture ricocheted across Twitter and other social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Truth Social and Gab.

The posts come amid surges in anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and disinformation, including spikes in posts spreading the narrative that LGBTQ people are "grooming" children, and right-wing boycotts that in recent months have targeted Anheuser-Busch, Target and other brands over their support of LGBTQ causes.

But the photo from the pride parade has been digitally manipulated.

Original photo shows plain white T-shirt

Reverse image searches show the person sporting a plain white T-shirt and white shorts in the original photo (archived here), which was captured by the Palm Springs Desert Sun during a November 7, 2021 LGBTQ pride parade in the southern California city.

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Screenshot from the Palm Springs Desert Sun, taken June 7, 2023

The newspaper's caption says the picture shows the Desert Flaggers, a social group in California's Coachella Valley for people who enjoy spinning and dancing with flow flags.

"I can confirm that the person in the photo is a Southern California flagger and that they were wearing a white t-shirt in the parade as that was our suggested dress for the event. It appears an image was later added to the photo that was taken by the Desert Sun and published in the newspaper," the Desert Flaggers' website manager told AFP.

A livestream of the Palm Springs parade (archived here) shows the group performing in white clothing at the roughly 1:46:00 mark.

AFP identified the flag dancer in the photo -- matching leg tattoos and other physical features to pictures on the person's publicly available social media accounts -- and contacted them through those profiles.

The person, who requested to remain anonymous, confirmed the picture shows them. They told AFP they do not own and would never wear a shirt like the one seen in the altered image circulating online.

The individual had posted on November 7, 2021 about attending the pride festivities in Palm Springs that day.

Fringe website spurs real-life harm

The member of the Desert Flaggers was not the only person negatively affected by the manipulated image.

The hoax picture appears to have originated on 4chan, a haven for misinformation and hate speech known for having little moderation. Users of the site shared an image of the "trans kids are sexy" graphic on June 1, 2023 followed by the doctored image purporting to show the parade participant wearing it, according to AFP's review of their activity.

But the graphic misrepresents a photo of Desmond Napoles, a 15-year-old LGBTQ advocate and model. Getty Images captured the original picture (archived here) at a New York City awards ceremony in May 2019, when Napoles was 11 and involved in drag.

The design has since cropped up across the internet, on websites advertising it on T-shirts for sale -- although it is unknown if such products are legitimate.

Wendy Napoles, Desmond's mother, told AFP the online activity and use of her child's picture without permission has been "very painful for Desmond," who is trying to "have a normal teenage life" beyond advocacy work and modeling.

"This is a story about a single image causing so much anti-LGBTQ+ hate that then got amplified by trolls and bots," Napoles said.

"This is really causing a lot of anti-LGBTQ and especially anti-trans statements to be made and the Photoshopped images are being used to validate making these statements," Napoles said. "All these hateful people sharing the image out there do not realize that with every share, there is a real teenager that they are hurting severely and causing very, very real trauma and mental health distress to."

AFP has previously debunked anti-LGBTQ misinformation, including here, here and here.