Texas Republicans like Ted Cruz have repeatedly used the image of a trans former student athlete to make inaccurate, incendiary claims in campaign ads. Now the athlete is suing Cruz for defamation.
Throughout his reelection campaign, Cruz has used the image of trans wrestler Mack Beggs in attack ads against Democratic challenger Colin Allred. These ads feature a 2018 photo of Beggs when he won Texas University Interscholastic League women’s wrestling state championship.
The ads claim that Allred, a former civil rights lawyer, “failed to protect women’s sports, supporting boys competing with girls.” There’s just one problem with that: Beggs is a transgender man who is competing on the women’s team because of Republican laws, which force trans students to participate in sports according to the sex assigned to them at birth.
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But in an effort to stir up outrage, the ads imply that Beggs is a cisgender man or transgender woman competing in women’s sports. Beggs has previously spoken out about the ads, but now he’s ready to take the next step.
“I’m definitely going to take legal action,” Beggs told Lonestar Live. “It’s a false narrative and defamation.”
“The Republican Party messed up and they know what they’re doing,” Beggs added. “You can’t just go around throwing around false narratives when this is literally what y’all asked for.”
Although Beggs gave no permission for his image to be used, he is more concerned with the blatant way the ad has twisted his story in service to an anti-trans agenda. “I’m not afraid of my name being known,” he said. “I’m not afraid of my face being plastered everywhere. What I don’t appreciate is my story being told falsely and me being painted out to be someone that I’m not.”
The reason Beggs is not afraid is because his name has been in the mouths of anti-trans politicians for years. “They are spinning the narrative to continue to push the anti-trans agenda,” Beggs said. “My name was brought up 20 times in the (Texas) Senate when it came to first enacting the anti-trans athlete bills back in 2017. So, I think they are very much aware of what they’re doing.”
The more important purpose of the lawsuit is to protect all athletes, both cis and trans, from these anti-trans attacks. “It’s not just me who is being attacked or trans athletes or trans individuals in general,” Beggs said, referencing Cruz’s anti-trans remarks against cis Olympian boxers Imane Khelif and Lin Yu Ting.
“That’s more important to me than me being trans. I think that if we continue to fight for marginalized groups as a whole, then myself and everybody in my community will as well win this fight.”
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