Head of Vermont-based funeral industry group resigns after producing anti-trans videos

A Vermont man who leads a nationwide funeral business group based mostly in South Burlington is resigning after publishing transphobic movies on-line.

Josh Slocum, of Winooski, has served as government director of the Funeral Shoppers Alliance, a nonprofit business watchdog. In late September, Folks’s Memorial Affiliation, one other funeral business group, withdrew its funding from the alliance, the affiliation stated in a written assertion.

“Slocum has used his appreciable attain to share ideas finest described as racist, misogynist, and transphobic, amongst different issues,” the Folks’s Memorial Affiliation stated within the assertion. Representatives of the group didn’t reply to requests for remark.

On Oct. 5, the Funeral Shoppers Alliance introduced on its Fb web page that it had accepted Slocum’s resignation. In that public assertion, the group additionally stated that “the private views and opinions of employees or volunteers, expressed exterior FCA, aren’t FCA’s views and aren’t FCA’s duty.”

The alliance has a employees of two, in accordance with Slocum, who stated the group educates the general public on funeral planning and serves as a “shopper lobbying voice.” He has labored for the alliance for 20 years, he stated. 

Katherine Ortiz, chair of the alliance’s board, confirmed by electronic mail that Slocum was resigning efficient Dec. 31 however declined to remark additional.

In an interview, Slocum described himself as a sufferer of “cancellation.” 

He stated the assertion by the Folks’s Memorial Affiliation “got here as a whole shock to my board” and criticized that group for caring extra about “very partisan, very left-wing politics” than both group’s missions. 

“We not dwell in a society the place we are able to disagree even on very strongly felt political factors of view with out attacking one another,” he stated. “My private politics don’t have anything to do with this job.”

Slocum usually discusses transphobic themes on his YouTube channel and has additionally made sexist commentaries, together with a video titled “Are girls disproportionately harming society?” Slocum has posted greater than 125 movies in his sequence because the begin of 2021, lots of which draw a number of thousand views apiece. 

Lots of Slocum’s latest movies have centered on Fred Sargeant, an anti-trans gay-rights activist from New Haven, who alleged that, on Sept. 18, contributors within the Vermont Delight Parade in Burlington attacked him. A number of nationwide conservative retailers, together with the Nationwide Evaluation and The Day by day Caller, picked up the story. Particulars of the incident stay in dispute and the Burlington Police Division has stated it’s investigating. 

Slocum stated he took half in a subsequent protest of the annual hearth truck pull hosted by Outright Vermont, an LGBTQ+ youth advocacy group, with Sargeant. He has criticized VTDigger’s protection of these anti-trans protests.

Slocum, who recognized himself as homosexual, disputed that he’s transphobic. He stated he believes that adults could make no matter decisions they like however that offering gender-affirming care to minors constitutes “baby abuse.”

In a video posted in April, Slocum focused Rep. Taylor Small, P-D Winooski, directing his viewers to “bombard” the cellphone traces of Vermont’s first overtly transgender lawmaker. Some state Republican officers used Slocum’s assaults in their very own efforts to combat a invoice within the Vermont Legislature that might have allowed transgender and non-binary minors to obtain sure sorts of gender-affirming care with out parental consent. The invoice didn’t make it out of committee. 

Slocum plans to proceed creating YouTube content material. “I’ve no plans of stopping the present,” he stated.

Different teams inside the funeral business denounced each Slocum and Funeral Shoppers Alliance. 

“We name upon the FCA Board of Administrators to point out, publicly and unequivocally, that they stand with the group they declare to serve — each as a corporation and as people. This isn’t a ‘cancellation.’ That is accountability,” the Nationwide Residence Funeral Alliance stated in an announcement on its Fb web page.

The Funeral Shoppers Alliance stated in a public assertion on its web site that it’s working to “restructure” the group. The corporate stated it’s a nonprofit, devoted to “defending a shopper’s proper to decide on a significant, dignified, reasonably priced funeral for his or her family members, irrespective of race, creed, gender identification or expression, sexual orientation, nationwide origin, or political views.”

Paul Heintz contributed reporting.