Democratic transvestite disqualified from Ohio House race for not revealing his original name

A transvestite poised to run as a Democrat for the Ohio House has been disqualified for omitting his original name. LGBT activists and the liberal media have rushed to paint "Vanessa Joy" as a victim. However, it appears that with his so-called dead name, the 42-year-old pornographer buried a questionable past that might have been of interest to prospective voters.

Jeremy Michael Adams legally changed his name to Vanessa Joy in 2022. Joy was poised to run in the upcoming Ohio House election against Republican Matthew Kishman for the 50th District seat in red Stark County, having secured a sufficient number of valid signatures to qualify. However, Joy failed to provide his former name on the petitions that he had circulated, in violation of state law, reported the Columbus Dispatch.

"I would have had to have my dead name on my petitions," Joy told WEWS-TV. "But in the trans community, our dead names are dead; there's a reason it's dead — that is a dead person who is gone and buried."

Ohio law states that "[i]f any person desiring to become a candidate for public office has had a change of name within five years immediately preceding the filing of his statement of candidacy, both his statement of candidacy and nominating petition must contain, immediately following the person's present name, the person's former names."

The law does not apply to marriage name changes.

Case Western Reserve University elections law professor Atiba Ellis told WEWS, "It would be fair for the candidate to disclose their identity including prior names so that the people and their representatives in the state government would be able to vet that person and know exactly who they are."

"If a candidate has something to hide in their past like criminal activity, disclosing former names used by the candidate would make sense," Rick Hasen, a professor at UCLA School of Law, told the Associated Press.

Even though the law has been in effect for nearly 30 years, Joy told the Associated Press it had taken him by surprise.

On account of the Democrat's failure to indicate that he had, up until recently, been Jeremy Adams and apparently unsatisfied with ignorance as an excuse, Stark County's four-member Board of Elections kept Joy off the ballot.

Sean Meloy, the vice president of political programs for LGBTQ+ Victory Fund, suggested "[t]he biggest issue is the selective enforcement of [the law]."

Pro-Choice Ohio said in a statement, "there should be zero reasons why Vanessa Joy isn't on the March 2024 ballot."

Investigative journalist Andy Ngô highlighted possible reasons Joy may have been reluctant to share critical information about himself and his past with prospective voters. For instance, under his previous name, the Democrat recently filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy.

Ngô also noted that Joy failed to mention his side hustle as a pornographer. As recently as November 2023, he was sharing images of himself masturbating to photographs of women to his OnlyFans page under the handle "Vanesstradiol."

Joy apparently also fathered a child whom he indicated in an Oct. 25 social media post had — at on at least one occasion — sat with him while he kept his post-op pelvic wound open with a dilator.

"It's dilation time and I'm alone with my kid, so I have to do it upstairs in the room with him rather than alone in my room. I'm not in love with the fact that he saw my dilators sitting on a table and knew what they are," wrote Joy.

Joy told NBC News Thursday that Ohio's transparency law requiring that candidates — irrespective of their sexuality or mental well-being — provide previous names is "a barrier to entry for many trans and gender-noncomforming people."

"Where I personally would have just bit the bullet and allowed my deadname to be on the petitions and likely on the ballot, for a lot of trans people, they don't want their deadnames printed. It's a safety concern for many," he added.

PinkNews reported that Joy has filed a petition to contest his disqualification, claiming the law poses a "discriminatory barrier" to non-straight candidates.

In his appeal, Joy wrote, "While I understand that the spirit of the law was not intended to be discriminatory, it is, in fact, a discriminatory barrier for the LGBTQIA2S+ community at large… Therefore, I feel my disqualification, despite being done by the letter of the law, was unjust."

Following the letter of the law does not appear to have been a problem for the three other transvestites presently running for state legislature in Ohio.

While alleging in his petition the law is discriminatory, Joy told WCMH-TV he agrees with the "spirit of the law" and understands how it would preclude others from similarly deceiving voters.

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