Darren Agee Merager, facing trial in the Wi Spa controversy, and arrested on December 13th after 15 months on the lam, is a convicted and registered sex offender. The 53-year-old has a long criminal record: vehicle theft, trespassing, robbery, and a prison escape in 1995. In 2018 he was arrested for exposing himself at a gas station. And twice in 2019 he is known to have exposed himself to children (at the West Hollywood Aquatics Center) and women (at the Century Day & Night Spa in the Arlington Heights neighborhood in Los Angeles).

But to ‘woke’ Left activists and their sympathizers in the media, he is a martyr. They say he was the one wronged when on June 23rd last year, women at the Wi Spa, near Los Angeles’ Koreatown, objected to his naked presence in a tub in the women’s locker-room area. It didn’t matter to the ‘woke’ that a five-year-old girl was among those using the area. All they cared about was that he self-identifies as female. By California law, self-identification has been enough for Merager to get a driver’s license and other IDs declaring him legally female. Despite the male genitalia he perversely likes to flaunt. To the Left, the Wi Spa incident was a case of “transphobia.”

Given the pervasive social climate that promotes and dictates the ‘woke’ LGBTQ agenda, it’s not difficult to understand how the incident (which I reported on here) was twisted and mischaracterized. Some media outlets widely bruited a narrative that made it out as if no exposure took place at the spa and that a right-wing conspiracy was afoot. Slate called it a “transphobic hoax.” When shocking revelations confirmed the veracity of the incident, only a handful of media outlets dared to correct the mislabeling. There was no condemnation of the violence that resulted from that opportunistic misrepresentation.

For after all, the violence, in which Antifa and other leftist groups took part, helped publicize the ‘woke’ LGBTQ agenda, making it seem as if Merager’s case was about a trans person facing up to bigots. In retrospect, the buildup to the violence seems well machinated. First, the viral video showing female clients at Wi Spa objecting to Merager (a biological male) using facilities reserved for women and girls was declared suspect. Then the genuine concerns of the clients were roundly criticized and dismissed. With no recourse to being heard, the clients gathered outside the spa on July 3, 2021, to peacefully protest the presence of a male in a state of genital tumescence in an area reserved for women and girls. They also wanted to express concern over its impact on children.

In response, SoCal Antifa organized a counterprotest and publicized it on Twitter with exhortations to “Smash Transphobia” and “Smash Fascism.” The protesting women clients, a Christian preacher, and members of the press were assaulted by Black Bloc members. Video footage shows Antifa members, who vastly outnumbered those fighting Wi Spa’s transgender policy, sucker-punching the demonstrators. In the mayhem, there was a metal-pipe clubbing and a stabbing. But police honored a hands-off approach: no arrests were made.

At a second protest organized by the offended spa-users on July 17th, they found themselves facing about 500 Antifa activists and members of the Autonomous Anarchist Revolutionary Front (AARF) sporting pink masks. Photos on AARF’s Twitter account show members in pink niqabs with the slogan ‘Queer gangs don’t bash back, we strike first.’ Antifa circulated flyers, sprayed graffiti around the spa, and doxxed those protesting the spa’s policies. Its members also used smoke bombs, fireworks, and pellet guns to intimidate the protesters and attack police. This time, the cops used non-lethal measures -- like hard-foam and beanbag rounds -- and arrested more than 40 people.

It wasn’t until early September 2021 that the LAPD investigated the incident at the crux of the controversy and discreetly filed charges – five felony counts of indecent exposure – against Merager. Interviewed by Andy Ngo, Merager claimed that “everything about the Wi Spa was a bunch of garbage and lies.” He said he was underwater right up to his chest, there were no children around, and that he’d been accosted by an angry spa-user. He said he is legally female and is a victim of sexual harassment by transphobic women.     

Fast forward to December 13th this year. Almost 18 months after the incident, Merager was apprehended and charged with five felony counts of indecent exposure, with bail set at $350,000. Together with offenses that came to light during a three-month investigation that followed the initial charges, he faces 11 charges, all related to indecent exposure while posing as a transgender woman. The LADP interviewed five victims and witnesses to corroborate the indecent exposure allegations. He’s being held in a facility for male inmates, and is scheduled to be appear in court on December 30^th.

But though Merager has been revealed as a sex offender who used California’s progressive trans rights ordinances to ply his perversion, the mainstream media has chosen to remain silent about the error caused by its blatant leftist bias. This was expected. For the ‘woke’ Left narrative to pervert Western values and engineer an alternative reality has advanced to the level of the absurd, especially when it comes to LGBTQ matters.

Politically, it’s fashionable to be seen as supporting the madness of a multiplicity of genders -- 72, by Dayaa Hawkins’ count -- and assignment of gender by self-identification. The Pentagon sanctions taxpayer-funded gender transition surgery for members of the military. Education boards promote drag queen story hours for children as young as three and encourage aggressive gender reassignment procedures for minors.

In gratuitous virtue signaling, the Biden administration has made it a point to appoint transgenders to visible, high-level positions. Last year, Rachel (Rick) Levine became the first openly transgender federal official to be confirmed by the Democrat-controlled U.S. Senate. In June, LGBTQ activist and nuclear engineer Sam Brinton, who dressed in drag and liberally applied lipstick to his mustache, was invited to serve as deputy assistant secretary of Spent Fuel and Waste Disposition in the Office of Nuclear Energy. Recently though, a clearly unstable Brinton was forced to step down following a second luggage-filching incident, orchestrated to augment his collection of feminine attire.

It’s a matter of grave concern, however, when gender-multiplicity and LGBTQ policies compromise the rights and safety of others. As in the case of Merager, now exposed as a serial sex offender. The Left values him in his victim status, as an oppressed transgender, even at the expense of public safety and our legal code. So it chooses to ignore the ugly truth about him. There are no bounds to the sanctimony, hypocrisy, and moral depravity of the Left.

Image: Julianna LaCoste