Meet the most creative LGBT rights activist ever

Earlier this month, Keanan Sargent, the nine-year-old son of Wisconsin State Rep. Melissa Sargent (D-Madison), became the star of a recent gay pride rally and parade in Wisconsin’s second-largest city by using colored balloons to obscure signs that anti-LBGT bigots displayed at the parade:

Keanan Sargent, the 9-year-old son of Wisconsin state Rep. Melissa Sargent, found himself confronted by homophobia at a pride rally in Madison earlier this month.

(Melissa) Sargent told The Huffington Post she was marching in the parade with her husband and two youngest sons, and the anti-gay protesters gathered at the base of the capitol building. The homophobic signs bore slogans like “gay sex is a sin” and “sodomy is the same as bestiality.”

When her son noticed the signs “were hurting people,” he took a balloon and stood in front of one of them, according to fellow attendee Lars Koch, who took the below photo. When the sign holder tried to move around the solitary balloon, members of the crowd starting handing Keanan their balloons, too.

Keanan Sargent’s creative use of balloons to obscure hateful anti-LGBT signs worked successfully: The bigots eventually rolled up their signs and left the pride event!

Make no mistake about it, Melissa Sargent is one of the finest progressive advocates in this country, and she’s certainly taught her kids well!

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This is the kind of sexism that female political figures have to put up with

Kelly Gunderson, a Minnesota conservative activist who dreams of being a right-wing talk radio host, took to Twitter and attacked Minnesota State Representative Carly Melin (DFL-Hibbing) for having an infant son and being a Minnesota state legislator at the same time:

If you have an infant at home, hours away from Capitol, Rep @carlymelin why did you run for re-election? @mnhousegop

— Kelly Gunderson (@talkette) April 25, 2015

Gunderson is receiving bipartisan criticism for her downright insensitive tweet:

@talkette GOP activist pens "Carly come home" tweet. Should she be barefoot too? @carlymelin

— Ryan Winkler (@_RyanWinkler) April 25, 2015

@RepRyanWinkler @talkette @carlymelin Kelly, that wasn't a fair comment. While we disagree w/ Rep Melin policies we should commend her..

— Jennifer DeJournett (@JenDeJournett) April 25, 2015

This is the kind of sexism that female political figures in this country have to put up with constantly. The fact that Gunderson apparently thinks that being a young woman who recently had a child should disqualify her from holding or running for a state legislative seat is clearly sexist. If the representative from Minnesota House District 6A was a young man who had an infant child at home, I don’t think for one second that Gunderson would have said the same thing she said about Melin.

Regarding Melin’s tweet about being away from her infant son all week because of the Minnesota legislative session, I’m not a parent, but I’m sure that most parents who are away from their kids for long periods of time for whatever reason would begin to wish they could come home to their child at some point. Even politicians have feelings.