Miguel Dyer has resigned as treasurer of Bernadette Ferrara’s City Council campaign over recent public remarks she made against gay marriage. He also felt “sick” when he discovered anti-transgender rhetoric has been part of her platform, Dyer told the Bronx Times.
“At this point, I can’t go to sleep if I still work for her anymore, so I’m not,” Dyer, who is gay, said in an exclusive interview.
Ferrara, who is running as a conservative Democrat in the June 27 District 13 primary against three other candidates, said at a BronxNet debate that aired Monday night that she believes marriage is between a man and a woman, and that she thought civil unions were sufficient for gay people. Ironically, in the same remarks, she said she believes “everybody has a right to live the way they want to live.” She added that she has “no animosity” toward LGBTQ people, saying that most of her friends are “part of the LBGTQ groups,” stating the acronym out of order.
“When I listened to her say that, it made me feel less than,” said Dyer. Dyer is the only openly LGBTQ member of Bronx Community Board 11, which Ferrara chairs despite Bronx Borough President Vanessa Gibson asking her to step down when she made a bid for City Council.
Dyer heard about her remarks before the pre-recorded debate aired, and reached out to Ferrara and her top campaign leaders on Monday morning, hoping it wasn’t true.
“I was like, please tell me, please tell me, this is not the truth,” he said.
He gave them a chance to tell him otherwise before submitting his resignation later that morning. When he watched the debate Monday night, Dyer said he vomited. As of Wednesday night, Ferrara has still not returned his calls, he said.
“I don’t know if you’ve ever read a fairytale, but at the end of the fairytale, it’s never ‘and the princess got civil unioned and lived happily ever after,’” he said. “It does make a difference. The word. … The big thing is that she made the decision to make that statement in 2023. As a Democrat. In the Bronx.”
Gay marriage was legalized in New York state in 2011 – more than a decade ago – and the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the right to marry for same-sex couples is protected by the Constitution in 2015.
Dyer and Ferrara weren’t just colleagues; they were friends. After hitting it off when they met in December 2020, Dyer’s foray into politics was through supporting Ferrara.
“I thought that she had a good heart and so I became friendly with her,” he said. “But the Bernadette that I knew then is a 180 from the one that I know now.”
Dyer admits he didn’t pay much attention to her platform. Instead, he was enamored by what he described as her “loveliness” toward him. He collected signatures for her two unsuccessful City Council runs in 2021, but this year, he only collected 13 signatures for her because things started to feel off.
“And then the little feeling of not right turned into, like, a big huge, f–k, I gotta go,” he said.
The unraveling of their friendship began when Dyer spearheaded an initiative to hang up an LGBTQ pride flag in front of the CB11 office for Pride month, he said. Dyer claimed that Ferrara said she couldn’t support the flag going up, but he threatened to “actively campaign” against her if she voted against it.
Ferrara did not respond to requests for an interview with the Bronx Times. Her only comment for this article was relayed in an email from CB11 District Manager Jeremy Warneke, who communicated that Ferrara said she “did approve of a pride flag going up in the CB11 Office window.”
However, Ferrara abstained from the pride flag vote without giving a reason, as documented on video, and Dyer claims she complained when two pride flags were hung in the office windows instead of one.
Dyer now plans to campaign against Ferrara in support of incumbent City Councilmember Marjorie Velázquez, a Democrat whose team has already used Ferrara’s gay marriage remarks against her in campaign messaging.
Prior to her BronxNet remarks, at least part of Ferrara’s stance on LGBTQ rights was no secret. Her campaign website says she opposes “biological boys competing against biological girls in sports, and biological girls being forced to share locker rooms, shower facilities and bathrooms with biological boys.” One of her campaign videos features a photo of transgender swimmer Lia Thomas — whose Division I national championship win sparked a national debate about transgender athletes competing on sports teams — where Ferrara simply pledges against “woke” school policies without elaborating on what those policies are.
Dyer said he didn’t actually know about Ferrara’s anti-trans sentiments on her website or the depiction of Thomas in the video, saying he was focused on the numbers and not involved with messaging. He said it makes him “sick,” and had he known, he “would have seriously considered quitting and definitely had a conversation” with her about it.
Denying someone from using a restroom or other facility consistent with their gender identity is considered unlawful discrimination under New York state’s human rights law. Additionally, NYC Department of Education policy specifies that transgender students must be able to access restrooms and locker rooms consistent with their gender identity and students generally must be allowed to compete on the team that aligns with their gender identity.
Zein Murib, an assistant political science professor at Fordham University whose specialties include gender and sexuality, told the Bronx Times that using words like “biology” to justify discrimination is a tale as old as this country.
“So in the beginning of this country, the justification for slavery was that Black people weren’t actually human,” Murib said. “And then there is same sex marriage, which was justified by saying same sex couples can’t biologically reproduce. The people who advance these agendas lost those campaigns. And so they pivoted, and now they’re targeting trans people, and they’re saying, well, gender is a biological fact. They are being anti-trans. They are being discriminatory.”
Ferrara’s current City Council platform has also become disturbing to Lewis Goldstein, who served on CB11 from 1974-1979 and 1981-1995, becoming the only openly LGBTQ-identifying CB11 member when he came out as gay in 1994. Goldstein pointed to high suicide rates among the transgender youth population as a concern.
The Trevor Project’s 2023 National Survey on the Mental Health of LGBTQ Youth found that 41% of LGBTQ youth seriously considered attempting suicide in the past year, including half of transgender and nonbinary youth. But those with access to affirming homes, schools and communities reported lower rates of attempted suicide, according to the survey.
“These kids are killing themselves,” Dyer said. “They’re killing themselves. And I can’t have that. They just want to be who they are. I just wanted to be who I was. … What if it were your kid?”
Warneke, who has worked as the CB11 district manager since 2011, said this is the first time the board hung up a pride flag. It wasn’t even discussed in past years, which shows the importance of having openly LGBTQ board members, he said.
Although CB11 has received some complaints about the pride flag – which led to American flags also being hung in the window – Warneke said the reception has been mostly positive. He said the flag symbolizes “that we’re inclusive, that we respect and understand that there are other members of our community that might be marginalized, and we support their right to exist without persecution.”
Reach Aliya Schneider at aschneider@schnepsmedia.com or (718) 260-4597. For more coverage, follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram @bronxtimes
