BREAKING🚨🏳️‍🌈 Voters in Miami just got a FAKE text claiming the frontrunner for Congress has HIV — made to look like it came from the LGBTQ group backing him. The text hit all phones Tuesday in Florida's 24th Congressional District and told voters that state Sen. Shevrin Jones "was denied to donate blood to Covid Survivor due to testing positive for HIV/AIDS because of his homosexuality." Jones is Florida's first out Black state senator, and if he wins the Aug. 18 Democratic primary in the deep blue district he is all but certain to become Florida's first gay member of Congress — as the Miami Herald's Raisa Habersham first reported. He is not HIV positive. Equality Florida, which endorsed him on Aug. 3, did not write or pay for the message, and says the fabricated disclaimer is a VIOLATION of federal election law. The link buried in the text goes to a 2020 news story about Jones being turned away from a Pembroke Park blood drive after he recovered from COVID and tried to donate convalescent plasma. He was blocked by an FDA policy restricting donations from sexually active gay men, a blanket ban dropped in 2023. The story says nothing about HIV. "I am not HIV positive, but I want to be very careful about how I respond to that, because I refuse to defend myself in a way that stigmatizes somebody else," Jones said. "HIV is not something to be ashamed of and being gay does not mean someone has HIV." The same 2020 plasma story was already weaponized against him during his first state Senate run. He won that race. Hours after the first text, a second one landed, listing the frontrunners' sexuality and signed "Paid for by Equity Florida." No active entity by that name has existed in Florida since 1965. If you appreciate Gay News, it would mean the world if you followed my page. Thank you for being here.