Family Research Council teams up with Russian disinformation to lie about pro-trans policies in high schools

Russian leader Vladimir Putin (top) and Family Research Council president Tony Perkins (bottom) are both claim that they are protecting children with their attacks on LGBTQ people.

This week, a trans woman in California, Christynne Wood, won a settlement from a fitness center which discriminated against her.

Anti-LGBTQ hate group the Family Research Council exploited the incident for its latest attack on transgender Americans.   In its whine, FRC offers up the usual nonsense about "men in locker rooms," making sure to demonize transgender women and girls as "naked men" who may be present when wives and daughters enter locker rooms. More of the same lies and appeals to fears. 

Then the group said the following in an attempt to tie President Biden into the situation:

And yet, this is the "progress" Joe Biden wants to bring to every locker room in America. And while grown-ups can fight these issues at places like Crunch, what's really terrible is when schools impose this on students -- and no one is allowed to complain! At its best, it's unfair to girls. At its worst, it's dangerous. Two teenagers in Loudoun County will have scars for the rest of the life because a policy like this one gave a boy in a skirt access to rape and assault two girls. But that hasn't stopped the Left from pushing schools to throw children's privacy to the wind and cast their lot with radical transgender policies like this one. If that makes you or your daughter uncomfortable, this president's response is a lot like Christynne's: "too bad."

FRC is speaking of an incident earlier this year when a young boy entered a girl's restroom in a Loudon County school district and sexually assaulted a 15-year-old -girl. Like so many of its fellow right-wingers, FRC skips past the complexity of the incident (a sexual assault did take place, but there were other factors involved  which are better understood via these links.) and simply blames district policy. 

But there is one problem here. According to Media Matters, the policy FRC is blaming wasn't even in place at the time of the incidents:

 . . . the policy was passed by the school board on August 11 -- months after May 28, when the assault was reported to have taken place, making it impossible for the suspect to have used the protections “as an advantage to get into the bathrooms.” The myth that trans-inclusive bathrooms allow predators to attack women has been repeatedly debunked; additionally, assaults and harassment are already illegal regardless of whether bathrooms allow trans people. In fact, the suspect was later charged in a second assault in Loudoun County that was reported to have taken place in “an empty classroom.” The suspect has now been arrested and detained in juvenile detention.

So no Family Research Council, a pro-trans policy did not lead to any sexual assault in the Loudon County School District. Here is something else I found interesting. FRC used only one source for its claim about Loudon school district policy - an article in a publication called RT News. 

According to Wikipedia:

RT News is a Russian state-controlled international television network funded by the federal tax budget of the Russian government. It operates pay television channels directed to audiences outside of Russia, as well as providing Internet content in English, Spanish, French, German, Arabic, and Russian.

One more thing. RT News does not have a good reputation for accuracy. In fact, it has been accused on more than one occasion of deliberately spreading disinformation.

According to the site Media Bias/Fact Check:

In review, RT News presents news that is generally in line with the Russian Government’s narrative. When it comes to covering USA/International News, they provide right-of-center coverage. They are highly biased in favor of Russia and occasionally run Pro-state conspiracy stories. The Columbia Journalism Review calls RT “The Kremlin’s propaganda outlet.”

And when it comes to issues of LGBTQ equality,  the Russian government isn't exactly a fan. Under its leader, Vladimir Putin, the Russian government has vigorously attacked the rights of Russian LGBTQ people to live in peace via legislation.  

In addition, there have been several ugly vigilante campaigns against LGBTQ Russians which led to them being beaten, tortured, imprisoned, or even brutally murdered for their orientation:

Receiving photos of mutilated bodies with the warning “you’re next” rattled gay rights activist Nikita Tomilov but when he saw surveillance men outside his home, he fled Russia for good. The threats via social media came from Pila - Russian for “saw” - a homophobic group which has said it was behind the fatal stabbing in July of an LGBT+ activist whose name was among a dozen on their widely-circulated assassination “blacklist”. 

 “I went to the police when I saw two masked men lurking outside my apartment, but they said they couldn’t do anything without proof that these men were there,” Tomilov, 22, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation via Skype from a European country. “What kind of proof could I bring them? And my family members started receiving threats as well. I realised it was too dangerous for me to stay in Russia.”

One wonders why FRC chose to site a Russian disinformation source for its false claims about the school district policy in question.

Or have I answered my own question?

No doubt, if confronted by these facts with regards whose news source it exploited, FRC president Tony Perkins and others at organization will loudly condemn violence done to LGBTQ Russians. They would probably react in mock outrage to being compared with the purveyors of such violence.

But like it or not, there is a similarity they share with Putin and the Russian government which they cannot easily deny. According to Putin, attacks on LGBTQ Russians exist to supposedly 'protect the children.'

"We are not forbidding anything and nobody is being grabbed off the street, and there is no punishment for such kinds of relations, . . . You can feel relaxed and calm [in Russia], but leave children alone, please."

How is that any different from the lies Perkins and FRC spew?  

What's more, if you can deliberately lie about pro-LGBTQ policies in a supposed bid to protect children, one has to wonder what else would you do if you are able to get away with it.