Sunday, April 03, 2022

Visual montage - Just a few of the times conservatives have accused LGBTQ people of 'indoctrinating,' 'recruiting,' or 'grooming' children

So now in defense of Florida's 'Don't Say Gay' law, folks are labeling LGBTQ people as 'groomers' who are targeting children for sex talk. It's an ugly claim, but it's hardly new. In fact the most potent weapon in the arsenal of the anti-LGBTQ industry for decades has been the accusation that gays are 'indoctrinating children,' 'recruiting children,' or (as it is spoken now) 'grooming children.'

It's powerful because it touches on the most primal fear of parents - that their children are going to be harmed. That fear coupled with the continued ignorance about  LGBTQ lives and our families (some people aren't even aware that we are raising children) becomes a powerful weapon which can be used to undermine our equality time and time again.

Below are just a few examples of conservatives and religious right playing the 'gays want your children' card over the years. Some go as far back as the mid 1980s





The images above were taken from the booklet Deathstyle, a vile anti-LGBTQ comic book.


Check out who endorsed Deathstyle:


I own a copy of  Deathstyle  but you can go here and here to see excerpts from it.

Amplifying that lie that LGBTQ are attempting to 'indoctrinate' or 'groom' children has been the conservative go-to tactic for a number of arguments against LGBTQ rights or as a general fear. Other examples are below:
 










The point that none of this has ever been about protecting children. It's always been about stoking hatred and fear. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, Fox News pundits, and anyone sounding the alarm about the 'gay agenda' to supposedly harm children are merely adding bad nuances to a long, but unfortunately successful campaign of lies.

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2 comments:

  1. Rhiannon11:02 PM

    And yet if you look at who is getting arrested for pedophilia and sex trafficking of children, it's the WXYZs, those pointing the finger.

    You demonstrated this yourself just recently, the news items out of Texas. I just did a quick search and found multiple arrests of pederast pastors from the month of March 2022 alone.

    WXYZ, my new acronym for white (W male (XY) cis heteros (Z). And near always, rightwing leaning.

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  2. Scott S7:16 AM

    One element that no one seems to acknowledge is that the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) was co-founded by none other than John Eastman, the same guy who tried to overturn the election of a duly-elected President. This man may be a lawyer who once passed a bar exam, but he's a right-wing partisan thru and thru and he's also a nut. He may end up going to jail for his role in the January 6 insurrection, and rightly so.

    But Mr. Eastman hand-selected Maggie Gallagher to run the hate group, and they published much of this falsehood-driven nonsense thinking it was effective. Others did too, but the ploy no longer generates many donations anymore, so they are turning their messaging to other things that actually draw donations. The lie of gays recruiting children may have worked in 1977 when Anita Bryant used it, but in the years since, a vast majority of Americans now see it as little more than a hyperbolic lie. Aside from religious nuts, no one believes gays recruit anyone in 2022. Congress no longer even wants opinions from groups as self-described "experts" on the subject, and certainly does not want their public testimony before Congress.

    But the antigay segment of social conservatism has lost sight of what they were doing and instead of focusing on winning elections and popular opinion, now relies on falsehoods and false conspiracy theories. The question is whether that will work anymore. I see no evidence to suggest it will.

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