Anti-LGBTQ group's data breach reveal plan to paint transgender youth as carriers of a contagious pathological disorder

 

From Raw Story:

An anti-LGBTQ hate group's secret files reveal marketing "pushing schools to adopt junk science painting transgender youth as carriers of a pathological disorder," and files detailing methods to indoctrinate pre-teens into a culture of "sexual purity" and opposing same-sex relationships.

 . . . "The American College of Pediatricians (ACPeds) is a fringe anti-LGBTQ hate group that masquerades as the premier U.S. association of pediatricians to push anti-LGBTQ junk science, primarily via far-right conservative media and filing amicus briefs in cases related to gay adoption and marriage equality," according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. WIRED on Tuesday published a bombshell report revealing that the American College of Pediatricians "has suffered a significant data breach." 

 "A link to an unsecured Google Drive published on the group’s website pointed users last week to a large cache of sensitive documents, including financial and tax records, membership rolls, and email exchanges spanning over a decade. The more than 10,000 documents lay bare the outsize influence of a small conservative organization working to lend a veneer of medical science to evangelical beliefs on parenting, sex, procreation, and gender."

 . . . WIRED found "volumes of literature crafted specifically to influence relationships between practicing pediatricians, parents, and their children. It includes reams of marketing material the College aims to distribute widely among public school officials. 

This includes pushing schools to adopt junk science painting transgender youth as carriers of a pathological disorder, one that’s capable of spontaneously causing others–à la the dancing plague–to adopt similar thoughts and behaviors." That marketing material apparently was based on a dubious research paper that hypothesized about something it called “rapid onset gender dysphoria,” which has been debunked, including in a recent study, according to Fenway Health.

I wrote about the American College of Pediatricians (on my blog and in The Huffington Post), long before it began to receive deserved scrutiny. 

From  The Huffington Post in 2010 when the group was attempting to counteract accurate LGBTQ information in schools with some information of it's own: 

Earlier last month, over 14,000 school district superintendents in the country were sent a letter by a group called the American College of Pediatricians inviting them to peruse and use information from a new site, Facts About Youth, which was created to supposedly help young adults. 

 The site contained extensive inaccuracies and generalizations about LGBTQ people passed along not for the purpose of providing facts, but solely for demonizing the gay community:

Some gay men sexualize human waste, including the medically dangerous practice of coprophilia, which means sexual contact with highly infectious fecal wastes

 On my blog the year before, I pointed out how the American College of Pediatricians was actually laundering junk science in an attempt to make a false argument that "homosexuality was a dangerous lifestyle." The group was relying on cherry-picked information from outdated sources and legitimate studies. In using the latter, the group ignored complaints by the studies' authors that their research was being distorted and misused.

So in the span of 14 years, the American College of Pediatricians has gone from claiming that gays "sexualize" poop to claiming that transgender children have a contagious pathological disorder. This merely proves that the attack on trans Americans isn't new. Nor is it about truth or general concern for public health and welfare.  It's nothing more than scapegoating with new targets placed in the bullseye. 

Related article - File on the American College of Pediatricians from SPLC.