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One would think that Fox News learned a lesson about lying after the $787 million settlement it was forced to pay Dominion.
The network clearly didn't.
.@FoxNews continues to celebrate pride month by pushing bigoted lies that are the driving force of increasing violence and GOP political attacks against the LGBTQ+ community. The flag in question is not controversial nor does it “promote grooming or pedophilia.” pic.twitter.com/Pw7ceUF74R
— Andrew Wortman 🟧 (@AmoneyResists) June 14, 2023
FACTS: Don't listen to this untrue, vile lie from Fox News. The Progress Pride flag adds communities of color (Black and Brown stripes), as well as pink, white, and light blue for trans and nonbinary people.
— GLAAD (@glaad) June 14, 2023
The White House is the People's House, LGBTQ people included! pic.twitter.com/BKayrZZgN2
UPDATE: Fox News deleted the tweet and changed the article headline and url. It was archived though. They are trying to pinkwash the hate by saying it "troubles some in the gay community."https://t.co/LxIOOtEFIH https://t.co/3a8CefIbfB https://t.co/Urm4e566LY pic.twitter.com/cOjJ4yBlo0
— Alejandra Caraballo 🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️🇵🇷 (@Esqueer_) June 14, 2023
grooming and pedophilia🤔https://t.co/tFEbZYkYCf
— PARODY - JEWISH SPACE LASER Captain Count De Monet (@johnaddams2022) June 14, 2023
"Promotes grooming and pedophilia..." I would say it promotes inclusion and love. And for the record, here are the GOP perpetrators of grooming and pedophilia... #FoxHates pic.twitter.com/bH3qzv4afT
— Beyurself66 (@beyurself66) June 14, 2023
How does a flag with nothing but colors on it promote grooming and pedophilia? Explain the process.
— TaritaC Loves Jack Smith (@TaritaC) June 14, 2023
Yeah. So they were wrong. But lovely headline for clocks, fox. You know, as well as I, that is a pride flag for LGBTQ and yes, of course it includes transgender. But no, LGBTQ does not promote grooming or pedophilia. And it’s disgusting that you feed into this awful lie.
— Leanne 🇺🇸🌈 🇺🇦🏳️🌈🌎❤️ (@Lcmwriter100) June 14, 2023
Conservatives are crying wolf with their lies about grooming and pedophilia, while Christian pastors and priests are abusing kids all over the country every day.
— Dan Smith (@helloimdansmith) June 14, 2023
The call is coming from inside the house, Fox. Check your own base before pointing fingers.
https://t.co/0DSeCOzErv
— bg (@bgilbert35) June 14, 2023
Does this mean the sign of the cross promotes pedophilia then???
Then why is it always Republicans, often white “Christian”Nationalists, who are arrested for grooming and pedophilia? pic.twitter.com/hzSRQQGiY6
— 🟧 truthbetold 🟧 (@somapsycheyogi) June 14, 2023
As you can see, it was a good day."Up next, we examine grooming and pedophilia within the Southern Baptist Convention"?
— Celeste Kenney, NCC, MS (@celestial_bean_) June 14, 2023
• Southern Baptist Convention sexual abuse report details cover up • SUN May 22, 2022 •https://t.co/XjFtoCBrHN
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| An image from an old religious tract shows the 'gays groom kids' lie. |
In spite of claims to the contrary, the narrative that the LGBTQ community - particularly the trans community - are looking to "sexualize" or "groom" kids is not a new one. It's an old lie and it's been very successful throughout the years. Unfortunately, nowadays it has been refurbished by social media influencers and believed by people who have no knowledge of or are willfully ignorant of the many avenues social conservatives employ to use it.
First of all, claiming that certain parties want to harm kids is an old canard used against so many other groups, including Jewish people.
From the handout, Echoes and Reflections:
Taken from the children’s book, The Poisonous Mushroom, the caption in this picture reads: “Here my little one, you get something very sweet, but as a reward you both must come with me.” This caricature portrays an elderly Jew trying to tempt small children with candy. It relies on one of the basic fears of all parents and the common instruction to little children not to take candy from a stranger. There are links made between “a stranger,” “danger,” “poison,” and “a Jew.” The Jew is portrayed as a dark, evil, threatening, manipulative stranger, as opposed to the innocent, pure, naïve Aryan children.
Exploiting parental fears while denigrating LGBTQ people as dangerous outsiders who are up to no good, much like is done in the graphic above, is a hallmark tactics in anti-LGBTQ propaganda. However, there are some differences. It can be blatant.
Hidden behind religious belief.
Or even behind the guise of statistics (which are usually lies or deliberately taken out of context).
But the most dangerous and possibly successful use of the "LGBTQ people are grooming children" narrative is when it's subtle. That's when social conservatives don't outright and accuse LGBTQ people of pedophilia or grooming. Instead, they imply that kids will be harmed by any law or action created to benefit the LGBTQ community.
Such as marriage equality
Non-discrimination ordinances
To a lot of older LGBTQ people, the recent legislative and other attacks on transgender people are very familiar. We've had seen it before. In April, Jack Turban, assistant professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco, published an opinion piece at CNN which spelled it all out.
Turban's piece, What the anti-trans movement is all about, deserves a read and a share. Here are some excerpts:
If some of these arguments around fairness and protecting children from LGBTQ people sound familiar, it’s because they’re the same ones used against gay people in the 1990s. These Republicans have simply repackaged old anti-gay rhetoric and scaremongering to target transgender people.Throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s, some cities in Colorado began passing laws prohibiting anti-gay discrimination. Frustrated by this progress, social conservatives in the state created an organization called Colorado for Family Values.Worried about more localities passing anti-discrimination laws, which it saw as endorsing non-Christian values, the group came up with a bold strategy: Start a ballot initiative to amend the Colorado Constitution to prohibit state and local government bodies from passing more. The question was: How would it convince voters, who were increasingly tolerant of gay people, to support it? The group developed two primary tactics it thought would appeal to different types of voters. The first was a more palatable “fairness” argument. It created the false narrative that anti-discrimination laws would give gay people preferential or “better” treatment than straight people. It ran with the catchy slogan “equal rights, not special rights.”
The second was a bit more grotesque — reverting to age-old accusations that gay people were sexual predators and “groomers” who posed a risk to children. The strategies worked, and what was known as Amendment 2 passed
. . . . We’ve also seen a resurgence in social conservatives labeling LGBTQ people as dangerous to children. When advocating for Colorado’s Amendment 2 in the 1990s, Colorado for Family Values distributed 750,000 copies of a pamphlets saying that “sexual molestation of children is a large part of many homosexuals’ lifestyle.” Things are much the same today. US Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene tweeted this month that “Democrats are the party of pedophiles,” a comment she doubled down on in a recent interview on CBS’ “60 Minutes.”Some conservatives have turned this rhetoric into public policy, arguing that laws are needed to force transgender people to use bathrooms of their sex assigned at birth, suggesting that otherwise sexual assault rates in bathrooms will rise. Though research shows that such policies are linked to transgender youth facing higher rates of sexual assault, I worry that facts won’t win out.In the 1990s, Colorado for Family Values won in large part because it had carefully crafted, emotionally inflammatory rhetoric, and its opponents didn’t. It didn’t matter that facts weren’t on the group’s side. The same is true today.In recent years, this rhetoric has been most effectively applied to attacks on gender-affirming medical care. Some conservatives have labeled it “mutilation” and in some instances “child abuse” despite endorsements by major medical organizations.
