GOP Turns to False Insinuations of LGBT Grooming

There seem to be no limits to the depravity and cruelty Republican candidates will stoop to inorder to energize the ugliest elements of the party's Christofascist base. Now, across the GOP spectrum Republican candidates are parroting long standing Christofascist lies that gays "groom" victims and recruit children and youth to their ranks - scientific and medical knowledge that shows these calims to be utter lies.  Of course, no one in my experience lie more often and with more viciousness than the "godly folk."  Indeed, their contempt for truth and veracity is right up there with that of Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin.  Democrats who support LGBT protections and oppose the GOP's ongoing book banning craze are now being accused of supporting the "grooming" of children and youths for campaign donations from knuckle dragging constituents and to message that they are the most "conservative" - read dishonest - candidates in GOP primary elections. It's vicious and hideous, but sadly defines today's Republican Partywhere moral bankruptcy is a requirement for one running for office.  Equally sad is the fact that anti-LGBT attacks are being used to distract voters from the fact that the GOP is offering no solutions to the nation's pressing issues.  If you have not watched Mallory McMorrow's (pictured above) response to the hate merchants you need to do so. A piece in the Washington Post looks at this cruel and dangerous GOP agenda item.  Here are highlights:

When Michigan Democratic state Sen. Mallory McMorrow stood on the chamber floor to take on a Republican colleague who had accused her of wanting to sexually groom children, she was denouncing not just an isolated incident, but an onslaught of GOP attacks on the LGBTQ community.

“I know that hate will only win if people like me stand by and let it happen,” McMorrow said in a Senate floor speech Tuesday that swiftly went viral, gaining nearly 12 million views within a day.

The rapid escalation in public support for the LGBTQ community’s rights in recent years had quieted much of the blatant homophobia in the nation’s political discourse. But, in recent weeks, Republicans have reverted to verbal and legal assaults on the community, sometimes employing baseless tropes that suggest children are being groomed or recruited by defenders of gay rights. The efforts ahead of the midterm elections are intended to rile up the Republican base and fill the campaign coffers of its candidates, without offering evidence that any Democrat had committed a repugnant crime.

Coming nearly seven years after the U.S. Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage, the rhetorical attacks and attempts to pass scores of anti-LGBTQ legislation nationwide have sent a bracing signal of animus to the LGBTQ community and particularly to transgender youth who have been targeted in many states.

In Michigan, McMorrow had been one of three Democrats to walk out of an invocation that GOP state Sen. Lana Theis gave on the Senate floor a week ago, during which she prayed for children “under attack” from “forces.” After the walkout, Theis accused McMorrow by name in a fundraising email of wanting to “groom and sexualize kindergartners.”

In her response to Theis on the Senate floor, McMorrow called herself “the biggest threat to your hollow, hateful scheme.”

“Because you can’t claim that you’re targeting marginalized kids in the name of ‘parental rights’ if another parent is standing up and saying no. … People who are different are not the reason our roads are in bad shape, or health care costs are too high, or teachers are leaving the profession,” she said.

“We cannot let hateful people tell you otherwise to scapegoat and deflect from the fact that they’re not doing anything to fix the real issues that impact people’s lives.”

McMorrow said in an interview Wednesday that the fundraising letter demanded a public repudiation. “That was the end of it, I couldn’t just say nothing,” McMorrow said.

The viral attention her remarks received “sends a really clear message that we have to stand up and we can’t be afraid of going in on social issues,' she added. “We have to talk about hate and identify it and say it’s ugly and disgusting and what it means as a deflection of other issues.”

The new thrust counters the decision by most Republican politicians in recent years to largely avoid the subject of LGBTQ rights given widespread support from Americans. . . . Republicans recently have used language similar to Theis’s to attack their critics who speak out against the ramped-up efforts to restrict protections for LGBTQ youth. They have specifically referenced the notion of “grooming,” which is used to denote adults sexualizing children.

Several weeks ago, as Florida Republicans were pushing legislation to ban discussion of sexual orientation or gender identity in classrooms up to third grade, Gov. Ron DeSantis’s press secretary, Christina Pushaw, made an audacious claim on Twitter about the measure Democrats referred to as the “don’t say gay” bill.  “If you’re against the Anti-Grooming Bill, you are probably a groomer or at least you don’t denounce the grooming of 4-8 year old children. . . . “

Critics responded in outrage while other Republicans made similar accusations.

“The Democrats are the party of pedophiles. The Democrats are the party of princess predators from Disney,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga,) said in an interview she posted on Twitter.

McMorrow, the Michigan Democrat, draws a direct line from the QAnon-inspired falsehoods about the 2020 presidential election and the resurgence of anti-LGBTQ attacks.

The groomer accusation is only one element in the revival of LGBTQ-focused battles popping up in campaigns across the country. Vernon Jones, a Black Republican congressional candidate in Georgia endorsed by Trump, argued recently that gay rights are not civil rights, claiming falsely that a person can choose to “go from being straight to being gay to being transgender and all these other genders.”

In Tennessee, many of the 31 bills introduced so far this year target transgender youth, including one that expanded Florida’s bill restricting LGBTQ discussion bill to prohibit instruction mentioning gender and sexual orientation education through 12th grade.

Kate Oakley, senior counsel at the Human Rights Campaign, said while attacks on the LGBTQ community never disappeared, the scale and vitriol have increased recently.

“The escalation is new. The saying the quiet part out loud is new, but the underlying animus of this is the same fear that we have seen,” Oakley said. “It’s just that they’re no longer feeling the compunction to wrap it up in a polite bow.”