"Even against an overwhelming backdrop of relentless GOP book banning
and censorship attempts of recent months, Florida's "don't say gay" bill
stands out from the crowd.

Despite all the public pressure, Florida Republicans pushed this bill
through the legislature and sent it to Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis'
desk on Tuesday morning. To make it even worse, Republicans, in their
eagerness to get the "don't say gay" bill across the finish line,
revived a repulsive, homophobic myth: That queer people are pedophiles
who recruit children.

"The bill that liberals inaccurately call 'Don't Say Gay' would be more accurately described as an Anti-Grooming Bill," Christina Pushaw,
DeSantis' longtime press secretary, wrote over the weekend on Twitter.
She followed up by saying that anyone who opposes the bill is "probably
a groomer." The term "groomer," of course, is just another word for
"child molester," as actual pedophiles are known to "groom" their
victims before assaulting them. But (I can't believe this needs to be
said in the year 2022) there is no evidence that LGBTQ people molest
children at a higher rate than straight-identified people.

What Pushaw is doing here, of course, is dog-whistling to QAnon and
their conspiracy theories accusing pretty much every Democrat around of
being pedophiles and cannibals. She's harkening back to a "gays recruit"
myth that is so old that many Americans haven't even heard it, or at
least thought it died out long ago. The myth comes straight out of the
1970s."

TB

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