Conservatives’ ‘grooming’ slur targets LGBTQ community, allies

Right-wing groups and conservatives are using the ‘grooming’ slur against the LGBTQ communities and their allies as the fight for gay rights shifts to another level.

By accusing the community and their allies of being ‘groomers’– those supposedly who act to make a child vulnerable to sexual abuse– the conservatives are linking them to pedophilia.

Accusing the LGBTQ community with grooming slur

This was seen when Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s press secretary Christina Pushaw attempted to reframe the controversial “Don’t Say Gay” law as “the Anti-Grooming Bill” last March.

Pushaw tweeted that those against the said bill were “probably a groomer or at least you don’t denounce the grooming of 4-8 year old children.”

This has now not only become a mainstream conservative talking point for Fox News but also adopts a conspiracy theory pushed by QAnon believers that liberals are either pedophiles or advocates of pedophilia.

Even a Republican congressional candidate in Arkansas, Neil Kumar, has been using this homophobic attack in raising funds for his candidacy.

In an email blast entitled, “LBGT Groomers Want Your Kids, Kumar wrote, “Education has been replaced by the promotion of the depraved LGBT agenda, a Satanic attack on God and Nature.”

He added that “sodomite predators are grooming, brainwashing, and mutilating our vulnerable children.”

A homophobic age-old tactic for the new age

But more than just attacking the LGBTQ community and their allies, as well as liberals, conservatives are also using this slur to refer to what they see as left-wing indoctrination.

That is, what they deem as “gender ideology” in educating children on political issues like gay and transgender equality is now deemed as “grooming” children to be victims of pedophilia or even a sex cult.

The latter is a conspiracy theory that led to Pizzagate and the real-world attack on a Washington, DC pizza parlor in 2016, later giving birth to QAnon.

However, this reframing is not new: linking homosexuality to pedophilia is one of the oldest attacks used by those who are homophobic.

What’s modern in this attack is that it’s now being used against LGBTQ allies, especially those educators who are fighting the anti-LGBTQ agenda pushed by conservatives.

Majority of Americans refute the grooming slur

Fortunately, there is some good news: a Data for Progress poll of 1,155 likely voters showed that majority of them oppose using this slur against LGBT-inclusive teachers and parents.

In the survey, 55 percent disagreed with the statement that “teachers and parents that support discussions about sexual orientation and gender identity in school” were “groomers.”

However, while there was 15 percent of likely Democrat voters that supported the anti-LGBTQ “groomer” language, there were 45 percent of likely Republican voters that supported this language.

86 percent of likely Republican voters also disagreed with government having a say in a person’s sexual preference or gender identity, but 63 percent of them said they support legislation like the “Don’t Say Gay” bill