Florida successfully passed the now-infamous “Don’t Say Gay” bill in 2022. Defending this act, Florida press secretary Christina Pushaw said on Twitter, “The bill that liberals inaccurately call ‘Don’t Say Gay’ would be more accurately described as an Anti-Grooming bill.” This rhetoric is historically consistent with conservatives’ anti-LGBTQ+ political agenda, and its affinity to controversy is as, if not more, problematic now as it was in the past.
Pushaw continued her thread, saying, “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. Silence is complicity. This is how it works, Democrats, and I didn’t make the rules.”
The term Pushaw used in her tweets, “groomer,” falsely links LGBTQ+ people’s interactions with children to the actions of child molesters.
Since then, North Carolina has passed a slate of anti-LGBTQ+ bills of its own, banning gender-affirming care for minors and family-friendly drag performances. Multiple politicians have also pushed their supporters to go to school board meetings to fight against queer books and lessons on gender expression.
While these actions may seem like they came out of nowhere, there is a long history of this attitude towards queer people. The idea that discussing topics surrounding gender and sexuality in school is a form of grooming, while baseless, has been around longer than many of us realize.
The first true, coordinated effort to suppress homosexual identities in schools was in 1977 when the Miami-Dade County Metro Commission passed an ordinance to protect homosexual people from discrimination in housing and employment. This ordinance followed a decade of reform in the wake of the 1969 Stonewall riots.
In response to the ordinance, evangelical Christians united to force a public vote to repeal the act. Spearheaded by Anita Bryant, this group gathered thousands of signatures as well as major media attention.
Bryant spoke about her reasons for repealing the commission’s ordinance,giving her autobiographical account of the grassroots movement.
“Two things in particular troubled me,” Bryant said. “First, public approval of admitted homosexual teachers could encourage more homosexuality by inducing pupils into looking upon it as an acceptable lifestyle. And second, a particularly deviant-minded teacher could sexually molest children”
Bryant, using these ideas, would found the group known as “Save Our Children”, with the intended goal of making sure homosexual lifestyles were not made welcome in public.
The parallels to today’s movements against transgender people are palpable. Bryant’s movement against “militant homosexuals” sought to empower the rights of parents to tightly control what their kids learn about in schools.
Republican Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, during a speech at the Asbury Baptist Church in 2021, made eerily similar comments.
“There’s no reason anybody anywhere in America should be telling any child about transgenderism, homosexuality, any of that filth,” Robinson said. “And yes I called it filth. And if you don’t like that I called it filth, come see me and I’ll explain it to you.”
Despite the 40-year gap, these quotes address the same sentiment: children being aware of queerness is inherently harmful. Allowing bigots the space to push hateful rhetoric emboldens even more radical, harmful actions.
For example, the Briggs Initiative proposed in California in 1978 sought to outright ban homosexual people from being teachers in California. In pushing for the Briggs Initiative, State Sen. John V. Briggs praised Bryant, citing her “courageous stand to protect American children from exposure to blatant homosexuality.”
The initiative was barely defeated, thanks in large part to civil rights leaders Harvey Milk and Sally Miller Gearhart.
Democrats are not free from evangelical influence either. Even in more liberal spaces, homophobia and transphobia are still tolerated outside of the current groomer narrative, making misunderstandings of these issues even more pervasive.
During the Clinton administration, the military barred members from expressing or discussing homosexuality in order to maintain “high standards of morale, good order and discipline and unit cohesion,” establishing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” This wouldn’t be repealed until 2011.
Clinton would also oversee the passage of the Defense of Marriage Act, which specified marriage as between a man and a woman. This would be defended in court all the way until 2011, when the Obama administration decided to abandon it and leave it to the courts to decide.
The Defense of Marriage Act was not repealed until 2013, in Windsor v. United States, and gay marriage was not nationally recognized until Obergefell v. Hodges in 2015. Congress did not explicitly legalize it until just last year.
Attacks on LGBTQ+ people are on the rise. They have the same outdated argument that was used to force gay people into the closet and strip them of their rights. Then, as today, those actions were taken under the guise of “protecting the children.”
Next time you see someone say Target is grooming children for providing pride-themed clothes, or Bud Light is grooming children by having a transgender spokesperson promote beer that is only available for adults, you can fight back against such ignorance. Now, more than ever, we must stand pridefully and confidently beside our fellow citizens as they face an onslaught of bigotry and denialism.
