It was a shot across the bow the day Gov. Ron DeSantis’ press secretary Christina Pushaw tweeted that those who opposed Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill were against what she called the “Anti-Grooming Bill,” and are essentially pedophiles. Republicans found their meat and promptly began chumming the trans- and homophobic waters with it. Today, the GOP has aimed its vitriol away from same-sex marriage and directly onto LGBTQ+ young people and their families.
Rev. Mark Burns was running for South Carolina’s 4th Congressional District, but about a week or so before his loss Tuesday (there really is a God), with just 23.8% of the vote to incumbent and Trump-endorsed William Timmons, Burns took to the airwaves to suggest murdering LGBTQ+ folks.
Burns appeared on The Stew Peters Show and immediately began furthering the ongoing homophobic rhetoric by the GOP about LGBTQ+ people being “groomers,” an attack that accuses adults of building relationships with minors in order to manipulate and sexually exploit them. Burns also says gender-affirming health care for trans youth is “child abuse,” The Advocate reports.
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“That’s why, when I’m elected, I don’t want to just vote. I want to start holding people accountable for treason to the Constitution. I am going to push to reenact HUAC,” Burns said, referring to the House Un-American Activities Committee, a long-abolished group of lawmakers appointed to investigate the ties of private citizens to fascism and communism.
“We need to hold people for treason, start having some public hearings, and start executing people who are found guilty for their treasonous acts against the Constitution of the United States of America. … Just like they did back in 1776,” Burns added.
Burns isn’t alone in his hateful and violent hyperbole.
On Wednesday, Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio posited on Twitter that “Hispanic voters” are turning away from the Democratic party because they don’t want “schools trying to turn their son into a daughter.”
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Michael Woods, a science teacher in Florida, told The Nation that not only is he banned from teaching about gender and sexuality, but the schools in the state have all but erased sex-ed requirements.
What remains in the curriculum? “Mainly defining ‘what is LGBTQ?’ We actually stress abstinence,” Woods said, “but if you’re choosing not to be abstinent, [we also cover] ‘here’s how you protect yourself.’”
Woods says people have no idea how “dangerous” the “groomer” slur is, particularly for teachers and school staff, as they are in contact with minors daily.
“Do you understand the consequences of that word? I’m a Special Olympics coach. That requires people to have trust in me. I’m a prom sponsor. I chaperone the senior class trip,” Woods said.
Sharon McGowan, legal director of Lambda Legal, a national LGBTQ advocacy organization, told The Washington Post that Trump Republicans are “wearing the more outrageous, more offensive as a badge of pride.”
“We’re seeing the recycling of tropes; there are go-to tropes that people use and this notion that somehow a child being taught in school is ‘grooming’ them to have a particular sexual orientation,” McGown said.
In an interview she posted on Twitter, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia called Democrats “the party of pedophiles” and “the party of princess predators from Disney.”
Greene added: “The Democrats are the party of elementary school teachers [who are] trying to transition their elementary-school-aged children and convince them they’re a different gender. This is the party of their identity, and their identity is the most disgusting, evil, horrible things happening in our country.”
Michigan Democratic state Sen. Mallory McMorrow famously spoke against a GOP colleague accusing her of wanting to “groom and sexualize kindergartners.” She told the Post in an interview that she makes a direct connection between Trump’s rhetoric about the Big Lie and attacks on the LGBTQ+ community.
“If people don’t trust elections, then it opens the door really quickly to believing the government is run by a Satanist cabal of pedophiles, and they’ll stop at nothing in the name of protecting kids. … We don’t have that much time, we need to reach out to everybody and tell them, ‘There’s hate, and then there’s people who want to make the government work, and that’s the choice,’” McMorrow said.