It's been a minute since I wrote about anything. It feels like I've forgotten how. Sometimes issues come up that need my professional and personal perspective. This is one of those times.
In response to companies like Disney and Apple protesting the Florida 'Don't Say Gay" law, many on the right including most of FOX News, have taken to calling Corporations and people who oppose the law, 'Groomers'. The use of this term is intentionally inflammatory and used by the right to equate Gay people with child molesters.
I've been investigating child abuse in Western Illinois for DCFS for 28 years. I'm a certified Forensic Interviewer. Forensic Interviews are a specific type of interview to use with victims of sexual abuse. So I can say without hesitation that teaching children that gay people exist is NOT grooming.
It should be noted that Florida already doesn't let sexual education classes start before 6th grade. The idea that teachers are actively teaching kids in K-3rd grade about gay sex is ridiculous. Teaching kids that there are people who love each other and get married or stay in relationships with people of the same sex is not child abuse.
What is child abuse are laws being put in place to deny rights to gay people. Imagine being a parent of a trans child. You encourage them or at minimum accept their being who they are. You support them getting hormone therapy when they are 15 or 16. In Texas this could get your child taken away and you pit in jail.
My youngest child, Greyson (formerly Rowan) is non-binary. They don't identify with either binary gender. We didn't groom them to be NB, they just are. I guarantee you that I will support their life and their ability to exist and thrive.
The GOP and FOX have recently started accusing Disney of 'grooming' children to be LGBTQI+. Disney has made statements that they support peoples lifestyles. The term grooming in this context is very dangerous and homophobic. In the the 60's, 70s., and 80s, people genuinely believed that gay "rubbed off" on people. In reality you can't "catch gay". You either are or you're not.
Grooming is a specific term in my business used to describe getting a child comfortable with sexual abuse. Grooming can be done within a family or without.
The traffickers that Q Anon and the GOP is so concerned with, groom teens with money and drugs. It should be noted that traffickers don't have a political affiliation, despite what the GOP may think. They traffic kids to adults and the don't care who the adult voted for.
Grooming also happens in families. Parents who abuse their children groom them too. It's subtle, and it takes time, but very few parents immediately start actively abusing their children. The best analogy I can think of is foreplay between adults, only over a longer period of time.
Equating grooming, with companies like Disney speaking out about discriminatory laws is a new low. Laws like those in Florida and Texas pretend to protect children from "abuse". A child who is LGBTQI+ isn't abused by living their truth. What is child abuse is forcing a non gender conforming kid to conform to these arbitrary laws.
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