9 Mar 2023 8:05 am
On March 28, 2022, Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis signed a bill banning kindergarten through third-grade public school teachers from talking about sexual orientation or gender identity, calling it an “anti-grooming bill”.
Why did he call it the "anti-grooming" bill? One reason, and one reason only, so that he, and his supporters, and anybody else of his ilk, could call anyone who opposes his bill, "a pedophile."
No different from all the "pedophile" finger pointing in this ****.
Why did he call it the "anti-grooming" bill? One reason, and one reason only, so that he, and his supporters, and anybody else of his ilk, could call anyone who opposes his bill, "a pedophile."
No different from all the "pedophile" finger pointing in this ****.
The Republican Party, once a proud proponent of limited government, has turned itself into a font of sexual innuendo and legal intrusion into the most intimate aspects of personal life. Protecting children from predators is a worthy aim, to be sure, but the GOP is obsessing about all aspects of sex. Why?First, it’s part of their culture war, and culture wars sell with voters (and the media) eager for conflict and titillation. A culture war over sex sells even better. It lets Republicans imply that Democrats are somehow on the side of sexual “deviants” who endanger the “natural order.”Also, by focusing on sex, Republicans can court both the evangelical right and the rightwing extreme QAnon vote (with its the loony “Pizzagate” conspiracy claim that Hillary Clinton was a pedophile).
Most importantly, a culture war over sex allows Republicans to sound faux populist without having to talk about the real sources of populist anger — corporate-induced inflation at a time of record corporate profits, profiteering and price gouging, monopolization, stagnant wages, union busting, soaring CEO pay, billionaires who have amassed $1.7 trillion during the pandemic but who pay a lower tax rate than the working class, and the flow of big money into the political campaigns of lawmakers who oblige by lowering taxes on the wealthy and big corporations and doling out corporate welfare.Oh, and by focusing on pedophilia, gender identity, gay people, and abortion, Republicans don’t have to talk about Trump and January 6.
- Robert Reich, April 7, 2022 - "Why Republicans are obsessed with pedophilia, gender identity, gay people, and abortion"