Is the war against groomers destined to fail? That’s what Grayson Quay, a news editor at The Daily Caller, believes. According to Quay, the strategy of denouncing queer messaging aimed at children as “grooming” or “indoctrination” will fail.
I disagree and feel I must prove him wrong.
Quay points to the uproar last year over a lesbian kiss in Disney’s Lightyear and compares that to “Bo Peep’s dalliance with Woody in the Toy Story films,” which Quay argues is “far more sexually suggestive,” yet didn’t generate outrage.
“Openly gay people exist in our society,” he points out. “In any debate over whether they should appear in kids’ entertainment, the burden of proof naturally falls on the party arguing for exclusion.”
Quay’s entire argument hinges on the idea that gay people exist and we can’t stop them from being represented in entertainment. While that may be a fair point, the grooming debate isn’t limited to LGBT representation in children’s programming, is it? However, those other issues are curiously absent from Quay’s analysis. Instead, he argues that 71% of Americans support same-sex marriage.
In other words, Quay believes that grooming isn’t grooming at all. It’s merely pop culture reflecting society. He is wrong.
Does supporting same-sex marriage mean you have to support pornographic content being made available in school libraries, or really young children participating in Drag Queen Story Hour, or being exposed to scantily clad adults and other sexually suggestive displays at Pride Parades? Does supporting same-sex marriage mean you have to support school districts helping students socially “transition” at school and, as a matter of policy, hiding this information from parents? Does supporting same-sex marriage mean you must believe that minors are mature enough to decide that they were born “the wrong gender” and undergo so-called “gender-affirming care”?
The biggest problem with “grooming” isn’t the depiction of LGBT characters in entertainment. It’s the targeting of troubled kids in public schools who are being convinced that their problems are rooted in being born in the wrong body. It’s the deliberate exposing of children to sexually graphic content at extremely young ages. Quay either doesn’t realize this is happening or is choosing to ignore it by limiting the issue of grooming to one particular aspect and presenting one relatively innocuous example as a basis for comparison and somehow linking it all to same-sex marriage.
Grooming is happening, and it’s a genuine problem. Statistics show that younger generations are increasingly identifying as LGBT—particularly those who identify as transgender. A recent Gallup poll showed that fewer than 1% of Americans born before 1946 identify as LGBT, along with 2.6% of Boomers, 4.2% of Generation X, 10.5% of millennials, and 20.8% of Gen Z. This is not organic; it’s social contagion. Even left-wing comedian Bill Maher realizes this.
“If we can’t admit that, in certain enclaves, there is some level of trendiness to the idea of being anything other than straight, then this is not a serious, science-based discussion. It’s a blow being struck in the culture wars using children as cannon fodder,” he said last year.
“If something about the human race is changing at a previously unprecedented rate, we have to at least discuss it. Broken down over time, the LGBT population of America seems to be roughly doubling every generation.”
“If we follow this trajectory, we will all be gay in 2054,” Maher continued. “I’m just saying that when things change this much, this fast, people are allowed to ask what’s up with that.”
Only a few decades ago, gender dysphoria was extremely rare and generally limited to adult men. Now, it’s become fashionable among teens and has been rising in recent years, mostly with teenage girls, who are coming out as transgender despite having always identified as their birth sex. Instead of asking questions about social factors influencing these decisions, pre-pubescent girls are given chest binders, puberty blockers, and eventually double mastectomies, and we’re just supposed to look the other way and pretend this is normal and natural? There is ample evidence that the increased occurrence of rapid-onset gender dysphoria is due to social contagion, not natural factors.
Make no mistake about it: grooming is happening, and it’s affecting young people. And, contrary to the notion that if you support same-sex marriage you have to approve of grooming, polls show that Americans don’t like schools indoctrinating kids with LGBT propaganda in the elementary grades. So, contrary to Quay’s claim that conservatives are destined to lose the grooming debate, I believe it’s very much a winnable fight.
