The GOP Hates The Gays More Than They Love Children

The GOP battle cry has long ben, ‘The children! The children’ and they trot it out very heavily election. They want to protect the unborn children, well, at least until birth at which time they become irrelevant. Until this year when the GOP took up the QAnon theory that Democrats ‘groom’ children to be gay or to be given to pedophiles or, and this is an actual QAnon theory, to be eaten by high-ranking Democrats, like Obama, or Hollywood celebrities, like Tom Hanks.

And the  GOP turned their wrath on drag queens and the LGBTQ+ community, accusing us of sexualizing children; wingnuts protest Drag Queen Story Hours and some even shoot up LGBTQ+ nightclubs to prove their point. So, you’d think they would rally round a bill that would help victims of child sex abuse, right?

The bill, entitled Respect for Child Survivors Act, was developed with input from child welfare groups to address the mistreatment that child witnesses sometimes face during investigations of their own abuse. It would require the FBI to form multi-disciplinary teams to investigate child sex abuse cases in a way that ensures accountability and transparency without re-traumatizing victims and their families.

Sounds like a good way to protect children and save them from further abuse and while the bipartisan bill—which was introduced by GOP Senators John and Lindsey Graham , along with Democrat Senators Chris Coons and Amy Klobuchar—passed the House with 215 Democratic and 170 Republican votes, the No votes were all from the GOP:

Mo Brooks and Barry Moore—Alabama

Andy Biggs and Paul Gosar—Arizona

Rick Crawford—Arkansas

Tom McClintock—California

Lauren Boebert—Colorado

Byron Donalds and John Rutherford—Florida

Andrew Clyde, Jody Hice, Austin Scott, and Marjorie Taylor Greene—Georgia

James Comer and Thomas Massie—Kentucky

Clay Higgins—Louisiana

Matt Rosendale—Montana

Jeff Van Drew—New Jersey

Dan Bishop and Virginia Foxx—North Carolina

Scott Perry—Pennsylvania

Ralph Norman—South Carolina

Louie Gohmert, Ronny Jackson, Troy Nehls, Chip Roy, and Michael Cloud--Texas

Bob Good—Virginia

Lauren Boebert, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Louie Gohmert, Paul Gosar and Rick Crawford all oppose he expansion of LGBTQ+ civil rights and many have accused the LGBTQ+ community of sexualizing or “grooming” kids.

And yet they voted against this bill.

In June, Boebert accused queer-inclusive teachers of “grooming” kids with educational flashcards showing a pregnant man on one of the cards.

In November, Greene called gay Californian state Democratic Senator Scott Wiener a “communist groomer” for calling “groomer” an “anti-LGBTQ hate word.”

In October, Gohmert co-sponsored a bill called the “Stop the Sexualization of Children Act” which would ban any entity that receives federal money from talking about sexual orientation or gender identity to children under the age of 10.

Crawford has consistently voted against LGBTQ+ civil rights.

It’s important to note these Republicans, who have spent the last year making so much noise about LGBTQ+ people “grooming” children, never speak as loudly against child sex abuse in their Christian churches, nor do they partner with any groups that actually oppose child abuse or child sex trafficking.

And now we know they aren’t even willing to vote for a bill to address child sex abuse that got broad bipartisan support.

That’s the rightwingnut faction of the GOP; they say they want to protect children but only if they can denigrate and humiliate and terrorize and threaten and perhaps even incite murder of LGBTQ+ Americans.

They don’t care about children.

They hate us.