Sharing – The Right Is Misusing the Word “Grooming,” and It Can Have Serious Consequences
I really couldn’t say it any better. Talking about LGBTQ+ people or knowing they exist has nothing to do with sexual abuse and everything to do with increasing their risk for suicide. Calling it “grooming” is demeaning and cruel to people who are not doing anything more than existing. It also simply misidentifies actual grooming that takes place with kids who are being preyed upon by adults. Instead of being aware of their families’ real risks, they are lulled into a false sense of safety based on nothing.
“LGBTQ+ representation and acceptance is life-saving for young people questioning their gender or orientation, and age-appropriate comprehensive sexual health education both gives youth skills to recognize and disclose abuse and helps reduce perpetration of sexual abuse.
This is why we are speaking today with one voice to demand that the journalists covering this devastating and false rhetoric do so responsibly. Whenever a source invokes the terminology of child abuse survivors as reasons to oppose education, LGBTQ+ rights, or other fundamental freedoms, we call on you to responsibly contextualize what child abuse actually is, and center the voices of survivor advocacy groups.”
Why is this so hard for so many people to understand? Why are some of you so dead-set on causing harm to people who are different than you? If your religious leaders encourage you to harm people or treat any other group of human beings as anything less than human, they are not to be taken seriously. We need to stop giving these leaders our attention or our money.
