So for our next segment, we are gonna go over the new moral panic of grooming. And rich I think you're going to be leading us off on this.
I am well, history is replete. That's one of my favorite words. Repleat with examples of people using a moral discquoitment something people don't like within their societies to find a group of people and demonize it. It's how the witch craze has happened. It's how the Nazis gained power and got away with what they did. These things happen time and time again, and according to Matthew Rosa of the Salon, it's happening right now in a good state
of Florida. Would be Florida, wouldn't it. With God of Ronda, Santis is banning his books in public schools, and the excuse is he doesn't want people to groom children and pedophiles and the people he doesn't want grooming of. Of course, the LGTB total these letters for me that plus community because obviously obviously not And this is the latest example.
It's an interesting article, the latest example of how it seems to be a go to of right wing parties, not just in the US, but beyond and they're doing it again, and it's yeah, it is back, it is back, and it is in Floyd. So the reason you can't get certain books is caused LGBTQ plus people are groomers. What say you people?
Yeah, we've covered this in multiple episodes. We've talked about the banning of books. We've talked about librarians being under attack where they're even getting death threats. Definitely go through our back catalog because this battle is not even close to being over, and I don't even think we're in the middle of it. This is really just kind of the tip of the iceberg. But we hear, okay, they're
calling us groomers. And when you hear the word groomers, I kind of want to what does everybody here think? And without kind of straw manning, what do you think other people are hearing when they hear about the word groomer? Aaron, what do you what are you thinking? Well?
I think it makes people conjure up images of being under attack, especially their children. I had at my communications professor in college said, if you can, if you can get kids involved in your argument, you've almost always won, you know, because because putting kids in danger is really gonna get people's fear response going, and they're gonna conjure up these scary images of you know, people teaching their children things that they don't they don't want to be taught.
The problem is can't really bring people. You know, people are what they are, They're born the way they are. You can't really no such thing as groomer. There are risk factors that make people more susceptible sexual abuse. From up the CDC websites, I saw the risk factors that they that they listen are being under the age of four and having special needs that may increase caregiver burdens.
That's it.
That's what increased the likely that someone's going to be a victim of sexual abuse, not what someone's sexuality or.
I mean, so are we saying that, you know, we just don't care about kids. You know that we don't, you know, because we're we're allowing the LGBT to kind of be what they are. We we are supportive of drag shows. Does that mean that we are okay with harm?
No, absolutely not. We're not okay with harm. What we want to do is instead of focusing on, uh, this scary thing over here, let's focus on solving the real problem. The real problem is we don't want kids to be sexually abused, right uh, And reading books isn't going to cause doesn't cause people to be sexually abused. Reading books doesn't cause someone to become homosexual or lgbt q I or any of that. People are born the way they're born.
Books don't contribute to that. Books have ideas which can be very simple this whole Uh. Yeah, so yeah, there there are so many better things that we can do to keep our kids safe. I'm from that same CDC website.
They say that the preventive factors that help help us prevent sexual abuse and include having them deployed, educated and nurturing caregivers, and having good communities that have that provide safe, stable housing, high quality preschool, nurturing and safe childcare, safe engaging school programs and activities, medical care and mental health services, economic and financial health work opportunities, and family friendly policies.
Instead of banning books, let's get let's start making policies that improve people's improve that improve people's parenting skills, parenting abilities, and economic conditions.
And we'll make sure to link that CDC article in our notes as well. So why is this message so effective? So I get that we're trying to say, hey, we want to protect kids, or they want to protect kids, but why is the sensationalism so effective? Scott or rich who wants to answer that.
I can step in here. One thing I think we need to point out here, though, is that the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, is running for president basically, or he's gearing up for a run for president, and so he's trying to Obviously a lot of what he's doing here is pandering to the bigotry block. Oh hey, they're a bigotry doctor to the bigot block, which is a large part of his support base. And so this demonization, uh,
is it's a tactic. It's a tactic, you know. They they frame it as if it were a moral or a safety issue. I don't see them warning about people going to confession at a Catholic church. I mean, that's I don't know.
Or expecting a two party or two peer system when you know a priest is with an ultar boy, which you know.
Right right.
It's sad that we need we need to even say that, But there have been so many cases out there it is. It is something you know, don't don't try to put out our house while yours is still burning, right.
Yeah, exactly, And so I mean I think what that illustrates, though, is that this is not Obviously they're cheering and warning and yelling about the kid's safety, the kid's safety, the kid's safety, but not our people, right, but not our people. It's only those it's only the people with the d's by their name who are going to be grooming grooming our kids. And but it's a natural it's a natural
tactic to use. It's very effective. People are very defensive about their kids, and well, it's evolution I mean, it's evolutionary, evolutionarily supported. I mean, the parents who did not overreact and and hyper protect their kids, the people who didn't do that, their kids would be less likely to survive
and to carry on their DNA. And so so it's it's first of all, it's clear that that's why they're using it, And second of all, it's clear that that's an effective So I don't see why, you know, we shouldn't be surprised that this is happening at all. It's just it's it's human nature and it's one party taking advantage of human nature.
I wonder if some people think that we might necessarily be doing something similar that we are saying, hey, look, you know, it's it's terrible that they're forcing a religious idea when it's just parents teaching their kids their culture, their history, their belief structure. Now, it would be nice if they were able to do that within the guise of but you can go ahead and make your own decision.
But I also I kind of wonder if there's if some of this pushback could potentially be us saying hey, no, no, no, we need to put this out there, we need to you know, Oh, if they only just were so we're quiet about their homosexuality or their other natures and all that. I wonder if they try to say that a little bit the same about us, But Rich, what do you think?
I think that's an interesting point that they will raise that, But it's kind of an odd one in that to use the UK as an example, In nineteen eighty eight, we had something that was called Section twenty eight, Section twenty eight of the Local Government Act, and that section twenty eight basically made it illegal for local authorities to quote promote homosexuality. The problem was nobody knew what on earth that meant. I mean, what was promotingosexuality exactly, you know,
putting posters up saying be gay. I don't know what he's supposed to do with this thing. It took twelve years for that to be got rid of in our country, and it was for every single day. I was there fighting it, and I almost fell off a bridge once, but that's another story. But it was a moment where it was a similar thing. It was a quite right wing conservative government who wanted to find a group and put a law in that would take a certain section
of their voters. Definitely definitely vote using a very very old tactic, as I mentioned at the beginning during the intro, which is to create othering, which is to say, they are them, and we are us, and they are transgressors, so we don't want to be like them. So those people they do these terrible, terrible things. Honest, they do these awful things. And the oldest known way of developing to a group to demonize. And once you've got a
group to demon that, you can vote against them. As you're saying, there's this kind of I think within the minds of a lot of people in certain political sp persuasion that the left or where the gays are, and that's the LGBTQ plus area on the left, which of course isn't true. One of the most controversial Republicans in the House right now is gay. So you know, it's what are they talking about. But that's kind of a picture that's been pain and they're using an old tactic.
It worked. It worked for Bargat Thatcher, it worked for the Nazi Party, it worked for Urban the second when he wanted to start the crusade, not against the LGBTQ plus, of course, but against those terrible marauding Muslims. It was, you know, it's it's a response to kind of couples of moral discuss They are a contagion that need to clean. I could go onto this forever because this is my topic, so I'm not. But it's this kind of idea of othering. I'll narrow it down to that. It's othering, and it's
it's very powerful, and that's why they're doing it. And it's not necessary to believe. I mean, it's not just by the way books that mention in any way that people aren't all heterosexual shocker for the world. Hey, it's also books talk about Frederick Douglas and Rosa Parks and things like that. What do you talking about history? Why can't we have history? Books about history? Something dear to my heart? But he's banning it. All I know is
when people start banning books, worry. That's kind of mine. And when it comes to saying to us, are we doing the similar thing? Are we just saying no, don't you shouldn't be able to teach? Of course we're not. They're saying teacher culture or you like, just don't impose it, just don't force it on me. And I think he's trying to argue that these cultures are being forced on kids when they're not. They're just being here's some information.
Leave it anyway. I could ramble long about othering and how this process works for five hours, and I think we've got a deadline, have we not?
So a little bit of one. I mean, we could always cross into, uh, you know, the atheist experience, because you know who means that. But you should just be watching the nonprofits all the time, all the time.
They don't do the subscribers.
Yeah, two words flag ship flagship.
Absolutely absolutely don't ever anybody forget about that. I see this a lot like one of the old school schoolyard arguments I heard back in the nineties and all that. You know, and this might get a little bit offensive, where you know, one person goes, you know, are you gay? And then they asked, do your parents know you're gay? Kind of trying to trip you up in a little bit of that, and it's like, you know, are you a pedophile groomer? Do your kids know your you are?
And it's just it's it's so disturbing, so disingenuous, so ignoring of any any type of fact or figure about what homosexual people are. Anybody within the LGBTQ community, anybody who has been to a drag show, who wants to do reading. You know, we I mean, we've talked about this at nauseum, but Aaron, what what what are you thinking on it?
I really like, uh, doctor Rich's point about othering. That's something that I feel strongly about too, because there really is no other. We're all part of the human race. You know. I don't want to sound naive or you know, lovey dovey, but we're all born, we all live our lives and we all die, and I think we all
want the same things. We all want to be loved and taken care cared of, right and all we want to be seen as human being And the fact that there are groups that are being demonized is really sad because they're human beings. They have their experiences too, And the fact that they can, that these politicians can dig into this fear response that we have is well, I don't like it. And the reason they can do that
is because we have this bias. We have the tendency in our brains to be scared of something we can vividly imagine, right, and we can vividly imagine lots of things, vividly imagine terrorist attack. Hence the success of locking down and getting rid of our privacy in the early sought after nine to eleven, people what was really easy for people to imagine terrorist attacks, and so it was really easy to get funding and stuff for anti terrorism measures.
And so guess what the most dangerous thing everybody does every day driving your car. Driving your car is the most dangerous thing you do every day, but nobody thinks about it because it's just so normal and commonplace. But you put kids in danger and suddenly people come up with all sorts of really scary things in their head. Just because it's scary in your head doesn't mean it's scary in real life.
Yeah, we have definitely seen where, especially on the driving there was so much pushback when booster seats really became prevalent. It's like, well, I'm not gonna put my kid in a booster seat. Why would I need to put my kid in a boosh seat, you know? And it's because, well, the technology of having seat belts and air bags needs to kind of put that kid where things are gonna be more, we're gonna be safer. Oh, I don't believe that. That's just rubbish, And yeah, you really can't get past that.
It's one of the reasons why straw man arguments are so convincing to people, because they're able to convince themselves that, oh, you're not human.