The Low Cost High Stakes Reason Right Wing Accusations of Pedophilia Are Terrifying

GayNrd Editors May 11, 2022

The suggestion that homosexuals or gay folks are pedophiles is the most persistent and pernicious “stereotype” that has never fully gone away.

It is, in my estimation, a long shadow that we can’t seem to escape.

During less contentious times it is an alarming accusation to even be uttered. In times like these: it’s terrifying and potentially deadly.

Jack Califano, who worked as on Bernie Sanders campaign wrote on Twitter Tuesday: The “groomer” & “pedophile” thing are the clearest moment where I’ve thought “oh, wow, they really are planning on killing a lot of people eventually. This is extreme dehumanizing language designed to prepare right wing fascists to feel no remorse over genocidal acts of violence. I’m not sure what other serious or responsible explanation one could give for it…

The “groomer” & “pedophile” thing are the clearest moment where I’ve thought “oh, wow, they really are planning on killing a lot of people eventually”
— Jack Califano (@jackcalifano) May 10, 2022

There is actually a word for this! It’s called “stochastic terrorism”, the use of dehumanizing language and rhetoric to make the social environment so hostile that violence is inevitable. It’s commonly agreed to be the first stage of atrocities like genocide.

pic.twitter.com/HTwNPpxgzE
— Talon (@DemandTalon) May 10, 2022

When Politico leaked Justice Alito’s memo regarding rolling back Roe V Wade he cited two specific cases both had to do with gay rights: marriage equality and the repeal of sodomy laws.

I’ve noticed this tactic and it’s gotten worse since. https://t.co/NGOsPMw6jJ pic.twitter.com/MppCZ4zhJX
— ffs (@njeae) May 11, 2022

The draft opinion is a full-throated, unflinching repudiation of the 1973 decision which guaranteed federal constitutional protections of abortion rights and a subsequent 1992 decision – Planned Parenthood v. Casey – that largely maintained the right. “Roe was egregiously wrong from the start,” Alito writes. Alito’s draft opinion explicitly criticizes Lawrence v. Texas (legalizing sodomy) and Obergefell v. Hodges (legalizing same-sex marriage). He says that, like abortion, these decisions protect phony rights that are not “deeply rooted in history.”

Let me explain what this draft does and doesn’t say about gay rights because I realize the screenshot above doesn’t tell the whole story. There are parts of the opinion in which Alito parrots Kavanaugh’s reasoning—that abortion is “unique” because it involves taking a “life.”

And there is a portion in which Alito says: Hey, we promise this decision won’t imperil other precedents. Two problems. First, he’s talking about precedents that came *before* 1992’s Planned Parenthood v. Casey. Lawrence (sodomy) and Obergefell (same-sex marriage) came later.

Second, the meat of Alito’s opinion is a lengthly repudiation of “unenumerated rights” that are not laid out in the Constitution. The Supreme Court may only protect these rights, Alito says, if they are “deeply rooted” in history. Abortion is not. Neither is same-sex marriage.Alito seems to identify the gay rights decisions as part of “a broader right to autonomy and to define one’s ‘concept of existence.’”