A well-established rhetorical tactic is to falsely accuse someone (such as transpeople) or something (such as television) of being a danger to children. Because humans tend to feel very protective of children, this accusation can easily create feelings of anger and fear that override rational assessment. Such accusations are even more effective when the target is someone or something the intended audience already fears or dislikes. For example, homosexuals have long been accused of being pedophiles.

One recent development has been the Republican strategy of accusing their opponents of pedophilia despite a lack of evidence. This typically takes the form of accusing them of being groomers. Transpeople and drag queens are among the most recent targets being accused of being pedophiles, despite the lack of evidence that these people are any more likely to be pedophiles than anyone else.

My adopted state of Florida has been on the frontlines of the culture wars, attacking LGBT+ people and going after anything labeled as “woke”, ‘DEI” or “critical race theory.” As would be expected, this has involved false claims about pedophiles and groomers. For example, it was claimed that books refereeing to LGBT+ people were corrupting or being used to groom children. But who is endangering the children?

It should not be surprising that marginalized people are not likely to be pedophiles or groomers. After all, pedophiles and groomers often rely on positions of power or authority to gain access to their victims and shield themselves from both suspicion and consequences. The Catholic Church provides an excellent illustration of this and has an entire Wikipedia page on is sexual abuse cases. As a single example, in 2024 the Archdiocese of Los Angeles agreed to pay $880 million to settle sex abuse claims, bringing the current total to over $1.5 billion. Sexual abuse of minors is also a problem in other churches. For example, male pastors from Texas are at least eight times more likely to sexually assault minors than drag queens. While people might be inclined to doubt these claims, they can be confirmed. For example, a skeptic can investigate the Los Angeles settlement and review the documentation. One can also scour police reports nationwide to search for examples of transpeople and drag queens who are pedophiles or groomers, but this will turn up little or nothing.

My adopted state of Florida, which seems to be pushing towards theocratic authoritarianism, passed a law opening schools to volunteer chaplains. In response, the Satanic Temple announced its intention to send in volunteer chaplains, which seems to have paused the plan until it can be reworked to allow only Christian chaplains into schools. Those who rushed to “protect the children” from transpeople, drag queens and books should have opposed this proposal. After all, if the effectively nonexistent threat transpeople and drag queens present warrants such action, then the threat presented by chaplains should be terrifying to them. It is not being claimed that chaplains are likely to be pedophiles, just that statistically they are much more likely to be pedophiles than would a transperson or drag queen. Given the statistical data, it makes more sense to ban chaplains from schools than to go after transpeople, drag queens or books. I must note that I am friends with ministers, chaplains and other religious leaders that are good people. As such, my point is not that we should demonize religious leaders as pedophiles and groomers but that we should not demonize people such as transpeople, drag queens and Democrats. In addition to churches, pedophiles can also be found in police departments.

The Post conducted an analysis of Bowling Green’s The Henry A. Wallace Police Crime Database. To be clear, this is a database of crimes committed by police. This database is, as one would expect, incomplete because it relies on reported arrests and hence is certain to underreport police crimes. From 2005 to 2022 17,700 state and local officers were identified as having been charged with crimes. About 1,800 of these officers were charged with a crime involving child sexual abuse. As per the conservative narrative applied to marginalized groups accused of being groomers, the officers typically spent months befriending and grooming the children before sexually abusing them. As many of these officers were convicted, the court documents can usually be found online, and the Washington Post’s claims can be independently confirmed. Unless, of course, one believes that the police and legal system are themselves involved in a conspiracy to falsely claim that some police have sexually abused children.

Given that Republicans are the self-proclaimed protectors of children and enemies of pedophiles, it might be wondered why they are focusing their efforts against people who are not at likely to be pedophiles while seeming to ignore the sexual predators known to be in police departments. As the Washington Post investigation found, while schools, churches and youth programs usually take special effort to address the risk of child sexual abuse, police departments generally do not do this. It was found that police departments hired people despite their having been accused or convicted of child abuse and other serious crimes. It was also found that officers could resign after being accused of inappropriate behavior with children and move to another department. In some cases, accused officers were reinstated and then eventually convicted of abusing children. Police departments also often fail to notice or act on evidence of inappropriate behavior. I must also note that there are many excellent police officers and  I am glad to know some of them through running, gaming, and my recent experiences as a juror.

If Republicans really cared about protecting the children, they would do something to address this. After all, they have adequate energy to fight imaginary dangers in the culture war. Why not use that to address real threats? While this obviously requires speculation, there seem to be two likely reasons the Republican party does not actually care about protecting the children from real pedophiles and groomers.

The first is that the party is focused on using children as tools for political advantage. Accusing institutionalized authorities such as churches and the police of doing what they are in fact doing would not be politically advantageous. But demonizing their political opponents and marginalized people is advantageous.

The second is that the right seems to accept or even praise “transgressions” by the right type of authority figures. While this sounds horrific, it is not actually being a groomer or pedophile that matters but who is being accused. In line with the claim that “every accusation is a confession”, the right wing media has an established record of defending actual pedophiles and sexualizing children. As this is being written, Matt Gaetz is likely to become Attorney General, despite the existence of credible accusations that he had sex with an underage girl.

In closing, while the right professes to be concerned with protecting children from pedophiles and groomers, the evidence shows this is not true. They are, for the most part, focused on falsely accusing their opponents and marginalized groups while largely ignoring the real danger to the children.