 Marketing sneakers or those goofy mouse ears to kids, that's one thing. But marketing complicated topics of sexuality and gender, that's grooming. Oh wait, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Joy Reid doesn't like that language, sorry. Conservative political operatives have figured out what riles up their base. The fake threat that progressives are trying to indoctrinate their children, to groom them, to become gay or trans. These terms, indoctrination, grooming, predator, accusing innocent people of being pedophiles or being soft on pedophiles. It is all so a very specific trigger for a group that is sinking its teeth into our political discourse. Mix metaphors aside, whatever term you want to use to describe what they're doing, it's having a dramatic effect on our young people. How else do you explain that today 20% of Gen Z identifies as LGBTQ+, which is double that of millennials five times more than Gen X, and 10 times those who identify as such among the baby boomers, they're boring. That was Fox News host Laura Ingram explaining why these don't say gay bills are necessary, because woke teachers are indoctrinating your children and they are quite literally turning them LGBTQ. How else do you explain why one in five Gen Zers are LGBTQ+. Well, it's actually not that complicated and the answer isn't that it's because they're being turned gay and they learn about gay and trans people and they think, oh wow, that looks cool. I want to do that. See, what's happening is this thing called acceptance. Society is changing and LGBTQ+, identities are being destigmatized. So Gen Zers, more so than any other previous generation, feel comfortable coming out and being themselves. You see, reactionaries even used to discriminate against people who were left-handed. I'm not making this up. As Lily Rothman explains in this article for time, left-handed people were literally thought of as evil and they would even possibly be accused of practicing witchcraft and the thought of businesses catering to lefties by making left-handed tools and whatnot was seen as bad because you're giving in to these evil people who are unnaturally using their left hand dominantly when they should be using their right hand. But eventually society began to change and society thought, yeah, maybe it's weird and stupid that we're treating people poorly simply because they're different. We all use our right hand, but they use their left hand. Maybe that's not a reason to discriminate against people. So society eventually became more and more accepting of left-handed people. And then this happened. Between the 20s and 40s, the anti-lefty reactionaries probably thought that their suspicions about lefties being evil were confirmed because all of a sudden so many people were coming out as left-handed. But when you look at the full timeline, it reveals a little bit of a different picture. The amounts of left-handed people leveled out eventually. Not necessarily because evil lefties recruited enough people for world domination but because the stigma had went away and people who were naturally left-handed felt comfortable being themselves. And the same thing is happening with LGBTQ plus people. The previous generations before me fought for a world that would be safe enough for me to come out to and my generation and subsequent generations will continue to fight for and add to this project of destigmatization. So it's not that LGBTQ plus people are going to take over the world and 100% of the population is going to be trans and gay. It's just that more people, Gen Z in particular, they're coming out because the world is changing. People are accepting LGBTQ plus people and we've still got a long, long ways to go but it's not anything to be afraid of. It's something to embrace and be proud of that society continues to be more and more inclusive and certainly progress isn't linear. You know oftentimes we'll take two steps forward, three steps backwards but what's important is that we continue to charge ahead. But reactionaries like Laura Ingram, the same way the reactionaries in the 20s and the 30s thought that left-handed people were evil are just fighting to maintain the status quo. I don't even know if she believes the nonsense that she's espousing. I don't know if she actually is stupid enough to think that you can turn kids gay simply by telling them about the existence of gay and trans people but what she's doing is fighting. She's digging her heels in the ground and refusing to be dragged into the future which is the future of acceptance. And she's so reactionary that her own family member decided to call her out. So she tweeted out this video saying the left is trying to destroy the children's innocence in the name of tolerance. Now no, that's not happening. We're fighting for a world where LGBTQ plus people are visible and accepted and not forced back into closets but her brother who's actually gay responded to this saying this is rich coming from my Putin loving sister who seems okay with children being killed in Ukraine. Looks like she has a new trope in hand to further rile and anger her followers. What a monster. That is her brother calling her a monster. Wow. If your own brother thinks you're a monster then you've got to be a pretty bad person because as much as I sometimes disagree with my siblings, my brother I don't think he's a monster. I think that he is well intended but sometimes we don't see eye to eye politically or ideologically but I don't think he's a monster. So for him to say that she's a monster that says a lot about Laura Ingraham. It tells me that she doesn't even believe the bullshit that she's espousing but she's doing it because her duty at Fox News as a propagandist for the Republican Party is to keep the base angry and riled up so that way they don't ever think wait a second isn't it kind of outrageous that we don't have healthcare and that my kids can't afford education? Isn't it outrageous that perpetually these oligarchs get richer but yet I still struggle to pay my rent every single month? That's what she's doing, she knows her role, she knows her job but all of this is this anti-LGBTQ plus sentiment that we're seeing from Fox News it is going to have a real world impact to the point where even the LGBTQ plus employees of Fox News are speaking up because what they're saying is actually internally Fox News it doesn't seem like they believe the things that they're espousing on television because they treat us with respect and dignity but yet these Fox News employees are speaking up because the real world impact that Fox News is having you know that's not going to insulate Fox News LGBTQ plus staffers you know even if they're treated well by the company so as Vanity Fair explains, Fox Pride denounces statements made regarding sexual orientation and gender identity on Fox News in the past week the Fox Pride Board wrote in the April 5th statement to the group's company-wide Slack channel which according to the Daily Beast includes employees from Fox brands such as Fox News and Fox Weather Fox Pride statement went on to suggest Fox News' on-air treatment of the LGBTQ plus community is at odds with the values of its own parent company while the internal support and resources Fox Corp offers to LGBTQ plus employees are amazing and supportive, the public-facing messaging and rhetoric is the opposite Fox Pride wrote we find it disheartening and a step backward in the acceptance of the LGBTQ plus community so I mean this kind of demonstrates that Fox News is just a propaganda machine they say one thing but do another I mean this goes back to COVID-19 right they were denouncing vaccine mandates and making fun of people for wearing masks but yet to work at Fox News you had to be vaccinated you had to wear masks indoors so again this is just all about feeding the outrage machine at the behest of the Republican Party which serves the interests of the rich in this country that's all that Fox News is and sometimes they'll change what they talk about because the mission never changes and currently there are an mission to demonize LGBTQ plus people and their own employees, family members of Fox News pundits are speaking out they're pushing back saying this is wrong what are you doing, it's terrible now to show you how craven Fox News is at the end of March Fox News mentioned Disney over 250 times they did 3 hours of coverage over 350 mentions of Disney and at least 53 segments on Disney and all of this was to manufacture outrage over the prospect of kids being groomed by Disney because Disney said that they're going to include more LGBTQ plus representation in movies and television shows and this comes after the scandal that they donated money to politicians that supported the homophobic don't say gay bill so they were caught and they're simply saying oh my god please please don't cancel your Disney plus subscriptions will be supportive of LGBTQ plus people will stop funding anti-gay politicians and Fox News doesn't like that they want to manufacture outrage now they're targeting Disney because Disney is doing what they don't want pushing for acceptance and it may be you know something that Disney is doing because they were caught but still we as a society are going to continue to apply pressure to companies and individuals and influential people who are trying to hold us back and that's never going to change so Laura Ingram she might now be temporarily successful this whole don't say gay campaign which is getting people to be accepting of homophobic tropes once again like the gay predator myth you know that's all temporary in the long term we see the trajectory and it is of acceptance and each generation will become more and more accepting to the point where types of things aren't going to be socially acceptable there will be a time when Fox News simply can't be explicitly homophobic and there'll be times where they'll try but society is headed in one direction and so it's important that you keep that in mind and not get discouraged if you're a gay person or a trans person and you see this rhetoric it certainly does have a demoralizing effect but long term we are headed in the right direction and these reactionaries will always push back regardless of how much progress we make them screeching louder is just evidence that we're actually winning