During last month’s confirmation hearings for Ketanji Brown Jackson, Senators Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley attempted to outdo each other in flinging accusations that the newest addition to the Supreme Court had betrayed a soft spot for child-sex predators during her tenure as a federal district court judge. Sensing political opportunity, some Republicans in Washington have exploited the passions brewing in the provinces.

And in a troubling sign that a movement once confined to the fringes of American politics may be shaping its contours for years to come, some 30 candidates pledging fealty to QAnon, the far-right conspiracy theory envisioning a ring of cannibalistic child-sex traffickers at the heart of the American republic, are running for Congress. According to PEN America, a third of the books banned in public schools over the past academic year contain LGBTQ+ characters and themes. Prominent right-wing activists bandy about groomer as a term of opprobrium, accusing their political adversaries of trying to sexually exploit children while invoking hoary stereotypes of gay men being pedophiles. A specter is haunting America - the specter of sexual degeneracy.Īcross the country, Republican state legislators are proposing bills to prohibit discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity in classrooms, purportedly to “protect” students from the perverted designs of predatory gay teachers.