'Grooming' and 'pro-pedophile' surge as conservative buzzwords amid battle over 'Don't Say Gay' bill

• "Grooming" and "pro-pedophile" have become attack buzzwords among conservatives recently.
• Disney's criticism of Florida's "Don't Say Gay" bill sparked backlash from prominent conservatives.

A group of right-wing protesters and conspiracy theorists gathered outside Disneyland's entrance in California on Wednesday to rally against "grooming," following weeks of similar rallies against Disney — the latest in a growing culture war trend of conservatives accusing opponents of corrupting children.

Prominent republicans and far-right influencers have spent weeks baselessly accusing Disney of grooming children after the company withdrew its support from Florida's controversial "Don't Say Gay" bill, which will restrict public school instructors from talking to K-3 students about "sexual identity and gender orientation." Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the bill into law in late March.

Grooming, which refers to people using manipulative strategies to coerce children, teens, or vulnerable adults into being sexually abused, has become the latest conservative attack buzzword against democrats (and companies), alongside "pedophile." The narrative echoes age-old fearmongering tactics used by conservatives to foster moral panic and baselessly link the LGBTQ community with predatory behavior.

The recent protests in California have been organized by Sean Feucht, a Christian music artist and right-wing "patriot pastor" who has helped lead the accusations against Disney. The protest on Wednesday attracted fewer than a hundred people, according to NBC News reporter Ezra Kaplan who tweeted from the rally.

Many conservatives have misleadingly called Florida's law an anti-grooming bill, despite that teaching children about gender orientation has no connection to grooming. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has been one of the loudest voices in this culture war moment. Greene baselessly accused Disney of wanting to "take your children, and they want to indoctrinate them into sexual immoral filth," and tweeted on April 6 that the Democrats are the party of "grooming and transitioning children, and pro-pedophile politics."

Meanwhile, DeSantis' Press Secretary, Christina Pushaw, tweeted that anyone against the Florida law — which she called the "Anti-Groomer Bill" — is "probably a groomer or at least you don't denounce the grooming of 4-8 year old children." In early April, far-right commentator Jack Posobiec tweeted a link to purchase a shirt with Disney's castle logo and the text "Boycott Groomers" and "Bring Ammo."

A host of the far-right news network One America News called President Joe Biden the "groomer-in-chief" on Saturday, while Candace Owens, in a tweet about Disney's decision to not support the Florida bill, said the company has "now openly admitted they have a not so secret agenda with your children" and wrote "child groomers and pedophiles."

Usage of the word "grooming" as a political tactic dates back to at least the conservative activist Christopher Rufo, who instructed his followers to use that word along with "political predators" in a Twitter thread in August 2021 about "winning the language war."

The backlash against Disney came around the same time as senator Josh Hawley launched similar attacks against Ketanji Brown Jackson during her Supreme Court confirmation hearing. He misleadingly accused her of imposing light punishments in child sex abuse cases, which the White House Deputy Press Secretary Andrew Bates called a "QAnon-signaling smear."

Hawley's argument became a popular refrain among the GOP and was adopted online by prominent QAnon conspiracists like Ron Watkins and Liz Crokin, who promoted conspiracies in widely viewed Telegram channels about Jackson going easy on pedophilia. QAnon has a long history of propagating baseless conspiracy theories focused on "saving" children from what the movement believes is an international cabal of child traffickers.

Jared Holt, a resident fellow at the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensics Research Lab, previously told Insider that the Republicans' "hyper-focus on Jackson's record of sentencing child pornography cases" directly led to online QAnon communities sinking their teeth into the narrative.

"The Republicans who keep bringing this up and invoking this don't have to take it all the way," Holt said. "These communities will often do that for them."

Before Jackson was confirmed to the Supreme Court, Greene called Sen. Mitt Romney, Lisa Murkowski, and Susan Collins "pro-pedophile" for saying they supported Jackson and said any senator who voted to confirm her is "pro-pedophile."