The hatred shown to the LBGTQ community instigated by evangelical groups has taught us a new word. They claim that there is a strategic program, which includes teachers and schools who are hell bent on “grooming” children to convert their thinking so that they will cease to be heterosexual.
Evangelical donor money has influenced conservative lawmakers to create laws to stifle healthy discussion of gender studies and this includes banning books. Conservative leaders have politicized hatred of the LBGTQ community and created unjust laws to prohibit free speech for a situation they created in their minds that does not exist. It is a deliberate distraction from the real problem.
The real problem is something far more dangerous that does exist: it is real grooming taking place in this country. It is society's grooming of our young children to be violent. The continual war of words over second amendment rights, the insane protection of civilian possession of weapons of war, the fact that there are more guns in this country than there are people, the fact that our entertainment spectrum is permeated with violence and graphic scenes of bodies being torn apart is part of our grooming. We are desensitizing our youth to violence. The continual mass killings in schools and all of our public places is the outcome.
It is the result of our grooming our children to be violent, either inadvertently or for profit. Some easily influenced children demonstrate this indoctrination by the violent acts of cowardly murders of unsuspecting people in the normal course of daily living. This is what they see in movies and video games. They have been groomed since childhood to see killing as normal and even to aspire to it. Gruesome murders are shown as heroic.
Conservative politicians support and encourage this behavior by refusing to make changes in the laws to protect people from the epidemic of mass murders. Donor money from the NRA and pro-gun organizations is payment for permitting ongoing domestic violence which terrorizes the population, especially children in schools who are sitting ducks.
Evangelical groups and others should be adamant about stopping this real problem and use the power of the strength of their combined political influence to create change. Murder is the real and terrifying problem that must be immediately resolved. Gender issues are a political distraction.
Nancy Tomaselli
Hernando