Just when you think things can’t get any crazier comes the charge of “grooming.”  Grooming is “when someone builds a relationship, trust and emotional connection with a child or young person so they can manipulate, exploit and [sexually] abuse them.”

Recently, David Mamet, well-known American playwright, who when interviewed by Mark Levin on Fox News (4/10) said: “What we have is kids not only being indoctrinated but groomed, in a very real sense, by people who are, whether they know it or not, sexual predators….That has always been the problem with education.  Teachers are inclined, particularly men because men are predators, to pedophilia.” Thank goodness these remarks provoked a lot of outrage.  Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, spoke for teachers everywhere, calling Mamet’s remarks “a repulsive demonization of the very people who have been a lifeline to our kids.”

But, unfortunately – and unbelievably – Mamet is far from alone.  Fox News, with hosts who are right-wing conspiracy theorists like Mark Levin, has become an echo chamber for grooming accusations.  Laura Ingraham calls public schools “grooming centers” and tells parents to send their children to private schools. Tucker Carlson, the most watched Fox commentator, did a segment on this where the banner at the bottom was: “Democrats are losing their minds because parents want to protect their kids from grooming.”

Of course, Fox News and the Republican Party are in synch, as usual.  Feeding the controversy is Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ “Parental Rights in Education Bill,” dubbed by the critics as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, which limits what can be taught about sexual orientation and gender identity in early grades. DeSantis’ press secretary Christian Pushaw calls it anti-grooming legislation. She charges: “If you’re against the Anti-Grooming Bill, you are probably a groomer, or at least you don’t denounce the grooming of 4-8 year old children. Silence is complicity”

The controversy was further fueled as the Walt Disney Company, a major Florida institution, opposed the bill and is calling for its repeal.  DeSantis immediately threatened Disney with revoking laws that have favored it.  Republican Senators like Marsha Blackburn (TN) concurred.  Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene went further: “The immoral, disgusting, evil left is attacking our children. They are child predators. I’m not kidding you. Look at what is happening at Disney right now. Disney wants to completely take your children and they want to indoctrinate them into sexual, immoral filth.”  Even President Biden has taken a position, calling the Florida bill “hateful,” only to be accused by a host of One America News, Chanel Rion, as “the groomer-in-chief.”

This insanity goes far beyond the Florida legislation.  I would hope that most people who saw the hearings for Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson were appalled by Republican Senators Josh Hawley (Missouri) and Ted Cruz’s (Texas) attempt to paint Justice Jackson as soft on child pornographers and pedophiles.  Three brave Republican Senators voted to confirm her.  Congresswoman Greene tweeted: “Murkowski, Collins, and Romney are pro-pedophile.”  As are presumably all the Democrats.  Not all Republican legislators have said such awful and ridiculous things – but there has been little in the way of denial.  And, in this case, DeSantis’ press secretary is right: Silence is complicity.

What were the outrageous extreme views of QAnon have moved from the fringes of the Republican Party to its center.  Before QAnon, Pizzagate was a more-than-fringe conspiracy that emails by associates of Hillary Clinton contained coded messages from Democratic National Committee members sponsoring pedophilia and a sex-trafficking ring.  Ordering a cheese pizza, the initials CP stood for “child porn.”  As if that wasn’t crazy enough, QAnon added baby-eating and blood drinking to the pedophilia charges and applied it to the whole Democratic Party.

As an educator, I feel very sorry for our teachers.  Their plight just gets more and more difficult.  The teaching profession has been under attack for decades.  Teachers have been blamed for everything from low test scores to the state of the economy.  Surveys of teachers used to report that a high percentage of teachers would like their children to become teachers.  In recent years, that percentage is abysmally low.  Legislators have increasingly treated teachers as workers to be monitored and controlled.  The recent controversies over school closures, vaccinations, and wearing masks have led to attacks on schools and teachers. Legislation making it harder to teach about racism and history makes it more difficult for teachers to do a professional job.

It is hard to write about all this without feeling both a deep sense of despair and anger.  How did the United States, most particularly, the Republican Party come to this?  How do we as a nation survive this?  I can’t respond to those questions here.  But I believe that the world, over the long haul, is changing for the better.  More people identify as anti-racist. More people are comfortable with different sexual orientations and identities (over 20% of Generation Z identifies as non-binary!).  Yes, all this makes many people anxious, and the Republican Party is playing on that anxiety, but I believe good sense will win out – eventually!