Layer One: Ad Hominem
Here’s something you might not know: the Republican Party consistently
mobilizes to defend child marriage. That’s right, the United States remains the
only country in the world that has refused to ratify the Convention on the Rights
of the Child, which outlaws child marriage. Adults can marry children in 37
states.
Between 2000 and 2018, around 300,000 minors were married in the United
States. In at least 60,000 of those cases, the age difference would have otherwise
constituted a sex crime. Some girls were only 10 years old. Most of the marriages
are between adolescent girls and grown men. Child marriage has allowed child
rapists to legally ensnare children, especially if they get pregnant. Whenever
attempts have been made—successful and unsuccessful—to ban this practice, the
Republican Party has consistently mobilized to defend child marriage.
In New Hampshire, for example, one Republican opposed a child marriage ban,
warning that preventing anyone “of ripe, fertile age” from getting hitched would
make “abortion a much more desirable alternative.” 174 Republicans voted
against the ban.
Two years ago, in West Virginia, Republicans successfully defeated a proposed
bill to raise the minimum age for getting a marriage license.
When Wyoming proposed something similar in 2023, raising the minimum
marriage age to 16, the Republican Party send out an email saying: “Since young
men and women may be physically capable of begetting and bearing children
prior to the age of 16, marriage MUST remain open to them.”
When Missouri banned marriage for 14-year-olds in 2018, 38 Republicans voted
against it. When another bill was introduced last year, outlawing marriage for
anyone under 18, Republicans again worked to defeat it.
It won’t surprise you that the same Republicans who vote to protect child
marriage are also transphobic. In New Hampshire, the Republican who referred
to young girls as “ripe” and “fertile” also compared trans women to white people
doing blackface.
During a debate in the Missouri Senate about a bill banning gender-affirming
care for trans kids, one Democrat confronted his Republican colleague:
“You voted ‘no’ on making it illegal for kids to be married to adults at the age of
12 if their parents consented to it. You said actually that should be the law
because it’s the parents’ right and the kid’s right to decide what’s best for them.
To be raped by an adult.”
“Do you know any kids who have been married at age 12?” the Republican
responded.
“I don’t need to,” the Democrat replied.
“I do,” the Republican said, “and guess what? They’re still married.”
The Republican Party doesn’t give a damn about the well-being of children. A
Republican abortion ban in Ohio prevented a 10-year-old rape victim from
getting an abortion. In response, one Republican lawmaker said, “It is a shame
that it happens, but there’s an opportunity for that woman, no matter how young
or old she is … to help that life be a productive human being.”
The girl ended up getting an abortion in Indiana. Soon thereafter, Republicans
began drafting legislation making it illegal to travel across state lines to get an
abortion.
Donald Trump himself has a troubling history. Which includes making lecherous
comments about his daughter’s figure, starting even when she was a baby,
speculating about how big her breasts would grow. He was a close friend of
notorious sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. And, as proven in court, he raped
columnist E. Jean Carroll in the ’90s. Trump also bragged, on multiple occasions,
of walking into women’s changing rooms at his beauty pageants—including at the
Miss Teen USA pageant where some of the girls were as young as 15.
The men Trump appointed to his administration have similar rap sheets: starting
with Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who faces very credible accusations of
rape from multiple women. It’s perhaps not surprising that the notorious
alcoholic is said to favor slipping drugs into his victims’ cocktails. But, when
drunk, Hegseth once chanted “Kill all Muslims!” in a bar, so his nomination to
head the US military was never in trouble.
Hegseth’s own mother once sternly scolded him in an email, which read:
Son,
I
have
tried
to
keep
quiet
about
your
character
and
behavior,
but
after
listening
to
the
way
you
made
Samantha
[his
then-wife]
feel
today,
I
cannot
stay silent. And as a woman and your mother I feel I must speak out..
You
are
an
abuser
of
women—that
is
the
ugly
truth
and
I
have
no
respect
for
any
man
that
belittles,
lies,
cheats,
sleeps
around,
and
uses
women
for
his
own
power
and
ego.
You
are
that
man
(and
have
been
for
years)
and
as
your
mother, it pains me and embarrasses me to say that, but it is the sad, sad truth.
[…]I
don’t
want
to
debate
with
you.
You
twist
and
abuse
everything
I
say
anyway.
But…
on
behalf
of
all
the
women
(and
I
know
it’s
many)
you
have
abused in some way, I say… get some help and take an honest look at yourself…
Mom
There is also Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whom Trump picked to head the
Department of Health and Human services. No doubt due to his stellar track-
record of spreading vaccine skepticism in Polynesia, which led to deadly measles
outbreaks in several Pacific island nations—the same disease that’s currently
spreading through unvaccinated areas of the US.
Kennedy is so skillful at spreading measles that Republicans overlooked the
sexual misconduct allegations against him. In the late 1990s, Kennedy and his
second wife hired a 23-year-old babysitter. According to her, Kennedy groped her
and made her give him naked massages. In his “defense,” I guess, he said: “I am
not a church boy. I had a very rambunctious youth. I said in my announcement
speech that I have so many skeletons in my closet that if they could all vote, I
could run for king of the world.”
Then, there is Elon Musk. In 2022, Business Insider reported that Musk’s
company SpaceX paid $250,000 to a flight attendant after Musk exposed his
penis to her, and offered to buy her a horse—yes, a horse—in exchange for sex.
Eager to make sure she kept shtum about this, Musk made her sign a non-
disclosure agreement. But her friend, whom she told the story to right after it
happened, was free to corroborate Business Insider’s story.
Even Trump’s pick for Secretary of Education has a surprisingly odious record.
Linda McMahon, alongside her husband Vince, dominated the world of
professional wrestling through their notoriously abusive company, World
Wrestling Entertainmen—better known by its abbreviation, “WWE.”
Linda McMahon was specifically named in a lawsuit that alleges she knowingly
protected child predators and enabled a “culture of abuse” at the company. The
chief beneficiary of that culture was Melvin Phillips. He would hire poor, lonely
young boys between 13- and 15-years-old, as “ring boys” to help prepare
wrestling matches. Phillips would take these boys to his dressing room or hotels,
where he would molest them.
According to New York Post columnist Phil Mushnick, who interviewed Vince
McMahon, the couple “had known for some time that Mel had a peculiar and
unnatural interest and attachment to children.”
“McMahon told me that it was his great regard for children, his own personal
regard for children, that made him get rid of Mel Phillips,” Mushnick recalled.
But Linda took pity on Phillips and rehired him, because he “really missed the
wrestling.” And the abuse continued.
Somehow Linda McMahon still has the temerity to start a think tank that accuses
“radical gender ideology” of “sexualizing young children” and works to ban
educational LGBTQ books from school libraries. Really, Linda?
Also worth mentioning is Trump’s initial nominee for attorney general, Matt
Gaetz. By the time Trump picked him to become the top lawman in the country,
the Floridian was embroiled in serious investigations by the Justice Department
and the House Ethics Committee. They were investigating his role in sex-
trafficking teenage girls.
And of course we can’t forget that during his first term, Trump nominated Brett
Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, despite him being accused of raping Christine
Blasey Ford when she was 15. Kavanaugh did not consent to an FBI investigation
(in which case consent apparently does become important), but opted instead to
angrily sneer at senators during his confirmation hearing, and bizarrely cited his
high-school calendars as exculpatory evidence, because he didn’t pencil in
“commit rape” on his day-planner.
We can easily broaden this criticism to the Republican Party as a whole. After all,
this is the party that circled the wagons for Jim Jordan after he was accused of
enabling the abuse of at least 177 students at Ohio State University when he was
an assistant wrestling coach. Multiple witnesses—including some of the
victims—have said that Jordan knew the team’s physician, Richard Strauss, was
conducting very thorough “medical examinations,” some involving his mouth,
with the wrestlers that Jordan coached. But rather than protect these students,
Jim Jordan looked the other way and allowed the abuse to continue.
The longest serving Republican Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert, also
deserves a mention. In 2015 he pled guilty to molesting several teenage boys. The
judge called him a “serial child molester.” Several Republicans wrote letters to
the court pleading for leniency. Maybe they felt indebted to him for his tireless
opposition to expanding gay rights.
Do I even need to mention Roy Moore or the creepy Republican televangelist
mega-donors, such as Jim Baker and Jerry Falwell Jr., and the specter of lurid
accusations hanging over their heads? Probably not.
My point is: these are the people demonizing our trans siblings, smearing them
as perverts. Just like the original Lavender Scare, LGBTQ people are smeared as
a threat to children.
We are supposed to believe these gremlins when they bloviate about trans people
sexualizing children? We are supposed to ban books from school libraries that
aim to educate confused teenagers about things like sexual orientation and
gender identity because these freaks claim being transgender is perverted?
Considering everything I’ve just described, wouldn’t I have to be almost… well,
fucking dumb to still believe these people?
And yet, the Republican Party frequently makes TERF-style arguments. They
warn that women’s rights are being threatened by allowing trans women—or in
their words, “biological men”—in women’s spaces. So let’s talk about that.