*Editor’s Note: This is a contribution from Dillon Naber Cruz, author of the forthcoming book Theological Musings, from Quoir Publishing, August 27, 2023.
In 2016 a high-profile professional footballer was sentenced to six years in prison in England. It was a tremendous scandal because the player in question was a Premier League player who had been capped a dozen times by the English national team. Because of his talent, Adam Johnson had the world at his feet. He had money, fame, and professional success as a top flight footballer in one of the best leagues in the world. He was also a pedophile who knowingly groomed a fifteen-year-old kid who was a fan of both Johnson and his team, Sunderland A.F.C. Johnson intentionally used his celebrity status as a professional footballer over a course of time in order to get her to engage in sexual activity with him. At his trial, after having denied the charges, he eventually plead guilty to charges of grooming and sexual activity with a child. He was also found guilty on another charge of sexual activity with a child.
The trial judge noted that Johnson knew the victim’s age at the time of his crimes stating, “That was known to you — to put it another way she had only just turned 15 when you began grooming her, because as you were to admit you found her sexually attractive. You made a deliberate decision to engage in sexual activity with this young girl, no doubt in the expectation that you would get away with it.” It was a calculated and disgusting act on Johnson’s part for which he was rightly punished.
At that time, I had never heard the term grooming in a legal sense and in a soccer message board discussion about the case, I asked some people in the UK what it meant. Once they told me what it meant, the term made complete sense. After the Johnson case, I would only here the term sporadically and always in the legal context. Then a few years later I suddenly started seeing people accusing all manner of people of grooming on social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook. The accusers were always people who identified as right wing politically, who were generally Trump supporters, and they were often targeting LGBTQIA people and their allies. This was driven by extremists like Chris Rufo, Matt Walsh, and Rob Dreher, all of whom are intent on waging a culture war against anything and anyone who is not white, cisgender, straight, and a conservative Christian. Dreher stated that, “I think it is coming to have a somewhat broader meaning: an adult who wants to separate children from a normative sexual and gender identity, to inspire confusion in them, and to turn them against their parents and all the normative traditions and institutions in society. It may not specifically be to groom them for sexual activity, but it is certainly to groom them to take on a sexual/gender identity at odds with the norm.”
Let’s briefly examine Dreher’s comment. First of all, as in the UK, there is a legal definition of grooming in the U.S. The Justice Department describes grooming as, “…a method used by offenders that involves building trust with a child and the adults around a child in an effort to gain access to and time alone with her/him. In extreme cases, offenders may use threats and physical force to sexually assault or abuse a child. More common, though, are subtle approaches designed to build relationships with families.” That shows that extremists are knowingly using the word incorrectly in their disingenuous culture war. Secondly, despite Dreher’s hate based ignorance, there is nothing abnormal about being gay, lesbian, transgender, nonbinary, asexual, bisexual, et al. Those ways of being human are just as normal as being cisgender and straight. LGBTQIA people have always existed.
With that in mind, remember that people throwing around the word groomer are using it inappropriately, often with intention, in order to incite hatred and even violence against LGBTQIA people. This is a calculated campaign by bad faith actors from the extreme right and “grooming” is not a reflection of who and what LGBTQIA people are. If people like Dreher, Rufo, Walsh, and their Republican allies like Ron DeSantis actually cared about protecting kids from predators, they would be far better served by getting pedophiles out of ministry or other positions such as athletic coaching. Not a day goes by that I don’t see another conservative, usually a white Christian male, being charged with or convicted of sexual crimes against children. I never see those news stories about drag queens, gay men, lesbians, or Trans people.
During this Pride month, allies need to stand up against the Christofascists to support and protect our LGBTQIA neighbors who are being targeted simply for being who they are. There is no gay or trans agenda to make kids gay or trans. LGBTQIA people are not grooming kids. They just want to live their lives safely and happily, and they want to be who they are, just like straight people do.
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