{"id":166667,"date":"2026-02-06T12:42:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-06T12:42:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/166667\/"},"modified":"2026-02-06T12:42:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-06T12:42:08","slug":"maga-cant-stop-pretending-it-cares-about-kids","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/166667\/","title":{"rendered":"MAGA can’t stop pretending it cares about kids"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The latest nauseant from MAGA types pretending to care about children was dished up last week<\/a>, but amid the internment of kindergartners<\/a>, the slashing of funds to catch child predators and a measles outbreak<\/a> at a detention center, you are forgiven for missing it. <\/p>\n

I am talking about a coordinated campaign launched by the religious right<\/a> to overturn gay marriage, arguing it harms children. The effort is a direct attack on the Supreme Court\u2019s 2015 Obergefell vs. Hodges<\/a> decision making same-sex marriage a fundamental right of equality under the 14th Amendment, but also seeks to engage churches on the issue and change public opinion. <\/p>\n

Good luck with that last part. Most Americans support marriage equality. But the Supreme Court? That\u2019s much iffier these days. <\/p>\n

But what disturbs me the most, while we wait for litigation, is that the campaign is yet another disingenuous ploy by MAGA to use children as an excuse for attacking civil rights, and attempting, Christian nationalist-style, to impose religious values on general society.<\/p>\n

MAGA frames so much hate \u2014 especially around immigrants and diversity \u2014 as protection of children, and through decades\u2019 worth of conspiracy theory has attempted to paint LGBTQ+ parents as deviant and predatory. (QAnon, for example, was all about saving kids from gay and Democratic predators.<\/a>) <\/p>\n

In reality, it\u2019s the MAGA folks who are traumatizing children. <\/p>\n

\u201cOur children are afraid. They\u2019re terrorized,\u201d Chauntyll Allen told me. She\u2019s the St. Paul, Minn., school board member who was arrested recently for her part in the church protest of a pastor who is also an ICE official<\/a>. <\/p>\n

\u201cAnd we\u2019re not just talking about immigrants,\u201d she continued. All kids \u201care watching this, they\u2019re experiencing this, and they\u2019re carrying the terror in their body. What is this going to do for our society in 20 years?\u201d<\/p>\n

This campaign to undo marriage equality, far from protecting kids, is just another injury inflicted on them for political gain. It features two<\/a> California<\/a> cases that are meant to show how terrible any form of same-sex parenting is, but mischaracterizes<\/a> the facts for maximum outrage.<\/p>\n

The campaign also specifically targets in vitro fertilization<\/a> and surrogacy as dangerous gateways to promoting LGBTQ+ families, an increasingly common position in far-right religious circles that would like to see more white women having babies through sex with white husbands. <\/p>\n

Attacking marriage equality isn\u2019t about protecting children any more than deporting immigrants is about stopping crime. Allowing it to be framed that way actually puts in danger the stability of the approximately 300,000 kids nationwide who are being raised by about 832,000 couples in same-sex marriages<\/a>. <\/p>\n

It endangers the physical and mental health of LGBTQ+ kids in any family who are growing up in a world that is increasingly hostile to them \u2014 with gender and identity hate crimes<\/a> on the rise. <\/p>\n

And it endangers everyone who values a free and fair democracy that separates church and state by eroding the rights of the vulnerable as precedent for eroding the rights of whomever ticks them off next. If LGBTQ+ marriages aren\u2019t legally protected, how long before racists come for the Loving decision, which legalized interracial marriage?<\/p>\n

If you doubt the MAGA agenda extends that far, when Second Lady Usha Vance recently announced her fourth pregnancy, one lovely fellow on social media wrote,<\/a> \u201cThere is nothing exciting about this. We will never vote for your race traitor husband.\u201d <\/p>\n

Hate is a virus that spreads how it pleases. <\/p>\n

Those behind the effort to undo marriage equality say that by legalizing the ability for LGBTQ+ folks to tie the knot, America put \u201cadult desires\u201d<\/a> ahead of children\u2019s well-being, which is dependent on being raised in a home that includes a married man and woman. <\/p>\n

Never mind the millions of kids being raised by single parents, grandparents (looking at you, JD Vance) or other guardians who aren\u2019t the biological John-and-Jane mommy and daddy of conservative lore. Never mind the many same-sex marriages that don\u2019t include kids. <\/p>\n

\u201cAmericans need to understand the threat that gay marriage poses to children and that natural marriage is directly connected to children protection,\u201d Katy Faust, the leader of the campaign, said in an interview<\/a> with a Christian news website.<\/p>\n

Of course, the campaign also makes no mention of the hundreds of children currently held in detention camps around the country \u2014 on some days, the number of children locked up just by ICE (not Border Patrol or in the care of other agencies) has skyrocketed to 400 under Trump, according to the Marshall Project<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Outside of lockup, Black and brown children are being traumatized daily by the fear that they or their parents will be taken or even killed by federal agents. Thousands of kids across the country, including in California, have stopped going to school and other public places for fear of endangering themselves or their families. Don\u2019t expect to see these folks campaigning to protect those kids. <\/p>\n

The campaign also ignores the fact that U.S. Department of Justice funding<\/a> to combat sex crimes against children was just slashed, leaving victims and prosecutors without crucial resources to fight that real and undoubtedly harmful exploitation of our youth by sex traffickers. <\/p>\n

And Epstein. I cannot even start on save-the-children folks who seemingly ignore the victims of the sex crimes detailed in those files \u2014 many of them children at the time \u2014 while wringing their hands over families who don\u2019t look like their own. It is a mind-blowing amount of hypocrisy. <\/p>\n

But of course, none of this is about saving children \u2014 yours, mine or anyone\u2019s. <\/p>\n

But framing it around protecting children is a powerful manipulation \u2014 a last-ditch effort as same sex marriage does in fact become more accepted. Because who doesn\u2019t want to save our kids? From whatever. <\/p>\n

Don\u2019t be surprised if this effort gains traction in coming months. As we head into elections, the MAGA machine will attempt to turn the lens away from immigration and back to old-school issues such as feminism, abortion and same-sex marriage, which time and again its base has been willing to vote on regardless of what else is happening. <\/p>\n

Because they actually don\u2019t care about kids. They care about power, and they\u2019re perfectly willing to exploit kids to get it. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The latest nauseant from MAGA types pretending to care about children was dished up last week, but amid…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":166668,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[3705,3409,7323,2329,7363,723,4416,80324,9614,3982,3410,48,52,51,80325,47,50,49,24359,30969,8702],"class_list":["post-166667","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-campaign","tag-child","tag-church","tag-civil-right","tag-country","tag-crime","tag-effort","tag-equality","tag-fact","tag-immigrant","tag-kid","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-lgbtq-family","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-maga","tag-same-sex-marriage","tag-sex"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166667","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=166667"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166667\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/166668"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=166667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=166667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=166667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}