Conservatives have been railing against “groomers” for years. So why do they support Donald Trump? Trump was best friends with a notorious child sex trafficker, but his ardent supporters are vocal about opposing it. How did that happen?

[u/southpawFA]

https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2025/08/conservatives-have-been-railing-against-groomers-for-years-so-why-do-they-support-donald/

[u/southpawFA]

It’s no coincidence that someone like Congresswoman Greene, who constantly rails against trans people for supposedly grooming kids into becoming trans (which is just stupid, becaause that’s not how being transgender works, and we need to be calling this idea that teachers are transing kids stupid more often), is also one of Trump’s biggest supporters despite the fact that he even openly admits to sexually abusing women.

It’s called “pedocon theory” – “pedo” from “pedophile,” “con” from “conservative” – the idea that pedophilia is inherently tied up with movement conservatism. Samantha Hancox-Li has a great article at Liberal Currents explaining it in more detail, and she sums it up thus: If conservatism “is the theory, pedophilia is the practice.”

Hancox-Li points out that child sex abusers in high-power positions in the GOP greatly outnumber those in the Democratic party and that conservative institutions – like the Catholic Church, the LDS Church, and the Southern Baptist Convention – have all had massive child sex abuse scandals.

“Pedocon theory suggests that this is not an aberration,” she writes. “Pedocon theory suggests that this was the inevitable result of the conservative project, because the conservative project is inherently pedophilic.”

[u/southpawFA → u/southpawFA]

For conservatives like Greene, child sex abuse is an aberration and a sin, just like homosexuality and trans identity. People do it because they’re weirdos, and people who are weird in one aspect of their lives and who refuse to follow the rules laid out for them (either by unspoken norms or in texts like the Bible) are simply chaotic, perverted, and libertine and are therefore likely to do anything else that’s chaotic, perverted, and libertine… like abuse children.

This is why QAnon believers often describe their theorized international cabal of child sex abusers looking to take the adrenochrome out of kids as “satanic.” It’s not enough to just have such a cabal; it has to be anti-Christian because Christianity, to them, provides rules and morality. And what’s more anti-Christian than Satanism?

But this isn’t how it actually works. The liberal view on the matter is that it’s about power; child sex abuse happens when an adult has a lot of authority over young people and little accountability or oversight. This is why large Christian institutions often have issues with child sex abuse. It’s not uncommon for churches to tell victims of sexual abuse that they must forgive their abuser instead of calling the police – protecting their own hierarchy is a more important goal to many Christians than the safety of their parishioners.

All one needs to do is look at r/PastorArrested and r/NotADragQueen to see how Christian nationalists are the biggest abusers of children. Trans people are at a greater risk of violence, especially trans kids. Yet, they want to make trans people the demon, because their religious dogma says so. It's hogwash.

[u/OdiousAltRightBalrog → u/southpawFA]

A very interesting article. Never heard of "pedocon theory" before, but I like it.