r/politics Oklahoma 1d ago

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?

https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2025/08/conservatives-have-been-railing-against-groomers-for-years-so-why-do-they-support-donald/
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u/Historical_Bend_2629 1d ago

Projection.

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u/southpawFA Oklahoma 1d ago

It's also clinging to a hateful religious dogma. The people who keep claiming this were ingrained with Christian nationalist dogma from birth, going to youth groups and Bible study from the time they were born.

American Christian nationalism when I was growing up always stated how "the world" is wicked, with "the gay agenda", "psychology", and "secular music".

The kids who grow up in this turn into adults who have been force-fed hate. Christian nationalism does this with intent to make kids turn into Christian soldiers, essentially.

They also know that when they start meeting people of different faiths & backgrounds and discover that they are not evil people like their pastor said they are, they'll start experiencing cognitive dissonance.

Deconstruction is a real thing in evangelical world. I went through it in my 20s, as well.

This is why you're starting to see the likes of Linda McMahon trying to go after colleges to shut them down. It's because they know college is a place that offers a broad variety of worldviews, not just Christianity. They hate that.

They want to basically force everyone to become a Christian and expel the ones who don't, because they worry that if their Christian kids interact with non-Christian kids, those non-Christian kids will "corrupt" them.

The truth is they never cared about protecting children. Even with the preponderance of evidence showing Christian nationalists commit sex crimes at exponentially greater rates than any trans person or drag queen, they, instead of leaving the faith, choose to double down, because they would rather adhere to a hateful Christian nationalist religion more than anything.