[Deliberately catty sigh]
One Million Moms, the vehemently right-wing group known for getting worked up over everything from Toys ‘R’ Us to Oreo Cookies to Chobani yogurt, is back with what could be its most obnoxious conviction yet.
This time, the group is targeting Jazz Jennings, the remarkable transgender teen who has inspired so many through her LGBT advocacy work and TLC series, “I Am Jazz.”
In two separate blog posts, one of which was titled “God doesn’t make mistakes (but humans do),” One Million Moms condemned the team behind “I Am Jazz,” arguing that the show aims “to desensitize America’s youth.”
“The show is attempting to normalize the transgender lifestyle and make it appear OK while using a young cast member to lure a young audience,” officials wrote in the blog.
(Wong)
I am of two minds about this sort of thing. “We don’t follow this group’s logic,” notes HuffPo Gay Voices Senior Editor Curtis M. Wong, “but when have they been logical?”
It is a fair question, but also one that begs recursively. To wit, we might wonder why we should bother attending the antics in this particular psychomoral cesspit when we already know they are both excrementally wrong and nearly entirely ineffective?
To the other, though, it really is kind of important to pay attention to these fringe jobs; we might recall another TLC-based family reality show that was more to the One Million Moms’ liking, and it turns out those prudish family values helped breed a child molester. Perhaps the American Family Association-cultivated activist movement is just hoping for some manner of petty equivocation when complaining about parents Greg and Jeanette Jennings: “Professional help would now be needed because it is a psychological issue”, the “Moms” argue, and of course they’re wrong, you know, according to, well, psychologists. But why would One Million Moms, a women’s outreach for an intrinsically misogynist organization, care about such minor details as reality?
The bigots are stung, as another family-values icon has fallen from grace, and perhaps seek a measure of comfort in hopes of canceling a show they just don’t like. If this boycott effort gains any real traction, like making the cable news cycle, watch for the equivocation, because it might seem odd to juxtapose transgenderism and child molesting, but these sorts of things have a way of coming up, and coming again; purity culture seems to have a problem with basic ideas like consent.
See how that works? They might be ineffectual when it comes to, say, boycotting Mitchum, but they still have potential to be dangerous.
That, at least, is something for “One Million Moms” to hope for. And that, in turn, is every reason to pay attention.
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Image note: Actress Jazz Jennings attends the 2015 ESPYs at Microsoft Theater on 15 July 2015 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo: Jason Merritt/Getty Images)
One Million Moms. “TLC Promoting the Transgender Lifestyle to Children”. 21 August 2015.
—————. “God doesn’t make mistakes (but humans do)”. 24 August 2015.
Wong, Curtis M. “‘Family Group’ Takes Aim At Jazz Jennings With Despicable Campaign”. The Huffington Post. 21 August 2015.
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