Anti-LGBTQ Rhetoric Quadrupled In Month After Don’t Say Gay Bill

Online anti-LGBTQ rhetoric implying queer people are “groomers” or “pedophiles” or “predators” quadrupled the month following the passage of Florida’s Don’t Say Gay bill. The law, which went into effect July 1, bans instruction about sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through third grade. More from NBC News:

The month after the Florida Senate passed the Parental Rights in Education bill, or what critics have dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, on March 8, tweets mentioning the LGBTQ community alongside these slurs increased 406%, according to the report, which was conducted by the LGBTQ advocacy group Human Rights Campaign and the nonprofit Center for Countering Digital Hate.

To evaluate the increase in rhetoric related to “grooming”, researchers collected a sample of 989,547 tweets that were posted between Jan. 1 and July 27 and that mentioned the LGBTQ community alongside words including “groomer” and “pedophile.”

They found that an average of 6,607 tweets a day used such rhetoric in the month after the bill passed, a significant increase from 1,307 tweets the month before.

The day after Gov. DeSantis signed the bill into law, tweets with the phrase ‘OK groomer’ peaked with 9,219 total, or about one every nine seconds. Read more at NBC News.

In the weeks following the passage of Florida’s so-called “Don’t Say Gay” bill, an average of 6,607 tweets a day used slurs such as “groomer,” “pedophile” and “predator” in relation to the LGBTQ community.https://t.co/V1V2FxW2r5

— NBC Out (@NBCOUT) August 12, 2022