For the past five years online, conservatives have repeatedly said that LGBTQ+ people are groomers and pedophiles. But now that thousands of documents related to notorious child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein were released – including emails from Epstein showing his close ties to the president – it’s more than a little annoying to see Republicans act like molesting children is no big deal.

Take rightwing radio host Megyn Kelly, for example, who recently pontificated that the story isn’t that bad because Epstein “wasn’t into, like, 8-year-olds” and instead trafficked “very young teenagers that could pass for even younger than they were.”

“I think there is a difference… between a 15-year-old and a 5-year-old, you know?” she said on her show Wednesday night.

For years, you couldn’t look at Twitter (now X) without seeing people calling trans and nonbinary adults predators for the crime of merely existing somewhere in the vicinity of children. Kelly herself jumped on that bandwagon, writing an essay that said that she was “done with preferred pronouns” in 2022, which was really a transphobic rant where she all but accused LGBTQ+ people of preying on children.

“Kids, too, can grow to adulthood and do what they want with their bodies. I will have empathy for them. I would never bully them,” she claimed. “But children should not be subjected to these dangerous interventions in school or at the hands of so-called medical professionals. The facilities that allow it must be stopped or shut down.”

Of course, no schools are actually performing gender-affirming surgery on kids. That wasn’t just a lie, it was an obvious, transparent lie, but it was a lie that many on the right repeated because they really wanted to believe — and make others believe — that LGBTQ+ people are a threat to children. “Look at what happens when the queers get even basic acceptance in schools,” was the argument. “They cut kids up!”

This isn’t ancient history. Kelly was calling California state Sen. Scott Wiener (D), who’s gay, “a dangerous dude” who is “very, very pro transing your child” just earlier this week. Her proof? She played a clip of him saying that parents should not be prosecuted if they support their trans kids. That was it.

Many on the right genuinely believe that the right type of person can simply do no wrong while the wrong type of person is always in the wrong.

So this is where Republicans are at the moment: You’re a threat to kids if you think that parents shouldn’t be thrown in jail for the crime of supporting their transgender children. But if you have sexually abused kids? Well, as long as they aren’t “like 8” then it’s fine. It’s not just fine, it’s grand, they might even vote for you for president.

Kelly isn’t the only one. Far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, a Trump supporter who has promoted several conspiracy theories about secret cabals of elitists molesting and sacrificing children, called the Epstein story a “nothingburger.” Jones once said that trans people wanting to use the bathroom of their gender is about “jacking with” children.

Now there’s a story that has actual proof that elites got together and harmed children, and Jones, who based his whole career on connecting obscure symbols and signs together to divine the existence of such a conspiracy, can’t believe the emails from Epstein’s estate.

Everything is grooming to conservatives except for actually molesting children.

I spend a lot of time each day reading LGBTQ+ news and discussions of LGBTQ+ issues on social media because of my job, and in the past few years, it has become taxing on my soul to keep up with the queer news because of the constant flinging of one of the worst accusations one can make with little concern for veracity.

Especially since they were meant to be attacks on me and the people I surround myself with. While I know that the claims are untrue — that LGBTQ+ people aren’t uniformly child molesters and aren’t even more likely than cis-het people to harm children — the constant accusation is intended to be psychologically damaging. It’s supposed to make LGBTQ+ people feel ashamed and excluded from society while putting a target on our backs.

So to find out not just that it’s the accusers who are more likely to support a system of power that enables this kind of abuse of children, but that they actually just plain don’t care about kids’ well-being at all, that it was always just a political football to them… is infuriating.

A lot of ink was spilled when conservatives started making every sentence they typed on social media into “noun verb groomer” about how diluting the meaning of “grooming” hurt people who were actually the victims of sexual abuse.

But what some of them, apparently including Kelly and Jones, were doing was not just diluting the meaning of the term. They had a complete disregard for what it was meant to signify. Instead, “groomer” and other child-predation terms were just insults to them, words that get people riled up. So why not just fling them around with no care for their meaning? It was all in the name of getting attention for hopping on board with the moral panic du jour.

The right won’t learn and they won’t change. Their worldview depends on elevating some people above others and protecting them from the consequences of their actions, and many on the right genuinely believe that the right type of person can simply do no wrong while the wrong type of person is always in the wrong.

That’s not how the real world works. Evidence matters when determining whether someone is guilty of a crime, while the demographics they belong don’t. And most people know this and most people from all parts of the political spectrum believe this. So anyone saying the opposite is not simply mistaken but is likely overcompensating or trying to cover for someone who is actually guilty.

That is, no one was ever stupid enough to really believe that LGBTQ+ people are inherently a threat to children. It just became a ritual practice to say it so that certain people wouldn’t have to take a hard look at who they supported.