One of the reasons Yiannopoulos’s latest comments are so abhorrent is that he, as a gay man, is tapping into a pernicious myth that has been historically used to oppose the rights of the LGBTQ community: the idea that gay men are sexual deviants who approve of all sorts of abhorrent behavior, including pedophilia and child sexual abuse. Yiannopoulos, perhaps inadvertently, played into this myth by arguing that there’s an upside to sexual molestation. [...]
The myth of a link between homosexuality and pedophilia is far from new. Retired University of California Davis professor Gregory Herek explained: “Back in 1977, when Anita Bryant campaigned successfully to repeal a Dade County (FL) ordinance prohibiting anti-gay discrimination, she named her organization ‘Save Our Children,’ and warned that ‘a particularly deviant-minded [gay] teacher could sexually molest children.’” [...]
Before trans people faced this myth, other minority groups were attacked on the basis of bathrooms as well. Fears of bathroom attacks were used to defend segregation — by invoking fears that black men would attack white women in bathrooms. And fears of gay men in bathrooms were constantly perpetuated to demonize gay people, such as the 1961 anti-gay PSA “Boys Beware” that warned that “public restrooms can often be a hangout for the homosexual.”
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