Republicans are fighting to stop sexualization of children, not Democrats

Five days ago, a Boise junior high teacher and basketball coach was charged with the rape and sexual battery of a minor child. Eric McDermott first groomed his victim in class and then over a social media “dating site,” where he asked the boy to send sexually explicit photos.

Sadly, McDermott’s conduct has become all too commonplace. Over the last few years, teachers, coaches, ministers, police officers, and firefighters have all been implicated in crimes ranging from the rape of minor children to downloading and sharing child pornography.

What makes this particular case troublesome is that McDermott was a leading activist in pushing a radical LGBTQ+ agenda on Idaho. 

The problem isn’t that all people who ascribe to the LGBTQ+ ideology are predators, it is that this ideology provides cover for predators. Regardless of how the Left and their friends in the Democrat Party will spin this, the central issue remains: the Left advocates for the sexualization of children. 

In seeking to change age of consent laws, spread pornographic material to minors, and allow adult entertainment to spread to venues like public parks and school auditoriums, Democrats are doing the work of individuals who actually seek to do our children harm. 

Take for instance the fight over single-sex restroom or changing facilities. Democrat figures like far left commentator Jim Jones cavalierly dismiss concerns about threats to child safety, claiming that laws that protect single-sex bathrooms and changing facilities or oppose the proliferation of pornography in schools are “extreme.” But these laws are actually central to a high trust society: where women could once rely on a social convention to keep men who would harm them out of their private spaces, like bathrooms and locker rooms, now women are compelled to allow men in these spaces, and predators can take advantage of that new social experiment. And predators are taking advantage of these changing conventions: just last week in Wisconsin, an 18-year-old biological male entered a school locker room showers with four minor girls and exposed his male genitalia to them.

Idaho Democrats — and their constellation of far left activist groups like Reclaim Idaho and the newly-formed Idaho Leaders United — oppose efforts to protect children from California pornographers and Big Pharma.

To pushback on this radical agenda targeting our children, Idaho’s families must move forward on two fronts: (1) we must persuade the State Legislature to enact commonsense protections for our children, keeping them free from the dangerous ideology that allows pedophiles and rapists to hide in plain sight; (2) we must hold local government, including school boards, accountable. Boise’s school boards have been relatively ambivalent about the recent uptick in crimes against minors and there is speculation in the news media that several administrators had reason to know McDermott was a child predator but did nothing to stop his actions. We must work ourselves to ensure local leaders are held accountable. The Idaho Democrat Party says the protection of children is extreme. Idaho’s Republican Party is proudly committed to the commonsense protection of children and opposes their sexualization. We support punishment for sexual predators and we support the long-standing social conventions that make predators easier to spot and easier to stop.