Bias Watch

Christian preacher says kids are turning trans because gay couples started adopting kids

Aaron Thompson
Aaron Thompson Photo: Screenshot

Preacher Aaron Thompson of the Verity Baptist Church in Vancouver, Washington told congregants that trans kids just started existing in recent years because gay couples started adopting. And there are many in more mainstream parts of the right that agree with his outlandish assertion.

“When Joe Biden is holding like some LGBTQ+AI-whatever you wanna call it, have this big thing at the White House and he’s like, ‘Aw, it’s the poor trans kids-‘” Thompson said sarcastically before shouting at the top of his lungs: “There’s no such things as trans kids!”

“It’s groomers telling them that they’re trans. There’s no such thing as that. It just isn’t true,” he insisted. “Show me all the trans kids from the last 6,000 years. You’re not gonna find them because, you know what? Homos weren’t allowed to adopt people back then. That’s a new thing.”

Of course, transgender people have existed for more than 6,000 years and gender diversity can be found in all cultures and time periods. Conservatives have just started caring about transgender kids more in the past several years, and, since they can’t accept that something may exist that they don’t know about, they refuse to believe that they existed before then.

Thompson, whose church is a part of the extreme anti-LGBTQ+ New Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (New IFB) movement, may seem like a fringe character on the right due to his use of slurs in church and the New IFB movement’s support for anti-LGBTQ+ violence. But the belief that transgender people – and transgender kids specifically – just started existing at around the time that Republicans and their supporters decided that it would be politically beneficial to attack them is shared broadly on the right.

The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh, whose anti-transgender activism has helped build support for attacks on transgender rights, said earlier this week that “transgenderism never existed” until feminism appeared. He lashed out at feminism, calling it “aggressively anti-family since its inception,” and then he blamed feminists for creating transgender people. His statements were part of a larger diatribe against TERFs (transgender exclusionary radical feminists) or “gender criticals” claiming to be leaders in the fight against transgender rights.

“These women will absurdly try to flip this around and claim that those of us with more ‘traditional’ views on sex are the ones who somehow set the sage for transgenderism,” Walsh ranted. “But our view was dominate [sic] for millennia and transgenderism never existed during that time. Feminism comes along and trans ideology follows almost immediately behind it. Try to piece this together, ladies. It’s not a coincidence.”

Don't forget to share:

Support vital LGBTQ+ journalism

Reader contributions help keep LGBTQ Nation free, so that queer people get the news they need, with stories that mainstream media often leaves out. Can you contribute today?

Cancel anytime · Proudly LGBTQ+ owned and operated

Robert F Kennedy Jr is trying to use his muscular son to get votes. It’s not working.

Previous article

Lauren Boebert rages at Pete Buttigieg for problem House Republicans aren’t solving

Next article