Moral Entrepreneurs and the "Boogeyman de Jour"

"Transgender people want to go into bathrooms, assault women, and rape kids."

The fear that innocent women, children and the treasured institutions of the USA are going to be warped by people not fitting themselves into the established gender paradigm is simply a new iteration of a longstanding methodology.

There is a long history in this country of the Moral Police peddling fear about all kinds of "different" people that are going to destroy the fabric of the USA. Between 1845 and 1850, when around one million Irish came into the USA, the moral police came out and railed against these Mick "Papists" that would fill our cities and destroy America. Then it was Italians and Jews about forty years later, it was Blacks coming up out of the South to Northern cities, it was Chinese, opium and the "Yellow Peril", it was Mexicans smoking marijuana and going on murder binges, it was jazz and jazz musicians that were destroying America, it was the dangerous move of Truman racially integrating the military and causing its inevitable collapse, it was Vietnamese driven as refugees by the war there that were a threat...on and on and on.

The Stonewall Riots in the 60s gave what sociologist Howard Becker called the Moral Entrepreneurs of the USA a fresh target: the Homo Peril. As homosexuals went from quietly asking the Establishment for some level of acceptance to advocates for equality, the Moral Police trotted out every possible argument about how "The Queers" were going to destroy the fabric of American society. Soon they'd be in your schools, molesting your kids! Queers will be pressing up against you at work! We must do something! Homosexuals were a great target because as racism was becoming somewhat passé, the Bible condemns homosexuality! Whoo hoo!

Now that homosexuals have pretty much gone the road of assimilation, a new boogeyman was needed, some marginalized group that can be trotted out as the new threat de jour...let's see....aha! Transgender people that want to go into bathrooms, assault women and rape kids! Oh no! We must do something about this! Even though there is not one...NOT ONE.. reported incident of an actual TG person attacking a woman or a kid in a bathroom, this new boogeyman will fly high for a while. The "horror" that women, kids and treasured institutions will be mangled by guys who think they are women will have decent play for some amount of time, as it fits the bill of "moral decay."

I suspect in a few years, as this one heads out of the mind of Americans, some new fear will need to be found, some horrid boogeyman that lurks in the shadows, waiting to do something destructive to the fabric of American society. Sociologist Barry Glassner wrote a seminal work on this topic called "The Culture of Fear." It really is required reading for anyone that wants to see how Moral Entrepreneurs peddle this nonsense to the public via the media, and people who like their information in simple, easy to digest bites scarf it down like a starving dog given a bowl of food.

Just as views on gay marriage literally turned 180 degrees in about 14 years, from 57% disapproving and 35% approving in 2001, to 55% approving and 39% disapproving in 2015 , I suspect that in fairly short order, Americans will start to be less concerned about this, the Moral Police will find another disappointing end to this moral crusade, and a new boogeyman will need to be found. What that group will be is an interesting question.