Parenting a New Moral Panic: Anti-Queer Digital Activism and Reactionary Media Ecologies

Abstract

This article looks at the appropriation of cancel-culture activism by anti-queer parental rights activists online. By examining their digitally mediated anti-queer rhetoric, this paper studies how these activists drive public outrage to promote cultural censorship. Surveying digital campaigns by Libs of TikTok and Moms for Liberty, this paper analyzes how their media amplifies “grooming” and “pedophilia” discourses to dynamize older anti-queer stereotypes. Drawing upon the language of child protectionism from 1970s educational debates, this mediated rhetoric demonstrates how anti-queer activists have appropriated the social justice origins of cancel-culture online. By using social media to frame conservative activists as marginalized, these campaigns invert the history of anti-LGBTQ+ media and educational environments to rationalize anti-LGBTQ+ censorship. By looking at how this rhetoric flows from social media into conservative TV journalism, this paper uncovers how this digital activism shapes a broader reactionary media ecology with corrosive democratic effects in the United States.