Illinois Republican Congresswoman Mary Miller is very concerned about "the children."
On January 6, 2021, she stood at the rally outside the US Capitol and said, "Hitler was right about one thing, 'whoever has the youth has the future,'" which managed to be one of the few standout moments that day other than the large group of people literally trying to overthrow the government because the election did not go their way.
Rep. Miller has a lot of strong opinions about the youth of our country. She is very concerned about teachers "sexualizing" children by informing them of the existence of LGBTQ people and wishes to see this rectified by bringing "God" back into our schools. In February of this year, she told Candace Owens at CPAC that she saw this "threat" coming, saying, "We need to tell our kids that we're created by God, they have a gift, they have a purpose, and put that back in the public schools as a foundation," even though that is illegal.
Illinois Republican Congresswoman Mary Miller's good buddy Bradley Graven is also very concerned about "the children," albeit in a somewhat different way.
In 2003, Graven was arrested for indecent solicitation of a child in a sting operation, after making plans to meet what he thought was a 12-year-old boy in a drugstore parking lot to engage in sexual activities. He then lost his contract job in the office of then-Illinois Republican Treasurer Judy Baar Topinka. He later pleaded guilty and was convicted and sentenced to 40 days in prison and two years of probation in 2005.
These days, however, Graven is out there soliciting signatures to get Rep. Miller on the upcoming primary ballot, driving her and her family to and from campaign stops and events in her personal vehicle, being photographed with her at said events, helping to raise money, and generally working real hard to get her elected. While he's not on the campaign payroll and says he is just an unpaid campaign volunteer, the fact that he's driven her around personally suggests she knows him and hangs around with him.
At several of these campaign stops, NBC reports, Miller repeatedly told her supporters that they can judge politicians by who they hang around with.
Via KSDK.com:
"A politician is known by their votes and by who they hang around with," Miller told supporters on Monday night in Quincy. [...]
Last month, Miller told supporters at the Moultrie County Lincoln Day Dinner that, “I always told my children that I could tell a lot about who they are by who they hang around with. It’s the same thing in D.C. with the adults.” [...]
"I believe a politician is known by their votes and the company they keep," Miller told a Schuyler County Republican gathering in March.
And for Miller, that company is Bradley Graven. Well, Bradley Graven and Marjorie Taylor Greene.
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So much of Miller's rhetoric has been centered on "protecting the children," albeit near-exclusively in ways that hurt LGBTQ children and adults. Her first bill was meant to discriminate against transgender children and adults in both bathrooms and on sports teams, grotesquely titled the "Safety and Opportunity for Girls Act."
In April, she tweeted, “The Biden Administration is engaging in extreme ‘woke’ politics by encouraging children to take chemical castration drugs and undergo surgeries, and they are lying to children by telling them puberty blockers are ‘reversible,’” none of which is true. No one is "encouraging" children to do anything (other than meet them in a drugstore parking lot for sex, but that's just Miller's buddy) and puberty blockers are entirely reversible and have already been used, safely, for over 30 years to treat precocious puberty.
She has claimed that those who oppose Florida's "Don't Say Gay" bill are looking to "indoctrinate children" with "gender ideology."
Graven is not the only one of Miller's acquaintances who is one case of Mike's Hard Lemonade away from Chris Hansen asking them to "take a seat." The Washington Examiner reports that a source says that the summer camp run by her family has twice featured Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore as a guest speaker.
It's never, ever been about "the children" for people like Mary Miller, who has no problem hanging around a convicted child predator and letting him drive her own family around. It's never been about protecting the children, or fearing that somehow teachers are going to use the existence of LGBTQ people to somehow "groom" those children for the purposes of sexually molesting them. It's always been about exactly what Miller said on January 6. It's about controlling the future and trying to ensure that the children of today grow into adults who will keep up their grand tradition of bigoted nonsense, so that the children of the future are not horrified by the Mary Millers of today.
Which they of course will be.
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