WaPo Profile Of Embattled Michigan Sex Educator Makes Strong Case For Yeeting MAGA Chuds Into Sun

Decent church-going people with their mean, pinched, bitter, evil faces.

For a heartbreaking illustration — or rather, yet another heartbreaking illustration — of what’s gone wrong with America in the last few years, go read this Washington Post profile (refreshed gift link 11/17/23) of Heather Alberda, a sex educator in Michigan who has a hell of a professional record to boast of in her two decades with the Ottawa County Health Department:

In her 21 years at the health department, the county’s teen pregnancy rate had decreased by 76 percent and is the fourth-lowest among Michigan’s 83 counties. The abortion rate for Ottawa County during the same period fell by 18 percent, according to state data.

Alberda started a bunch of initiatives to teach about healthy sexuality in the county, including programs that distributed condoms, classes for for people coming out of prison (and for inmates at the county jail), as well as for people recovering from addiction, migrant workers, and unhoused people. She met with survivors of uterine and cervical cancer for whom vaginal sex was no longer an option, and she was frequently invited to speak in public school classes. Alberda was the very model of good sex education:

Often, Alberda had groups write anonymous questions for her on scraps of paper, which she kept in a drawer in her desk. They asked her about pain during intercourse, penis size and consent. “If a guy presses me into sex and I say no five or six times and he starts touching me is that molestation?” read one question from a high school student. Alberda talked with the students about sexual consent and the importance of reporting abuse.

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But then Trump and QAnon and the pandemic happened, and rightwing lunatics became convinced that masks were tyranny, horse dewormers were medicine, and vaccines were poisons distributed by an international child sex and murder cabal led by Hillary Clinton and Tom Hanks. In 2021, some antivaxxers and white Christian nationalists formed “Ottawa Impact,” a group aimed at electing good Christianists to office, taking inspiration from a Wisconsin pastor, one Matthew Trewhella, and hoo boy, he’s a piece of work.

In 2013, Trewhella self-published a book called “The Doctrine of the Lesser Magistrates,” which argues that low-level elected officials — “lesser magistrates” — have a sacred duty to oppose higher authorities who attempt to enforce immoral or anti-Christian laws.

Trewhella drew inspiration for the book, which he said has sold more than 80,000 copies, from 1500s-era treatises written by Protestant leaders resisting the tyranny of the Catholic Church. His roots, though, were in the 1990s antiabortion movement. In 1993, he signed a letter describing the murder of doctors who provided abortions as “justifiable,” and he often boasted of the 15 months he spent in jail for blocking the doors to abortion clinics.

Let’s say it together, shall we? He seems nice.

The Post notes that while voters weren’t familiar with Trewhella, they sure liked Ottawa Impact’s message of resistance to health tyranny and, as the pandemic began to wane, the group’s seamless shift to anti-LGBTQ paranoia. Members would show up at county board of commissioners meetings to fulminate about the massive child sex trafficking and predation rings they were sure lurked everywhere, and a local church started building a shelter for any trafficked children that might be rescued, although those Jesus-haters at the Post point out that the county attorney hasn’t seen any increase at all in child trafficking cases.

Ottawa Impact has met with Trewhella a couple times for advice, and at those meetings he

preached that resistance to “wicked tyrants” and “anti-Christian” laws, such as those protecting abortion or “homo sex,” could “abate the just judgment of God” on their community.

Members of Ottawa Impact did their own research on the internets and in May 2022 issued a “report” accusing the county health department — and Alberda, in bold type — of sexualizing children, promoting abortion, and refusing to allow parents any input on what’s taught in sex ed classes. The “research” was mostly of the kind where they found scary things on Facebook and then tied them to the health department and Alberda, and suddenly the online rightwing hatemachine had her in its sights, including Twitter’s top death threat generator, “Libs of TikTok.”

That account, the Post explains, took out-of context screenshots of a pamphlet Alberda had written to help parents understand kids’ sexual development and how to talk to kids about sex, then twisted the content to depict Alberda as a pervert obsessed with sexualizing children:

Libs of TikTok zeroed in on one page of the guide, which advised parents that it was normal for children under age 5 to play with themselves and experience “genital pleasure.” The right-wing account twisted Alberda’s words and warned that she was advising parents to teach toddlers “about masturbation.”

The information in the guide came from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Planned Parenthood and the American Academy of Pediatrics. None of that mattered. Soon, dozens of people on social media were calling for her to be fired and accusing her of being a pedophile and a groomer.

In last fall’s midterms, candidates sponsored by Ottawa Impact won 8 of 11 seats on the county commission, and the new commissioners set to work rooting out all the perverts and groomers they were sure infested county agencies, because if you believe Tom Hanks and George Soros get high drinking the blood of babies they’ve sexually tortured to death, of course you suspect the lady distributing condoms at the county jail is a pedophile.

The new commissioners didn’t restrict their Inquisition to the health department, either. In April, they visited the Children’s Advocacy Center in Holland, a nonprofit that helps with actual child victims of sexual abuse, where between 250 and 300 kids a year are referred by police so they can “be questioned by specially trained professionals in a less intimidating setting.”

The commissioners listened politely as they toured the center with its executive director, Darcy Fluharty, who

talked about the therapists who worked with the victims and their families. She showed the commissioners interview rooms, which included comfy chairs, toys and two-way mirrors that allowed detectives and prosecutors to follow along and suggest questions. And she explained how the center worked with the schools on prevention programs that aimed to help students and teachers recognize grooming and report abuse.

When she asked if they had any questions about all the work the center does with abuse victims, one of the commissioners cut right to the most important point: demanding that Fluharty discuss “the elephant in the room,” the biggest problem that had to be addressed — a 3 by 5 rainbow flag sticker on the center’s front glass door, along with some other Pride flags commissioners had glimpsed in staff members’ offices. Why on earth was the center displaying an “activist symbol”?

Fluharty tried explaining that the rainbow flags could give marginalized, abused kids some comfort, but nah, how could a groomer flag do anything but harm kids? One of the commissioners claimed they knew someone who was dissuaded from seeking help at the center because when that person saw the flag, they feared the counselors would try to make children gay or transgender, because you know how counselors are.

Another commissioner, Fluharty said, asked her if she would put a swastika on the door to let neo-Nazis know that they should also feel welcome. To Fluharty, the notion that a Pride sticker and a swastika were in any way similar was ridiculous and offensive.

See? She’s so brainwashed! The center’s board hasn’t decided whether to remove the sticker, just in case it might threaten their funding. On the bright side, though, not one of the new commissioners shot and killed any staff members over the rainbow flag, so you really have to admire their restraint and level-headedness.

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Big Surprise: Creep Who Killed Lauri Carleton Over Rainbow Flag Was 'Pro Life' 'Christian' Gay-Hater

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We promised we would not just blockquote every horror in the WaPo story, which you should definitely read yourself with this gift link (refreshed 11/17/23), at least if you can get through all of it.

Spoiler warning: The new commission in Ottawa County went right ahead and passed a vaguely worded resolution to “protect childhood innocence” by prohibiting the county from providing support to groups that “encourage the sexualization of children,” which now apparently includes the schools, the health department, and the group that provides therapy and support for kids who have actually been sexually abused. Ms. Alberda fears for her job, and has sought outpatient psychiatric treatment because of all this crap.

As we say, the political backlash against these rightwing assholes can’t come soon enough. The vast majority of Americans are sick and tired of Christianist bullies trying to push everyone around. Let’s drive them back to the weirdo margins where they’ve always festered.

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[WaPo (gift link refreshed 11/17/23)]

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