Last year, Media Research Center writer Bill D’Agostino made a big deal out of portraying as “radical” a bill in Minnesota that would remove redundancy from a law defining sexual orientation:
Minnesota’s Human Rights Act, which prevents discrimination based on sexual orientation, contains language which specifically notes that pedophilia is not a legitimate sexual orientation. However, transgender Democratic state Rep. Leigh Finke has introduced a bill called the “Take Pride Act” (H.F. 1655), which would remove that language from the document.
How much attention has this bill received from the broadcast networks?
ABC: 0 seconds
CBS: 0 seconds
NBC: 0 seconds
Politifact has already attempted to muddy the waters around this legislation by pointing out (accurately) that the bill would not offer special protections to child sex offenders. However, even they admit that the bill strikes language from the state’s Human Rights Act which explicitly excludes pedophilia from the definition of sexual orientation:
The bill also removes a line on the existing definition of “sexual orientation” that says: “‘Sexual orientation’ does not include a physical or sexual attachment to children by an adult.”
The authors cite unidentified “legal experts” to reassure readers that “laws prohibiting discrimination because of sexual orientation do not protect pedophiles.” But why change the law, then? Politifact is basically arguing that not excluding something is somehow materially different from including it.
It’s not “muddying the waters” to accurately state what the law does — something even D’Agostino concedes is accurate. And if no medical authority considers pedophilia to be a sexual orientation, there’s no reason to specifically outlaw something that doesn’t exist. D’Agostino cited no legal expert who argues that it is a sexual orientation. It seems that D’Agostino was the one trying to muddy the waters by forwarding the idea (which he knows is false) that the change legalizes pedophilia.
In a Dec. 11 post, however, Tim Graham not only doubled down on that interpretation, he libeled Finke in the process. The headline of his post called Finke a “Pro-Pedophilia ‘Pioneer” — a smear he did not substantiate. He’s effectively calling Finke a pedophile, which seems legally actionable. Graham went on to whine about the bill:
As the incoming Trump administration considers defunding the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the PBS News Hour just keeps hitting the accelerator on their overwhelmingly one-sided promotion of transgenderism. On Friday night, PBS anchor William Brangham supportively interviewed transgender Minnesota state Rep. Leigh Finke (D), best known for a bill called the “Take Pride Act,” trying to strip anti-pedophilia language out of the definition of sexual orientation. It would eliminate the sentence
“Sexual orientation” does not include a physical or sexual attachment to children by an adult.
The Minnesota-based blog Power Line argued “We might re-name it the ‘Take Pride in Abuse of Children Act.’” The networks all ignored this controversy, although they routinely celebrate leftists in state legislatures.
None that came up as anchor Geoff Bennett began the promotional gush for transgender “rights”: “William Brangham is back to talk with one recent pioneer about how she sees this current moment.” A “pioneer.”
Brangham described the two sides of this debate, and the conservatives were dismissed as offering “vitriol,” as if there is no respectable dissent:
Liebeling Finke as a pedophile is not “respectable.” We’re not sure why Graham thinks it is.
The Power Line post Graham hyped falsely portrayed the bill as supporting pedophilia, right down to the headline “Democrats for Pedophilia” (and also maliciously misgendered Finke).
It seems that Graham might want to have a chat with the MRC’s lawyers about how to clean up after his vicious libel of Finke.