A murder over a Pride flag is sadly no surprise to anyone paying attention

The best of Voices delivered to your inbox every week - from controversial columns to expert analysis Sign up for our free weekly Voices newsletter for expert opinion and columns Sign up to our free weekly Voices newsletter SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. For example, in April, a spokeswoman for Florida Governor Ron DeSantis tweeted that anyone who opposed the state’s notorious “Don’t Say Gay” law is “probably a groomer or at least you don’t denounce the grooming of 4-8 year old children.” This, after the Human Rights Campaign found that the anti-LGBTQ grooming narrative had increased on social media by 400% following the passage of the law, which prohibits teaching Florida students about sexual orientation or gender identity. This harassment is not limited to the internet, though; in April, The Independent interviewed three people who “had been harassed or attacked in public over the past two weeks by strangers who accused them, with no provocation or evidence, of ‘grooming’ children or being a ‘groomer.’” This is not the first time the American right has been swept up in a moral panic over LGBTQ people and children. As the Poynter Institute’s PolitiFact reported last year, most child molesters are straight, “school employees who perpetrate child sexual abuse are most likely to be white, heterosexual, male adults…” and that actually, “gay, lesbian, bisexual and trans people are less likely than people who do not claim those labels to commit child sexual abuse in school settings.” There is also no evidence that teaching about LGBTQ people, sexual orientation, or gender identity leads to children becoming LGBTQ or increases incidents of child sexual abuse. The right – especially Republican elected officials and their staff – must end the baseless and bigoted moral panic over LGBTQ people “grooming” children, a conspiracy theory that has been disproven time and again in modern American history.