CAMP VERDE, Ariz. – On Saturday, June 1, there will be an event in Camp Verde, Arizona called the “Protect Our Children Town Hall.” And what are the folks at the town hall looking to protect children from, you ask?

Why, brainwashing, of course! And what are the Forces of Evil using to brainwash children? Porn and LGBTQ+ literature, obviously.

“It is no surprise that today’s youth are exposed to more inappropriate, dangerous and damaging content than ever,” the organizers posted in describing the event on Facebook. “From what they see on screens, to what is pushed on them in schools and even public libraries, there has never been a stronger agenda than now to brainwash our children.”

One of the people speaking at the town hall will be Dr. Jeffrey Hanson, who will, presumably, explain to those in attendance that watching porn is making kids believe they’re trans, when really, they’re just a bunch of regular ol’ American kids, who would still yearn to be Beaver Cleaver if only they’d never seen Cleave Her Beaver.

To be fair, Dr. Hanson doesn’t claim watching porn once immediately makes kids think they’re trans. In fact, Hanson himself isn’t entirely clear on just how much porn a person must watch before they begin to question their gender.

“It’s hard to say how much pornography might push a person to identify as trans when they otherwise wouldn’t,” Hanson told LOOKOUT.

I’ll bet it is hard to say – mostly because that’s the dumbest shit I’ve ever heard. And trust me, I have heard some truly dumb shit in my time living in Arizona.

Unsurprisingly, it’s not the only dumb-as-Marjorie-Taylor-Greene thing Hanson has claimed about watching porn. In a 2021 essay, Hanson asserted that watching gay porn can convince a straight boy he’s gay.

“A previously defined heterosexual boy might ultimately find himself enjoying homosexual pornography and then begin to question his sexuality,” Hanson wrote.

Here’s another possibility, Jeff: A boy who thinks he might be a little bi-curious watches some gay porn and discovers he’s right. Or how about a boy who is trying very hard to convince himself and others around him that he’s straight, in part because narrow-minded dickheads like Jeff Hanson present being gay as something ‘wrong,’ watches gay porn and says to himself “Fuck all those narrow-minded dickheads like Jeff Hanson; I’m going to live as my true self! But first… maybe I’ll watch just a little more of this gay porn, because I haven’t ejaculated yet and I’d like to take care of that before moving on to weightier life decisions like coming out.”

The LOOKOUT piece linked above (where it was reposted to the Arizona Mirror website) goes into detail about the various connections between dicey practitioners of “conversion therapy,” which is partially banned in Arizona, and a variety of counseling service providers in the state. And just as predictably as Jeff Hanson saying dumb shit about porn, those services all have a religious bent to them.

One former member of “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints” (AKA the “Mormon Church,” AKA the “LDS Church,” AKA “The Only Republicans Who Still Vote for Mitt Romney”) broke down the Church’s teachings on pornography for LOOKOUT.

“If you watch porn, two things will happen,” Elena Joy Thurston said. “One, you’re going to become addicted. And two, because you’re probably a guy watching porn, you’re going to become gay.”

“Homosexuality and sex addiction are framed as temptations that come from our body,” she added. “And the underlying idea is that our bodies are tempting us to sin. The whole reason why we’re on this planet is to learn how to overcome our body.”

And here I thought we were on this planet to procreate wantonly, consume every natural resource in our path, turn the sky dark gray with our emissions, eventually strip the planet bare of all other living things, then fly off to a life-sustaining planet in some distant galaxy to do it all over again, hopefully happily slaughtering any intelligent life we find there along the way. But I suppose that’s just all the porn I’ve watched talking, right?

Wait a minute… Come to think of it, I’ve very likely watched more porn than any Mormon guy, living or dead; why aren’t I gay, or trans, or at the very least so racked with shame that I find myself compelled to seek counseling, spiritual guidance and maybe a fistful of ‘Trump 2024’ bumper stickers in Camp Verde?

Or… maybe before I started watching all this porn, I was a woman?

Hey, Jeff, quick question: Can watching too much straight porn make a woman grow a penis without any sort of surgery or hormone therapy and make her severely forgetful about her own past in the same fell swoop?

I guess maybe I’ll have to make the drive up to Camp Verde, after all. Someone appears to have washed my brain, and that sounds like just the place to make it dirty again.

Photo by cottonbro studio from Pexels