Federalist Author Calls for a New Satanic Panic

“Is our modern ‘gender cult’ rooted in Satanism?” No, of course not, but a right wing writer wants you to connect the two ideas nevertheless.

by Evan Urquhart

A Federalist article published this morning by conservative Christian writer Georgi Boorman isn’t the first time those on the right have sought to link the existence of transgender people with the literal devil, and it won’t be the last. It does provide a decent example of a genre where dark inuendo is being used by those who ought to know better to intensify the panic over all things gender among Republicans’ increasingly unhinged and terrorism-prone base of support.

Boorman starts by describing a few satan-inspired designs of a London-based trans man who was subjected to hundreds of hateful messages after misinformation circulated on the right over his work with Target’s Pride collection this past June. Acting as if she was born yesterday, Boorman describes a designer using edgy imagery of satan as if it’s an entirely new phenomenon, as opposed to an 80s metal album cover cliche. She then pauses briefly to mention that Erik, the designer behind Abprallen whose work she’s using to introduce the idea that transness is rooted in satanism doesn’t ascribe to satanism himself.

screenshot from the Federalist

This sets the tone for the rest of the piece, where descriptions of Anton LaVey’s Satanism is interspersed with vague notions that some of the popular slogans in the LGBTQ+ community are kinda sorta like that. After LaVey comes Crowley, who again can’t be tied directly to the modern LGBTQ+ movement much less transgender acceptance in particularly, so he’s just put into paragraphs next to those things and Boorman calls it a day.

“A simple search of “Satanist” among Twitter accounts brings up countless results that include rainbow flags and gender tags such as “nonbinary” and “she-they,” Boorman writes. This is the quality of the evidence we’re dealing with here! The point, in the end, is just that she doesn’t like trans people, or satanism, so they simply must be linked.

screenshot from the Federalist

To the extent that there’s any attempt at a theme tying together these disparate threads, Boorman is claiming that the concept of self-love and an individual pursuing their own thriving are A) unique to the LGBTQ+ community, B) incompatible with Christianity, and C) core tenets of Satanism. To say she fails to support this would be an understatement, but making a coherent case for the idea that satanism caused people to become transgender or that becoming transgender causes people to embrace satanism isn’t the goal here. She’s just slapping the two things next to one another willy-nilly and letting the hatred and paranoia of her readership do the rest.

Boorman’s goal isn’t to describe the real-world ties between satanism and trans identity because there aren’t any. It is a statistical near certainty that more trans people identify as Christian than followers of Satan, because Christians are pentiful and satanists aren’t. While the most recent attempt at capitalizing on satanist branding, the Satanic Temple, has made statements in support of LGBTQ+ rights, many Christian denominations have actively stood in support of trans youth. If a writer wanted to cherry pick examples and put vague statements about Christianity next to vague descriptions of the LGBTQ+ or trans community, it would be much easier to create an article vaguely suggesting that there’s something inherently Christian about transness based on the many churches that support transgender members and the many trans people who have publicly declared a Christian faith. After all, didn’t Jesus call for Christians to welcome the stranger? Who’s stranger than queer people, huh? Check and mate.