Does Teaching Your Teen To Be An Anti-Gay Bigot Qualify As Brainwashing?

Editor’s note: On Monday, as The New Civil Rights Movement reported, 14-year old Sarah Crank stood in front of the Maryland State Legislature and asked them to give her “the best birthday present ever” by voting “no” on a same-sex marriage bill. Sarah willingly gave her first and last name in her testimony, and her mother, Kathleen Crank, has been extremely active on the Internet this week commenting on blog posts about her and her daughter’s testimony, and their views on same-sex marriage equality, “traditional marriage,” and home-schooling. To be clear, not only has the elder Crank not attempted to shield her daughter from any future challenges that might arise by taking such a public and controversial position on a matter of huge importance to society, as any normal parent would do, she has been actively promoting her daughter as a modern-day anti-gay Joan of Arc. 

The gay bashing testimony delivered to the Maryland State Legislature by 14-year old Sarah Crank is very disturbing, yet hardly surprising; after all, in a majority of schools around the country even today, 14-year-old anti-gay bullies torment fellow students actually and/or perceived to be gay.

Yet the question arises; did Sarah Crank decide to have contempt for gay people’s rights all on her own, or is she being raised and home-schooled in an environment that teaches her contempt for gay human beings?

Under a post about her daughter’s political gay bashing, Kathleen Crank has been (nearly endlessly) commenting, (see: images throughout) telling all who look that her gay bashing daughter aspires to be a Supreme Court justice and that the daughter has reached vehemently anti-gay conclusions all on her own, a precocious and spontaneous bigot, as it were. In her comments, Kathleen Crank states that her daughter Sarah “wanted” to give the gay-bashing testimony — but very obviously, the child “wants” to because the child has learned that this is how to get her professional gay-bashing mommy’s approval.

Internet research on Kathleen Crank, indeed, suggests that she personally has taught her daughter to hate gays.

Kathleen Crank describes herself professionally as a “public interest lobbyist.” The lion’s share of her “public interest lobbying” appears to be against gay rights. She has been active in the so-called Concerned Women for America; many of CWA’s most powerful figures have been caught out telling propagandistic lies against gay human beings.

Here is a report with a full gay-bashing statement that Kathleen Crank made to the Maryland State Legislature in 2008 when her daughter Sarah was 10.  In that shocking, counter-factual testimony in which Kathleen Crank bore false witness against all of those of her fellow citizens that happen to be gay, she said that 1) homosexuality is a “lifestyle;” 2) that a gay adult forced by prejudice into a heterosexual marriage has no right to liberate him or herself and the spouse from that untenable relationship; 3) that when women have AIDS, it is exclusively the fault of male homosexuals that they have it; 4) that the entire African AIDS epidemic is the fault of gay people; 5) that same-sex marriage legalized in certain countries in Europe has been “a dismal failure” and caused “cultural chaos” in all of Europe; and that 6) for the United States truly to have a government that is of the people, for the people and by the people, sexual orientation apartheid must be maintained forever.

In this document pertaining to matters of adoption, Kathleen Crank states that all gay human beings are unfit to be parents, that all research stating otherwise is a sham, and that most Catholic priests that abuse children are gay. Here is a report that Kathleen Crank cried as she gave her gay-bashing testimony to the Maryland State Legislature. A Maryland Catholic Conference press release reported on Kathleen Crank’s personal contribution to defeat of a proposed equality measure.

The above is just a sampling of Kathleen Crank’s ferocious engagement against LGBT Americans’ rights. One Internet commenter stated that Kathleen Crank has “weaponized” her daughter Sarah Crank, “in an attempt to destroy our rights.” The appearance certainly is that Kathleen Crank has taught her daughter Sarah far less about what loving commitment really means than she has taught her about relentlessly beating down a sexual minority as a nasty-spirited public arena blood sport.

It is especially revealing of the upbringing through hatred to which Kathleen Crank has subjected her daughter Sarah that Sarah stood in front of the Maryland State Legislature and declared that if the elected officials voted against equality, it would be her “best birthday present ever.”  That is how little Kathleen Crank has taught her daughter about the meaning of love.

Images: Kathleen Kositzky Crank’s comments at Think Progress. 

New York City– based novelist and freelance writer Scott Rose’s LGBT– interest by– line has appeared on Advocate .com, PoliticusUSA .com, The New York Blade, Queerty .com, Girlfriends and in numerous additional venues. Among his other interests are the arts, boating and yachting, wine and food, travel, poker and dogs. His “Mr. David Cooper’s Happy Suicide” is about a New York City advertising executive assigned to a condom account.