In the United States, anti-LGBTQ+ pseudoscience has largely been informed by conservative interpretations of Chrisitan religious traditions.[xiii] The assumption that LGBTQ+ identity is not “natural” and is contrary to the “Biblical binary” understanding of sexuality and gender has fueled common stereotypes and false narratives that LGBTQ+ people are not only flawed but dangerous to society.

While it may be easy for some to shrug off these harmful assumptions, social and medical practices that attempt to force LGBTQ+ people to be straight or cisgender through unsound counseling, psychological and medical practices, forcibly out them to unsupportive parents and caregivers, or by limit their access to affirming health care, only works to ensure that everyone is bound to follow rigid social conventions that keep women subjugated to men, Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) subjugated to white people, and everyone subjugated to white European conservative Christian values.

To understand how and why the modern anti-LGBTQ+ movement uses pseudoscience as a tool to advance extremism, it is instructive to look to history because pseudoscience has long been a tool used to justify marginalization. For example, white supremacists frequently use pseudoscience to control the lives and bodies of People of Color. Beginning with the Enlightenment, the science of racism, ableism, male supremacy, hetero- and cisnormativity took on a new fervency when those committed to white supremacy and colonialism found a new outlet to peddle their racist beliefs – “science.”

This period was marked by a general turn toward logic and reason, rather than spirituality, as explanations for things happening in the natural world.[4] It stood in contrast to the period of European history known as the “Dark Ages,” which is typically recognized as ending with the Renaissance and the re-emergence of philosophical, political, scientific and artistic inquisitiveness, invention and rationality as the preferred modes of thought. The popularization of the “scientific method” to acquire objective (value-free) knowledge about the world represents one of the major achievements of this time. Yet, during and since this period, people have used pseudoscience to generate so-called “proof” to support their animus toward others.

Pseudoscientific studies of human anatomical or skeletal features, such as measurements of human skulls (a field known as phrenology[xiv]), were cited as incontrovertible evidence that Caucasians were a superior “race” to humans from other regions of the world. In America, Thomas Jefferson wrote an infamous book in which he deployed this kind of pseudoscience to justify his view that white Europeans were inherently superior to African Americans.[xv]

Similarly, the eugenics movement, founded by Francis Galton in the 19^th century, was started with the intent to breed out maladies, mental illnesses and other conditions/traits that supposedly made an individual a less desirable member of society.[xvi] Although claiming to “improve” humanity, the objectives were laced with racism, ableism and other forms of prejudice. This period also witnessed the development of many scientific and medical fields or specialties including gynecology and psychology. These fields and others largely began as a way to control the bodies of Black, Indigenous, and women of Color and grew through experimentation on enslaved people.[xvii]

Throughout the 19^th century, pseudoscientific studies claimed to document deficiencies of non-white populations. American lawmakers used this eugenic research, which at the time was considered scientifically rigorous, to diminish the agency of people considered to be “unfit.” These studies were used to justify slavery, segregation throughout the Jim Crow Era and race-based immigration restrictions, as well as the institutionalization, medical experimentation and forced sterilization of many BIPOC, disabled and LGBTQ+ people.[5]

By the 1930s, “32 states passed explicit eugenics laws that allowed for the government to sterilize the “insane,” the “feebleminded,” the “dependent” and the “diseased” — all of whom were deemed incapable of making their own decisions about reproduction.”[xviii] Alongside these restrictions, beginning in the 20th century, eugenicists led campaigns to promote reproduction among rural, white, Protestant families whose ”ideal” offspring, they believed, would stave off the decline of the white population – a common pseudoscientific fear that many contemporary white supremacists repeat.[6]

The eugenics movement in the United States significantly influenced Nazism and the Holocaust, especially pseudoscientific ideas about preserving the white race. The most infamous example of pseudoscientific genocide occurred from 1933 to 1945 in Germany as roughly 400,000 forced sterilizations and 275,000 “euthanasia deaths” are contributed to Nazi “race science” during the Holocaust.[xix]

By the end of the 19^th century, the study of sexual “deviancy” was used to create the label “homosexual,” or people who experience same-sex attraction, to describe a deviant form of sexuality distinct from “heterosexuals,” or people who experience opposite-sex attraction. Just like debunked studies of racial inferiority, pseudoscientific studies of gender and sexuality claimed women were mentally and physically inferior to men, claimed “homosexuals” were sexually underdeveloped and that they are sexual predators.

For most of the American colonial period, incarceration or capital punishment were used to police non-normative sexuality and gender expression. However, the advent of modern psychiatry and psychology and the willingness of dubious researchers to use pseudoscience meant that some doctors, religious leaders, and policymakers could claim to not only identify (i.e. diagnose) homosexuals and gender “inverts,” but also “treat” and “cure” their medical afflictions.

Thousands of people were given “blue discharges” from the U.S. armed forces during World War II, for example, because they were “identified” as “homosexuals.”[xx] The methods of identification included: inkblot (Rorschach) tests, hormone tests, tongue depressor tests, overly effeminate appearance or speech among cismen or masculine appearance or speech among ciswomen.

The “treatments” for “sexual psychopaths” diagnosed through these pseudoscientific processes usually involved medical procedures including surgery to remove supposedly damaged parts of the brain, electrocution of the body and especially genitals, the over-use of pharmaceuticals and almost always institutionalization in “hospitals” that housed many people medical science of the time deemed too mentally ill or physically debilitated to function in society.

Pseudoscience is and remains an attractive tool to marginalize others because it allows dominant groups in society to subjugate other groups while claiming objectivity. Science, unlike religion, is imbued with a sense of neutrality. Furthermore, scientists are viewed as neutral truth-seekers and trained experts in their fields of study. We often defer to experts, allowing them to substitute their judgement for our own. Purveyors of hate and extremism count on this deference when they market pseudoscience as objective truth and use it to discriminate (and worse) against others.