Sam Seder and Emma Vigeland unpack Bernie Sanders’s high-energy “Fight Oligarchy” rally featuring Zohran Mamdani. They discuss the disconnect between this grassroots enthusiasm and the lack of support from mainstream Democratic leaders. The MR crew argues that this demonstrates a core ideological conflict within the Democratic Party itself.
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Republican Josh Breecheen spews Islamophobic rhetoric at a recent town hall, connecting to a broader pattern of fear-mongering and political attacks against Muslims in America. Emma Vigeland and Francesca Fiorentini draw a direct line from the “Sharia law” conspiracies of the Bush and Obama eras to the current dehumanization of Muslim Americans and the use of technology from the war on terror against citizens at home.
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The latest jobs report paints a grim picture, with job losses under Donald Trump’s administration mounting and key industries sliding into decline. While Trump’s team struggles to blame Biden while also promising explosive growth in the future, economists and analysts are sounding the alarm that a US recession, or worse, is near.
Billionaire hedge fund manager, Ray Dalio, is in the news for warning about the dangers of extreme wealth inequality. Sam Seder and Emma Vigeland highlight how Dalio’s comments, which are a major news story because of his status, echo what many others have been saying for years.
The U.S. government has acknowledged Donald Trump’s military strike on a boat in international waters, resulting in the deaths of 11 individuals. This action, targeting Venezuelans en route to Trinidad, has raised significant questions about Trump’s legal authority behind such a strike, particularly given the lack of clear evidence of the individuals’ involvement in drug trafficking or any threat to U.S. interests. Despite the gravity of the situation, the incident has reportedly garnered minimal attention in mainstream news, with some segments of the media appearing to endorse the action.
Trump was asked about a bizarre video showing someone throwing bags out of a second-floor White House window by Peter Doocy of Fox News. Trump insisted that the video was “AI-generated” because, according to him, the windows of the White House are “heavily armored and bulletproof,” sealed shut, and each one weighs 600 pounds. Trump also added that if anything “really bad” were to happen, he could simply “blame AI.”
Hey if these people can outright lie about the LGBTQ+ community, willing to let LGBTQ+ kids die or be pushed via violence into the closet hiding who they really were, what is faking your expertise. I already posted about a sexologist who had no experience with trans kids testifying to red state legislatures enabling his bigotry to further the harm to trans kids by giving an excuse for theirs. These people are on a mission that is far from pure but one driven by hate and bigotry to make all kids pretend to be straight and cis in the hope that they can force all adults to pretend to be straight and cis also. If they can’t force the adults to pretend to be straight or cis at least they can stop the trans adults from looking like the gender they identify with in hopes of stopping those that are passing as the gender they identify as. This they hope will mark those people in ways that make their life harder. Again their lies are OK for them because either they think their god approves or their hate is that great so nothing but the mission matters. Hugs
Pippin testifying in favor of book bans at a school board meeting in 2023 (screenshot / YouTube).
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Jennifer Pippin has repeatedly claimed to be an operating room nurse. USA TODAY, the New York Times, TC Palm and other publications have cited her as such. In 2020, Pippin argued that wearing masks to prevent the spread of COVID-19 was unnecessary, citing her professional expertise.
“As a registered nurse, I’ve learned a bit. I’ve learned a whole lot more though that they won’t tell you in nursing school,” she wrote in a 2020 Facebook post. “Not wearing a mask is NOT A RISK. Not to me and not to anyone else.”
Pippin, now the chair of one of Moms for Liberty’s (M4L) first chapters in Indian River County, Florida, has also mentioned having “medical licenses” while speaking about the group’s accomplishments at a school board meeting. And in an email chain with Florida’s Department of Education, she wrote that she couldn’t make it to a meeting because she was “operating on a doctors wife.”
(Screenshot received from The Florida Fruit Loop, highlight added).
However, allegations have surfaced that these statements might not be true, and the community is growing frustrated. On Facebook, one user decried “the utter misinformation that has spewed out of [Pippin’s] mouth any time she’s shared her thoughts about public health issues.” Another sarcastically wrote that they were “shocked … to find out Jenny is a liar!!”
“We reported this years ago, but because [M4L] were so powerful politically here in Florida with Ron DeSantis, we had no voice, nobody cared,” Cindy Gibbs, a local parent and former school board candidate, told Uncloseted Media.
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Is She Really a Nurse?
Despite Pippin’s claims of being a nurse, there is a stack of evidence suggesting otherwise. One individual shared screenshots of emails they received from a Florida Department of Health (DOH) official in 2024 after they filed a complaint against Pippin when they noticed her license wasn’t turning up in database searches. In one email, the DOH official states that Pippin had been under investigation since April 1, 2024, for potentially misrepresenting herself as a nurse and that no license had been found.
Uncloseted Media also filed a public records request with the DOH for the license. In an email, they said they were “unable to find anyone licensed by the department matching the information … provided.” The department did not respond to a request for further comment.
In addition, Uncloseted Media was unable to find any license associated with Pippin in the Florida Department of Health’s medical license database or the NURSYS database, which records multi-state licensees. We also checked the certification database for the Competency and Credentialing Institute, which certifies certain specialized nurses including operating room specialists, and found nothing.
While records do exist for Jennifer Hughes Pippin, a nutritionist and dietician at Florida State College in Jacksonville, her listed address and social media profiles do not match the Pippin from Indian River County.
The Florida Nurses Association also did not find any record of Pippin’s membership.
Multiple sources and news articles say Pippin was formerly employed by the Cleveland Clinic Indian River Hospital. Despite this, Uncloseted Media was unable to confirm she held a position there. The hospital declined to comment on the status of current or former employees as a matter of policy.
The only employment information we found listed for Pippin later than 2021 was in a Sebastian City Council meeting agenda from 2023, where she says she is “self employed” working for Organize Me!, a gig-based home cleaning service.
Why It Matters
Falsely presenting as a nurse is a phenomenon that has been on the rise since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Pippin’s case, though, is of particular interest because she is often cited as an influential figure in Florida politics. In her role with M4L, Pippin has filed hundreds of requests to ban books—many of which include LGBTQ or racial justice themes—from school libraries. Some of the books she’s requested to ban include a graphic novel adaptation of “The Diary of Anne Frank” and “All Boys Aren’t Blue,” a memoir about growing up Black and queer.
In 2022, Pippin was also appointed by the Florida Department of Education to a workgroup of parents tasked with developing a training for state educators to comply with the classroom censorship laws signed by Governor Ron DeSantis, who has spoken at a M4L summit. One of these laws is the notorious “Don’t Say Gay” law, which prohibits educators from teaching about sexual orientation or gender identity.
And earlier this summer, she filed a complaint against a Vero Beach wine bar for hosting an all-
ages drag event, which she alleges contained performances with sexual themes. The bar’s owner, who is also a city official, denies the allegations.
This is not M4L’s first brush with controversy. The group’s co-founder, Bridget Ziegler, allegedly assisted her husband in sexually assaulting another woman. An Indiana chapter came under fire for quoting Adolf Hitler in a 2023 newsletter. And the group has hosted speakers who’ve spread medical misinformation on multiple occasions, claiming that doctors are “sterilizing and mutilating [trans] children” and that gender-affirming health care is “snake oil.”
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Pippin’s Response
When presented with these allegations, Pippin did not provide any evidence of a nursing license. In an email, she told Uncloseted Media that she was “surprised to see these allegations being raised again — especially considering they were addressed over a year ago.” She pointed to a prior case involving stalking and said the answers about whether she is a licensed nurse can be found via that case. However, the case and its associated documents are not available online.
Pippin testifying before the Indian River County School Board (screenshot/YouTube).
Pippin has previously stated that the reason her license is not publicly accessible is because she was ordered to “hide [it] from the public for five years” after filing a fraud suit in 2020 against someone who she says had used her license to file for unemployment. In emails with Uncloseted Media, she reaffirmed this story.
While Uncloseted Media was unable to verify the existence of this fraud case, experts say that such a decision from the court would be “unusual.”
“We have fought to make nurses licenses private and have been unable to do so even in at-risk areas,” says Willa Fuller, executive director of the Florida Nurses Association.
Multiple people in Indian River County say that Pippin’s questionable nursing status has been an open secret for years, but the issue didn’t start attracting wider attention until it was covered by The Florida Fruit Loop, a local Facebook page that promises to provide “a daily dose of MAGA butthurt.” Last weekend, Pippin left a note in the page’s comments titled “CEASE AND DESIST LETTER,” where she called multiple statements made by the page defamatory. However, the notice does not mention or dispute any allegations made about her nursing license.
The intro to Pippin’s comment (screenshot received from The Florida Fruit Loop).
The Implications
Falsely presenting as a nurse is a crime in Florida under certain circumstances, with one woman being arrested in the state for this just last month. However, in emails reviewed by Uncloseted Media, a DOH official cautioned that the laws only apply in specific cases.
“For those statutes where an unlicensed person is allegedly holding themselves out as a licensed healthcare provider to apply, the Subject would need to hold themselves out / lead the public to believe they are a current and active licensee,” the official wrote.
While the full results of Pippin’s investigation have not yet been released, the individual who corresponded with the DOH says the department later informed them that their complaint “lacked … a criminal finding.”
The DOH official did note, though, that the video of Pippin’s testimony before the school district could be considered a violation. Pippin has also publicly used the formal title “registered nurse” on multiple occasions, including in a rant against masking posted to the Republican Club of Indian River’s Facebook page in 2020; in a Department of Education report; and in Vero News.
“She has been out here presenting herself as an authority on things in the world of health care and education,” says Cindy Gibbs. “And the groups of people that she associates herself with … just keep generating and regenerating the same stuff: ‘oh, Jennifer knows things because she’s a registered nurse.’”
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These bans have been successful in part because of a toxic and ruthless ecosystem of far-right influencers, like Riley Gaines, who have formed entire careers around attacking trans athletes by prioritizing hate and misinformation.
“So much of what we see … just seems like it’s wrapped up in really hateful and negative messages that aren’t good for anyone,” says Mary Fry, a professor of sport and exercise psychology at the University of Kansas. “We’re creating issues where maybe we don’t need to.”
The anti-trans attacks in sports are also affecting cis women. Ayala, a competitive cyclist, remembers one race where she and her trans friend both made the podium. When photos of the event were posted on Facebook, people accused her of being trans, and she was added to a “list of males who have competed in female sports” maintained by Save Women’s Sports.
Earlier this year, 16-year-old AB Hernandez became the target of nationwide hate and harassment when the president of a local school board publicly doxxed the track and field athlete and outed her as transgender. Right-wing activists misgendered her and called her mom “evil;” swarms of adults showed up to heckle her at games; Charlie Kirk pushed state governor Gavin Newsom to condemn her; and President Donald Trump threatened to withhold federal funding from California over her participation.
While transgender athletes are very rare, this type of harassment towards them is playing out across the country and internationally. A trans girl was harassed at a soccer game in Bow, New Hampshire, by adult protestors wearing XX/XY armbands, representing an anti-trans sports clothing brand. And in British Columbia, a 9-year-old cis girl was accosted by a grown man who accused her of being trans and demanded that she prove her sex to him.
While research into the relative athletic capabilities of trans and cis women is ongoing, far-right groups, including the Alliance Defending Freedom and the Leadership Institute, have been putting hate before science to turn the public against trans athletes since at least 2014. And it’s working.
Laws, rules or regulations currently ban trans athletes from competing in sports consistent with their gender identity in 29 states, with 21 beginning the ban in kindergarten. The majority-conservative Supreme Court announced this month that it’ll be taking on the question of the constitutionality of the bans. Meanwhile, the federal government is pressuringstates without bans to change their policies in compliance with a Trump executive order that attempts to institute a nationwide ban.
Trump signs an executive order calling for bans on trans women and girls from women’s sports. Photo by: The White House.
These bans have been successful in part because of a toxic and ruthless ecosystem of far-right influencers, like Riley Gaines, who have formed entire careers around attacking trans athletes by prioritizing hate and misinformation.
“So much of what we see … just seems like it’s wrapped up in really hateful and negative messages that aren’t good for anyone,” says Mary Fry, a professor of sport and exercise psychology at the University of Kansas. “We’re creating issues where maybe we don’t need to.”
Harassment and Mental Health
Grace McKenzie has been deeply affected by these hate campaigns. A lifelong athlete, McKenzie has stayed healthy by playing multiple sports where she’s met “amazing people.” Shortly after she transitioned in 2018, she was thrilled when she was invited to join a women’s rugby team at the afterparty of a Lesbians Who Tech conference.
Grace McKenzie. Photo courtesy of McKenzie.
“Rugby became my home, it was my first queer community, it was the space where I really discovered my own womanhood,” McKenzie told Uncloseted Media. “I could be the sometimes-masculine, soft-feminine person who play[s] rugby and loves sports.”
But that started to change in 2019, when McKenzie and others on her team started to hear rumors that World Rugby was considering a ban on trans athletes. Fearing the loss of her community, she started a petition that racked up 25,000 signatures—but it wasn’t enough, and the ban took effect in 2020.
As anti-trans rhetoric in sports has ramped up, McKenzie says she’s had soul-crushing breakdowns that have left her “sobbing uncontrollably and unconsolably.”
“It would be these waves of such intense despair and rage—it was like going through grief for five years,” she says. “I have to wake up every single day and read about another state or another group of people who say that they don’t want me to exist.”
While McKenzie says she’s found the strength to keep playing where she can, sports psychologist Erin Ayala has seen clients leave sports altogether due to the hate toward trans athletes.
“It can be really difficult when they feel like they’re doing everything right … and they still don’t belong,” says Ayala, the founder of the Minnesota-based Skadi Sport Psychology, a therapy clinic for competitive athletes. “Depression can be really high. They don’t have the strength to keep fighting to show up. And then that can further damage their mental health because they’re not getting the exercise and that sense of social support and community.”
That was the story of Andraya Yearwood, who made national headlines in high school when she and another trans girl placed first and second in Connecticut’s high school track competitions. The vitriol directed at her was intense: Parents circulated petitions to have her banned; crowds cheered for her disqualification; the anti-LGBTQ hate group Alliance Defending Freedom launched a lawsuit against the state for letting her play; and she faced a torrent of transphobic and racist harassment.
“It’s a very shitty experience,” Yearwood, now 23, told Uncloseted Media.
Fearing more harassment, she quit running in college.
“I understood that collegiate athletics is on a much larger and much more visible scale. … I just didn’t want to go through all that again for the next four years,” she says. “Track obviously meant a lot to me, and to have to let that go was difficult.”
It’s understandable that Yearwood and other trans athletes struggle when they have to ditch their favorite sport. A litany of research demonstrates that playing sports fosters camaraderie and teamwork and improves mental and physical health. Since trans people disproportionately struggle from poor mental health, social isolation and suicidality, these benefits can be especially crucial.
“In some of these cases, kids have been participating with a peer group for years, and then rules were made and all of a sudden they’re pulled away,” says Fry. “It’s a hard world to be a trans individual in, so it’d be easy to feel lonely and separated.”
Caught in the Crossfire
The anti-trans attacks in sports are also affecting cis women. Ayala, a competitive cyclist, remembers one race where she and her trans friend both made the podium. When photos of the event were posted on Facebook, people accused her of being trans, and she was added to a “list of males who have competed in female sports” maintained by Save Women’s Sports.
Ayala isn’t alone. Numerous cis female athletes have been “transvestigated,” or accused of being trans, including Serena Williams and Brittney Griner. During the 2024 Paris Olympics, Donald Trump and Elon Musk publicly accused Algerian boxer Imane Khelif of being trans after her gold medal win, as part of a wave of online hate against her. She would later file a cyberbullying complaint against Musk’s X.
While women of all races have been targeted, Black women have faced harsher scrutiny due to stereotypes that portray them as more masculine.
Yearwood remembers posts that would fixate on her muscle definition and compare her to LeBron James.
“I think that is attributed to the overall hyper-masculinization and de-feminization of Black women, and I know that’s a lot more prevalent for Black trans women,” she says. “It made it easier to come for us in the way that they did.”
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A Big Distraction
Joanna Harper, a post-doctoral scholar at Oregon Health & Science University and one of the world’s leading researchers on the subject, says that the jury is still out on whether the differences in athletic performance between trans and cis women are significant enough to warrant policy changes.
“People want simple solutions, they want things to be black and white, they want good guys and bad guys,” Harper says, adding that the loudest voices against trans women’s participation do not actually care about what the science says.
“This idea that trans women are bigger than cis women, therefore it can’t be fair, is a very simple idea, and so it is definitely one that people who want to create trans people as villains have pushed.”
Even Harper herself has been the victim of the far-right’s anti-trans attacks. Earlier this year, she was featured in a New York Times article where she discussed a study she was working on with funding from Nike into the effects of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) on adolescents’ athletic performance.
Riley Gaines and OutKick founder Clay Travis attack Harper’s study on X.
“That Nike chose to fund a study on trans athletes doesn’t actually say that they’re supporting trans athletes. They’re merely supporting research looking into the capabilities of trans athletes,” Harper says. “You don’t know what the research will show until you get the data … but the haters don’t want any data coming out that doesn’t support what they want to say.”
Harper says this anti-trans fervor and HRT bans are making it more difficult to conduct studies in the first place.
And while the far-right argues that they are “protecting women’s sports” in their war on trans athletes, multiple athletes and experts told Uncloseted Media that this distracts from bigger issues in women’s sports, including sexualharassment by coaches and a lack of funding.
“If the real goal was to help women’s sports, they would try to increase funding [and] support for athletes,” says Harper, noting that women’s sports receive half as much money as men’s sports at the Division I collegiate level. “But that’s not what they’re doing, and it becomes pretty evident the real motivation behind these people.”
Since Trump’s reelection, Grace McKenzie has somewhat resigned herself to the likelihood of attacks on trans people getting worse. Despite this, she finds hope in building community with other trans athletes, such as the New York City-based trans basketball league Basketdolls.
“If that’s the legacy that [the anti-trans movement] wants to leave behind, good for them,” McKenzie says. “Our legacy is going to be one about hope, and collective solidarity, and mutual aid, and I would much rather be on that side of the fence.”
Meanwhile, Fry remains hopeful that conflicts can be resolved and that trans people may be able to find a place in sports over time.
“If we could all have more positive conversations and not create such a hateful environment around this issue, it would just benefit everyone.”
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Again this is about wiping first the trans out of public society and then the rest of the LGBTQ+ community. It is the Russian / Nazi playbook. It is part of their plan to return the country to a 1950s white straight cis ethnostate. We must not let it happen. Hugs
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But how does Google’s algorithm decide which results show up? And how do these results influence LGBTQ kids, their parents and Americans at large who are searching for help?
Uncloseted Media asked five Americans from around the country to Google five common queries related to LGBTQ identity, religion and parenting.
The results were alarming and raised an urgent question: With nearly 40% of LGBTQ youth seriously considering suicide just last year, what happens when a queer teen or the parent of a gay kid in crisis turns to Google?
Photos courtesy of participants Mark Just, Genna and Melanie Brown, April Samberg, Tommy O’Neil. Photo of Genna and Melanie by Kaoly Gutteriez.
“I’m Christian, my daughter is a lesbian,” Melanie Brown, a Southern Baptist from High Point, North Carolina, types into Google.
When Brown presses enter, Bible Bulletin Board comes up as the third result, with the suggestion of “offering hope for change,” and “lead[ing] the way to the alternative to homosexuality.” It goes on to explain that “homosexuality is contrary to God’s Word. It is sin and as always results in sin’s destructive effects on the individual and on those close to them.”
In the living room, Brown’s 15-year-old daughter Genna, with her dog on her lap, Googles “accurate information on gay kids and what to do.”
Focus on the Family (FOTF) is the first result. She clicks the link and lands on the platform of a hyper-religious organization known for promoting conversion therapy and labeling her sexuality as sinful.
The site, which presents itself as a reputable religious source, features a tab titled “Understanding Homosexuality” and a section under their resources for “Homosexuality.” It states: “[FOTF] is committed to upholding God’s design for the expression of human sexuality: a husband and wife in a marriage.”
It offers suggested reading on “redemption” from a gay lifestyle, along with 11 counseling resources aimed at changing sexual orientation, including The Alliance for Therapeutic Choice and Scientific Integrity, which guarantees “professional assistance … for persons who experience unwanted homosexual attractions.”
The language is intentionally padded, which means Genna and her mom—and many of the other millions of Christian parents of queer kids—may never know that Google led them to a Southern Poverty Law Center-designated anti-LGBTQ hate group. FOTF is known for its long-standing opposition to LGBTQ rights, for spreading anti-LGBTQ disinformation and for framing homosexuality and transgender identity as sinful and disordered.
Screenshot courtesy of Genna Brown. Photo by Kaoly Gutierrez.
In South Boston, Virginia, Tommy O’Neil Googles, “My daughter just came out as trans and I’m a Christian.” As a father of two, he wants what’s best for his kids. According to Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, Google’s second result, O’Neil should recognize that God doesn’t make mistakes when assigning sex and give sympathy for those who are indoctrinated in the “transgender cult.”
Thousands of miles away in Anchorage, Alaska, 38-year-old bisexual woman April Samberg Googles, “I am bisexual and have a husband who is Christian, am I going to hell?”
The third result is once again an article by FOTF that tells April that “same-sex-attracted strugglers” and “transgender and homosexual lust and behavior are wrong.”
In Cincinnati, 44-year-old Mark Just Googles, “accurate information on homosexual kids and what to do.” FOTF is the top search result.
“I don’t feel good about it,” Just told Uncloseted Media. “It’s disturbing because if there are people out there who want to accept and understand their children or loved ones, this is what they’re being pointed to.”
“[I feel] fear for the queer kids with Christian parents who will be seeing that and thinking it’s good advice, and sorrow for the kids with parents who already have,” says Genna Brown, who was a “self-loathing, suicidal kid” who thought God would punish her for being gay before she came out to her now accepting parents. “It’s pretty awful that this is what’s being pushed for advice. This has no doubt harmed people.”
Uncloseted Media also asked folks in Taiwan, Lebanon, China, Hong Kong, Canada and India to Google similar queries. All of them had FOTF turn up as a top search result.
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Why Does Google Allow This?
Google, like other search engines, compiles information and directs users to various websites by referencing the titles of web pages that it judges to be most reflective of what was searched.
“Google’s algorithm is notoriously a black box,” says Jesse Ringer, founder of Method and Metric, a search engine optimization (SEO) growth company. “That’s intentional to keep their competitive advantage.”
What we do know is that Google ranks search results by first crawling the web with an automated program called “spiders” to follow links from page to page and collect data.
It uses text matching to identify documents that it thinks are relevant to a query and then ranks them based on a combination of popularity, freshness, location and previous links clicked.
But for people searching for reliable information, its process can be problematic.
“Google doesn’t rank based on accuracy, but on popularity and query matching,” says Dirk Lewandowski, professor of information research and retrieval at the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences. “This is based on clicks and a network of how many other links are directed to this website. … Of course, users click what is shown in the first position. So we have kind of a rich get richer.”
How to Get a High Ranking
As websites with the highest rankings continue to receive more clicks, websites like FOTF can also employ other tactics to keep their prominent placement.
Backlinking—the process of having other web pages hyperlink back to your site—is one of the ways to maintain your high ranking.
“Backlinks are a big part of popularity. So the relationship between other websites linking to this source is a big part of Google’s algorithm,” says Ringer. “There are SEO businesses that build link farms so that the content of their clients can go higher. They create a network effect and they link to each other. It is not unreasonable to think that [FOTF] has hired either an SEO person or they’ve hired an external agency to contribute to that.”
According to Francesca Tripodi, assistant professor at the University of North Carolina School of Information and Library Science, ranking can also be gamed by matching keywords to content. Tripodi looked at the metadata of progressive and conservative companies and found that conservative content creators “are much better at doing this.”
“They are savvy at creating new sets of words and tagging their content with them,” she says. “That’s not something I’m seeing with progressive content creators.”
Tripodi says that not only does conservatism thrive online, it might be the only perspective returned.
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“They are well-funded companies with large production budgets and effective digital marketing teams,” she wrote in a 2019 testimony about conservatism and Google searches. “This is why when you search for liberal phrases like ‘gender identity’ or ‘social justice’ the top returns … are conservative content creators.”
Google declined to speak on record with Uncloseted Media for this story.
In an email, a spokesperson said: “Like any search engine, Google indexes the content that’s available on the open web, relying on systems like keyword matching to surface relevant results. We are largely guided by local law when it comes to removing pages from search results.”
What If It’s Harmful or Illegal?
The United States notoriously protects harmful or misleading content—including anti-LGBTQ hate speech—under the First Amendment.
“The situation in [other countries] is a bit different than in America,” Lewandowski says. “For instance, Holocaust denial is illegal in Germany. So Google bans these sites, but they don’t ban them in the U.S.”
Section 230 of the U.S. law protects Americans’ freedom of expression online by implying that we should all be responsible for our own actions and statements on the internet. This law largely takes legal pressure off of Google.
And in 2003, an Oklahoma court ruled that Google’s rankings are subjective opinions and thus constitutionally protected.
Google’s policies for tamping down on harmful content “don’t apply to web results.” Thus, there is little moderation on the web pages that pop up for Americans who use the search engine.
The spokesperson for Google says that “[they] hold themselves to a high standard when it comes to legal requirements to remove pages from Google search results” and that “they don’t remove web results except for child sexual abuse, highly personal information, spam, site owner requests, and valid legal requests.”
But according to the company, “determining whether content is illegal is not always a determination that Google is equipped to make.”
Tripodi says this might be why groups like FOTF are still showing up, even though conversion therapy is illegal in 23 states. She says these groups may have found a loophole in Google’s policy by “tricking” the search engine into thinking they are providing “resources” and not simply a recommendation for conversion therapy.
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What Can Google Do to Fix This?
“Google has a responsibility for what is coming up in their results because people trust [them],” says Lewandowski. “They think something is correct or accurate because it is number one in Google.”
Fifteen-year-old Genna Brown is one of the 85% of Americans who feel this way, according to a 2025 study.
“Isn’t the first result typically ranked most credible?” she says. “Because I typically trust the first result more.”
“It’s pretty concerning what comes up when you search for these things,” Ringer says. “There needs to be more done to educate the people who are doing the searches on understanding news and information.”
But vulnerable groups, like LGBTQ kids who are living in households where they are told they are going to hell and parents who are often confused and in crisis themselves, are being led by Google’s algorithm to believe that being queer is wrong.
“1000% yes, these results concern me,” says Genna Brown. “We’re talking about organizations that promote practices like conversion therapy, which is insane. … I wish there was some disclaimer. Like, ‘Google has determined this to be a subjective query. As such, we can’t verify the following results. Proceed with caution.’”
Tripodi says she thinks consumers are responsible for about 20% of the burden by researching and verifying the sources they learn from. But she agrees with Brown in that Google carries an ethical responsibility for the content it chooses to rank and promote.
“As a global corporation that gobbles up all other possibilities for information, Google has a responsibility to ensure that its content is accurate and not harmful,” Tripodi says. “[It’s their job] to ensure that the information that they surface is accurate and reliable because we know people trust that information.”
Uncloseted Media reached out to Focus on the Family, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, and Bible Bulletin Board. They did not respond to our request for comment.
Additional reporting by Sophie Holland and Spencer Macnaughton.
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