QAnon conspiracy theory claims COVID vaccines will turn you gay or trans
A woman with a QAnon shirt stands among an anti-vaccination protest. (Joseph Prezioso / AFP) (Photo by JOSEPH PREZIOSO/AFP via Getty Images)
In the latest conspiracy theory cranked out from the depths of QAnon, the view that COVID-19 vaccines will turn you gay or trans.
And yes, it is time for us to all eject ourselves into the sun. Humanity is cancelled.
BBC reporter Shayan Sardarizadeh uploaded screenshots from the right-wing social media platform Telegram of QAnon supporters spewing a debased, unscientific theory that, er, vaccines cause people to be LGBT+.
QAnon is a once-fringe, troll-infested pro-Trump movement that went from convoluted rants on message boards to being considered a domestic terrorist threat by top domestic security agencies.
But its latest theory is a seemingly even more wild version of a pseudoscientific claim from an Iranian cleric Ayatollah Abbas Tabrizian that told his Telegram followers to steer clear from those vaccinated against the coronavirus as they have “become homosexuals”.
QAnon influencer who has ‘homosexual friends’ fears coronavirus vaccine will turn you gay
A user with 180,000 followers, according to Sardarizadeh’s screenshot, wrote: “Let’s assume [being LGBT+ is] genetic for a minute. Since homosexuals by and large don’t procreate their own children, their own genetics typically are not passed forward.
Two of the biggest QAnon channels on Telegram, with 180,000 and 56,000 subscribers respectively, have endorsed the baseless conspiracy theory that vaccinating children increases the probablity of them identifying as homosexual or transgender at a later stage. pic.twitter.com/42O62TFTjm
— Shayan Sardarizadeh (@Shayan86) February 10, 2021
“Since that is against the continuation of life, then homosexuality can’t be a dominant gene, it must be recessive.”
The meandering rant somehow gets worse. “I have many homosexual friends that have said they have known they were different SINCE THEY WERE LITTLE KIDS.
“When is your earliest memory? Four years old? You’ve already received 50 vaccines by then in 2020.”
“Are unvaccinated children also homosexual or transgender? I don’t know.”
Sardarizadeh also shared a reblog of a user with more than 56,000 followers who agreed with Tabrizian, saying: “In my opinion, he’s not far off.
“This is why we have gender confusion among our youth. Research how they put in hormones and alter DNA with their vaccines.”
Social media quickly became clogged with misinformation after drugmakers announced COVID-19 vaccines. There are many types of vaccines but they, for the most part, give the body a safe blueprint for it to battle particular viruses.
Take the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. In short, it works by injecting the body with the genetic material cells read to make proteins – in this case, the spiked proteins that give the coronavirus its “crown” shape.
So, if the body encounters the coronavirus – with its spiked proteins – the body knows it shouldn’t be there and already has the plan ready to make antibodies and T-lymphocytes.
In other words, no, it does not cause homosexuality.
