Charles Blow is sounding the alarm bells again. According to the New York Times columnist, we are under a “state of emergency for L.G.B.T.Q. people.” He cites the Human Rights Campaign’s announcement to the same effect, which is based on the recent passage of laws such as those against gender-reassignment surgery for minors and the use of preferred pronouns in public schools.

To illustrate the magnitude of the moment, Blow employs some truly abhorrent comparisons. These laws, he tells us, are a form of “terrorism” akin to — and this is not a joke — “burning a cross on someone’s lawn.” Blow concludes his bloviating jeremiad by arguing that Republican legislators are leading America toward a new era of “Jim Queer” (that is, Jim Crow, but for transgender people).

Blow argues, naturally, that there is no possible motivation for these laws beyond malice. Even concern for the welfare of children, he supposes, merely masks homophobia and a desire to preserve the patriarchy. Conservatives, we are told, see transgender people as “Frankenstein’s monster in lipstick.” Credit where it’s due, unlike most people who allude to Shelley’s novel, Blow appears to have actually read it. But this is a rare instance when the more appropriate comparison would have been to Frankenstein himself. The right is by and large afraid not of transgender people but of the mad scientists who, inspired by a twisted understanding of human nature, hack away at the human body.

If Blow must mischaracterize laws intended to protect children against unsound social movements and dangerous medical procedures, he should find a way to do so that doesn’t involve trivializing some of the darkest moments in American history.