Did The Atlantic magazine publish an article titled, "At this weekend's Pride parade a man exposed his genitals to my 6 year old. She was horrified. Am I raising a bigot?"? No, that's not true: A spokesperson for the magazine told us that the article was "not a real article." There is no evidence on The Atlantic's website or on Google that this article appeared.
The claim appeared on Twitter (archived here) on June 26, 2023, with the caption, "Demonic as Hell....running out of millstones." The screenshot read:
At this weekend's Pride parade a man exposed his genitals to my 6 year old. She was horrified. Am I raising a bigot?
This is what the post looked like on Twitter at the time of writing:
In a June 27, 2023, email, Anna Bross, a spokesperson for the magazine, told us "this is not a real article." Her full response:
No, it's not a real article from The Atlantic.This image is crudely fabricated; it is not a screenshot of an actual Atlantic article. We have published no such thing.For those who are irresponsibly sharing this image: it's remarkably easy to verify if something is real - or not - by visiting The Atlantic and searching our site.
The font used for all Atlantic articles and the one seen on Twitter are different. Below are two real articles from The Atlantic. One is from a desktop, and the other is from an iPhone. Neither of The Atlantic's fonts are in bold like the font seen on Twitter.
(Source: The Atlantic screenshot taken on June 27 15:26:39 2023 UTC)
(Source: The Atlantic screenshot taken on June 27 15:32:33 2023 UTC)
Other LGBTQ+ related Lead Stories fact checks can be found here.
