Apparently, having all their arguments about recognizing same sex marriages beginning in MA in 2004 destroying families, promoting marriages to children, animals, pets, and inanimate objects being shown to have been exaggerated and baseless claims, the conservative right has decided since it is not being done as a result of same sex marriage, some states need to pass laws to kick start what they had imagined would happen hasn’t.
Just as when their claims that allowing Transgender people using the restroom that match their correct gender would result in all sorts of sexual predation in ladies’ restrooms, some male conservative and Christian warriors dressed as women and entered the restrooms causing a disturbance.
It wasn’t happening until these people played their games.
They’re like an anti-graffiti brigade who, having no existing examples to explain the importance of their work spray paint the Mona Lisa to show how bad it is and why the brigade is needed.
When Same-Sex Marriage was recognized as legal, for some odd reason the prediction was that Gay people would be having relationships with children, and non-Gay people would see these marriages as permission for them to go after children too.
Since, other than in a case of rape, Gay sex, just like straight sex, is between consenting adults, yes, there is the occasional perv, but that is not determined by sexual orientation, politics, or religious affiliation, this assault on children did not take place.
But it has to the religious and conservative right demand.
There was also the claim that Same-Sex Marriage would dissolve the institution of marriage even as since 2004 and nationally since 2015, not only are Gay people getting married, but heterosexuals are still getting married.
And, so, in Tennessee they codified these attacks on children and marriage with the proposed HB 233.
Domestic partnerships were not seen to be on the same level of marriage to Gay people who wanted their relationships to be seen as more than shacking up or a perpetual roommate arrangement.
While the justification for banning either arrangement when it came to relationship recognition was that unwed couples living together was Biblically wrong and there were laws against it, this bill would establish a common-law marriage between “one man” and “one woman”.
Common law marriages, also known as non-ceremonial marriage, informal marriage, or marriage by habit and repute (living together in an agreed upon long term relationship),and is an informal arrangement without registering with the government or a church.
Not so recognized, such marriages do not get the rights, privileges, and government or corporate benefits, just as long term, same sex relationships were denied, and their domestic partnerships seen as living in sin and detestable
Apparently two Gay people doing this is still illegal and considered wrong.
Only straight people can “live in sin” and get the same benefits as married people.
During the marriage debate the claim was often made that Gay people, in spite of many examples of decades long couplings, were incapable of committed relationships by the same people who would fire a person found in a long term committed Gay relationship, arrest the couple for violating lewdness laws, and prevented these relationships.
Gay people were not incapable of long term, committed relationships. They were being denied the opportunity to have them and then blamed because of the lack of them.
Bill sponsors want to add a new marriage option for residents and will keep those who object to same sex marriages, like churches, happy by establishing an alternative form of marriage.
According to one sponsor,
“So, all this bill does is give an alternative form of marriage for those pastors and other individuals who have a conscientious objection to the current pathway to marriage in our law. There is not an explicit age limit.”
Because they are not formal and do not involve ceremony or paperwork related requirements as they are not in a present-day Biblical marriage, although they are in one allowed in the Old Testament, the usual age limits for legal marriages are waived as an adult is not marrying the child, but simply living with them in a sanctioned common law marriage.
With the age limit evaporating, child advocates oppose this. Pedophiles can now legally shack up with their victims.
In 2018, a Tennessee bill was passed that prohibited anyone under the age of 17 from marrying in the state and anyone under 18 from marrying someone who is four or more years older. Judges could still waive the minimum age limit with parental and guardian consent.
This bill applies to formal marriages, not common law ones.
Straight pedophilia is now sanctioned by law because in Tennessee relationships between an adult and a child are now legal in Tennessee because they have established an “alternative form of marriage”.
The public did not demand this. It is the state’s response to Same Sex Marriage.
They are probably pleased that when it comes to the predictions of future modifications of marriage because Gay people are able to wed, the conservatives in Tennessee, and, judging by the GOP states’ practice of attempting to one-up the others by making their restrictive laws the most restrictive, this common law thing will Metastasize among the red states.
They are the parent who at first is reluctant to give their kid a cookie, but when finally deciding to, cautions the kid that because he has that cookie he is going to fall down soon and tripping him as he passes on the way out of the kitchen.
Gay marriage did not promote or create pedophilia, nor did Gay people demand that.
This is the work of the very Christian conservatives who needed to make marriage modification happen.
Because Gay people can get married, Tennessee has made straight pedophilia legal in response.
After knowing for at least a decade and after having promoted and passed local, state, and federal laws that forced anyone who was not Heterosexual into the closet and to find human sexual companionship in places that, hopefully, such hook-ups would not be necessary in a more open minded and informed society, the GOP found itself having to deal with Congressman Mark Foley, the then Chair of the House Committee on Missing and Exploited Children, who had been sending messages to house pages with lewd content.
His doing this was not a secret among the GOP.
The House Speaker at the time, Dennis Hastert, not only declined to move to have Foley removed from Congress even though his position kept him in contact with his victims, but he and the GOP continued to have Foley appear at fundraisers and Party events.
Thing is, though, that Hastert who did not demand the resignation of Foley was later found to have been messing around with 14 year old boys when he had coached a high school sports team admitting to at least four instances where he molested high school kids.
The GOP had no problem with this self-admitting, repeat offender getting only 13 months as punishment without the book being thrown at him.
They both preyed on minors both with pictures, words, and deeds.
Roy Moore had a penchant for looking for young girls in malls. When those charges and credible witnesses came forward, they made Moore a hero to Republican Alabama voters because he was a stalwart Christian soldier who had installed a monument to the Ten Commandments on public land and refused to remove it. When he ran for Alabama Attorney General even after the revelation of his propensity, he defeated his opponent who had been appointed to replace Jeff Sessions when he went to the Trump administration.
This was the administration of the president who as a serial sex offender and unfaithful husband to his three wives on a number of occasions was sent by God and that was okay.
As a form of pushback to mentions of Foley or Hastert now, the common approach is to demand we let the past alone and not hold the present to the past.
Time heals all wounds.
Except, whenever congress or the senate deal with race related topics, the GOP will point out that Jim Crow was introduced by Southern White members of Congress and the Democratically run legislatures of the various Southern states.
What they leave out is that by the 1950s the southern Democrats had become the Dixie-crats and were out of step with the main Democrat Party that was actively becoming promoters of the equality of the races especially after Truman integrated the U.S. Armed forces.
They, in the meantime want to keep the Good Ol’ Days and where necessary bring them back and have become the new Dixie-crats.
At the Ketanji Brown SCOTUS nomination hearing both Senators Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz kept bringing up and questioning her about her record on sentencing those who possessed and distributed child pornography with which they found fault and kept interrupting her answers each time it became obvious her explanation began to show the fault in their false sense of righteousness.
Lindsey Graham got the vapors over it, and they got moral support from the rest of the GOP on the dais because they too are so righteous.
But for all the concern Republicans are showing now, I am wondering what the hell these people are going on about while child abuse and pornography infects their own party, and they do and say absolutely nothing.
Just googling for lists of Republican politicians, local, state, and federal, who have been charged, indicted, and convicted of sex crimes with minors or in questionable consenting adult situations is quite an eye opener.
Of course, Democrats aren’t completely innocent of these crimes, but the difference is that the Democrats do not stand in the public square and condemn others for doing what they themselves do.
Contemporary to the display of righteous indignation at a judge assigning sentences according to established parameters, there is Matt Gaetz being investigated on charges he helped to pay for and transport underage girls across state lines for sex as has been admitted to by a good friend of his who joined in this with him.
He remains a very vocal member of the GOP and the present minority leader of the GOP in the House refuses to take any action, major or minor, to even tone him down in spite of the admission of his friend that established a strong case.
Jim Jordan still has his problems for letting things go on in the showers and elsewhere between a doctor and athletes in the athletic department of the college when he was involved with the wrestling team. The GOP simply ignores those filing the charges and the severity of those charges.
Those employing the deflection of ignoring the past and the what-about-the-past references in an attempt to hide their pattern of behavior will say that that was then and this is now, hoping people will believe the GOP sins are far in the past when in reality such topics of removing Don’t ask/Don’t tell, recognizing same sex marriage and the Civil Rights of Gay people, making schools safe and welcoming for Gay kids, and removing positive information from schools and the same when it came to books in the library that touch on gender were “battles” in the W Bush years with many of the people involved then still in Washington. Many who came in after those recent years have been using these tropes to deny the rights of others, like Trans people.
In some places the battle has been won in favor of Gay people, in some varying degrees and parts, and in some others still way behind in recognizing people’s creator endowed rights.
I was involved in that battle to have rights recognized, as a participant, not a spectator, and I hear the arguments from the GOP in the days of Foley and Hastert being used again now, while the messes in the background continue with tacit approval from the Party.
Having lost when it came to the GLB part, they simply adapted the same false arguments concentrating them on the T and are doing what they can to roll back time to before the predicted horrors of Gay equality that they guaranteed equality would bring about that didn’t happen.
If their only defense in their support of racism which is evidenced by action and taking away people’s rights is that Southern democrats introduced Jim Crow over a hundred years ago and stayed with it until about three quarters of a century ago ,the time difference between supporting Jim Crow and evolving to the point the majority of Democrats rejected it and only the outnumbered southern democrats still supported is an acceptable span to hold Democrats to, then the shorter span from 2000 until now when the fight for GLBT rights was quite alive during the W Bush years can be referenced when you show that while the GOP is having a problem with everyone else’s sexual activity, they engage in those activities and worse on a regular and tacitly approved basis.
Every year the Austin, Texas, school district holds a Pride Week “to celebrate LGBTQIA+ students, staff, and families by highlighting the district’s commitment to creating a safe, supportive, and inclusive environment.”
The Austin Independent School District states on its webpage,
“Each campus will receive an inspiration guide of suggested activities for PRIDE Week. Campuses are encouraged to plan activities that engage, educate and inspire. If you have any questions regarding planning activities or for assistance in selecting resources that best fit your school community, please contact your campus GSA coordinator or campus counselor.”
However, this year, because of the new anti-Gay laws in that state, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has said that the school district is breaking state law.
The week-long celebration and education this past week had each day covering a particular theme such as “know your rights” and Gay History and ended with a “PRIDE OUT!” party. This year the Pride Week came during National LGBTQ Health Awareness Week.
However, two days in, Paxton notified the Superintendent of the district that
“The Texas Legislature has made it clear that when it comes to sex education, parents—not school districts—are in charge.”
The use of the phrase “sex Education” clearly shows he did not bother to actually look at the event and that he knows the word “sex” will disturb some people, most likely his conservative base.
“By hosting ‘Pride Week,’ your district has, at best, undertaken a week-long instructional effort in human sexuality without parental consent. Or, worse, your district is cynically pushing a week-long indoctrination of your students that not only fails to obtain parental consent, but subtly cuts parents out of the loop. Either way, you are breaking state law.”
In another subtle reveal of his prejudice and the need to use loaded terms to win support, Paxton, in justifying his claim that there should have been parental consent, does not describe the Pride Week events as what they actually were but, instead, purposely mislabels them instruction regarding human sexuality.
He let the public know that parents can file complaints against the school district with the school board and the Texas Education Agency.
In response, the superintendent released a statement that said,
“Here at Austin ISD, we celebrate Pride during every school year so our LGBTQIA+ students know how much they are valued and loved. This year, it’s important to me personally that they know they are respected and safe, too, and lest anyone have any doubt, that absolutely goes for our trans kids. We are ALL Austin ISD. We embrace diversity.”
The statement on Tuesday by the Attorney General did not stop Pride week that continued to the end.
Good Lord, what will Paxton do if a high school in Texas puts on a play with two people falling in love and talking about it.
The deaths of Romeo and Juliet will not be from suicide, but Texas bigotry.
By calling the Affordable Care Act “Obama Care” so that conservatives would reject good health care because they so identified the act with that Obama, racism and rank , political partisanship had them rejecting Obama Care while praising the ACA. They had no idea they were the same thing, and some preferred the ACA to Obamacare, even as they were one in the same. They did want or need the actual facts the name was enough to influence them.
Call addressing the needs of Gay students “instruction in human sexuality”, and you have people opposing what, if properly informed, they would support.
Texas, a place where at agricultural schools or in the classes of schools that have that in the curriculum along with animal husbandry, students will have questions about the similarities between humans and farm animals and may threaten the teacher’s career and financial standing if the questions are asked.
Ripples in the pond are going to start forming and being noticed.
Because the SCOTUS nominee Ketanji Jackson Brown’s hearing was public, we got to see the strength with which members of the GOP attempted to justify past bigotry and promote its continuance. You basically had a group White, conservative Southern men explaining racism and segregation and their effects on people to a Black Woman.
It was a terrible display and should be noted by the public, especially those who reject the ideology and politics that was so open.
In a less nationally televised campaign, it is obvious that racism is not the only thing these men want to bring back.
Close to 200 hundred state bills have been filed this year seeking to erode and/or remove protections for Gay kids in schools with a emphasis on the Transgender ones.
While attempting to appear Pro-family and Pro-child, by their very words they clearly show that they have not taken the time to do even the minimum amount 0f research to have even a rudimentary idea of what Transgender actually is, the science behind it ,and its relation to children.
To them it is boys playing on a girls’ team because that is scarier and easier than grasping and then explaining the realities of sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression.
In some states Gay children are actively and tacitly reduced as people as are their families. In these states their laws against discussing or mentioning anything Gay is so broad and open ended, hot only must a Gay child keep quiet, but that child’s family must go unrecognized or spoken of if a child has two mommies or two daddies.
The number of proposed anti-GLBT laws is quadruple the number of similar bills introduced just three years ago.
While Christianity runs rampant in our schools and its adherents demand it be the predominant consideration when it comes to curriculum and school activities and who can participate in them, and while Christian symbolism in the form of golden crosses worn by faculty and students, posters about church activities and Christian holidays and holy days, and demands from the Christian community that school policies and curriculum be based on the Bible a which is not consistent even among Christians (Book of Sirach anyone?), they claim that acknowledging a student’s sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression, their same sex parents or Transgender parents, the family they have created, or that some of the people who made our society and created Western Civilization were gay, is a form of recruitment unlike all the religious things and the question actually asked in school and sometimes by faculty and staff, “Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior”, usually followed by the reasons why you should, somehow, is not.
Now they are attempting to proselytize on school campus during school hours by both 0vert and covert means.
It is obvious that the unprecedented legislative efforts are aimed at dismantling the hard-won civil rights of a group the religious right needs to have as a bogey, As all bullies, they need the vulnerable victim to feel good about themselves
These proposed and passed bills are based on the false claim thatparental authority is being undermined and that things mentioned in schools are sometimes in conflict with religious tenets taught at home.
As State Senator Rob Standridge of Oklahoma explained concerning his motivation for proposing his Anti-Gay bill and that of others proposing theirs,
“Christian parents don’t think the schools should be evangelizing children into sexual ideologies they don’t agree with. So that’s what the bill is about, to try to get schools to stop doing that … I’m empowering the parent that is directly affected by what they see as overriding their beliefs.”
Notice that only the religious beliefs of Christians are mentioned and he compares teaching facts to evangelizing.
What bills is this Oklahoma state senator speaking of”?
In his state alone, One such bill, for instance, “would require school districts to submit to the State Department of Education detailed expenditure reports on diversity, inclusion and social justice training for teachers and administrators,”
while another “would outlaw teaching of social-emotional learning in schools”
Another “require higher education institutions to post their budget for student and teacher diversity curriculum online,”
And one that would, “ban voluntary surveys in schools from asking questions about sexuality or gender and would ban school libraries and curriculum from including books that deal with sexuality or gender.”
At the same time that these bills are being considered the state senator also filed one that
“would require teaching ‘patriotic education” or be subject “impose civil penalties of at least $10,000 on school personnel who teach lessons related to critical race theory [and] require the employee to be fired and blacklisted from educational employment for at least five years.”
Oh, and another bill would “require social studies classes to teach at least 45 minutes every Nov. 7 on “Victims of Communism Day”, take that Native Americans, make it mandatory for
“schools to distribute historical Thanksgiving day proclamations, all of which list the importance and role of Christian faith,” “add reading requirements for high schoolers that contain some theological themes,” and “require the Oklahoma State Department of Education to contract for curriculum for a four-year pilot project for 11th graders on U.S. history that “narrowly tailors the subject areas to align with free high school curriculum courses from Hillsdale College”, which, for those who are not familiar with it, is a private, conservative liberal arts college with a curriculum based on Western heritage, as per Greece and Rome, and Judeo-Christian traditions that opted out of the federal affirmative action policies choosing to replace federal funds with private donations rather than comply. It has connections with both the Heritage Foundation and, recently, the Trump administration.
Clearly in the attempt to honor and empower parents, there would seem to be a limit on which parents they accept, the conservative, white, Christian ones.
Rather than educate themselves and the public, politicians in Oklahoma and the other states that are proposing, discussing, and passing the anti-Gay bills, play into fears that true Americans are being replaced by immigrants, people of color, and younger more progressive people.
And that their religious beliefs are not accepted by everyone and given precedent in all civil decisions and that s more people’s rights are recognized, theirs are somehow decreased.
Parents always had a say in their child’s education. There are parent conferences, Parent/Teacher Nights, email, and the phone along with going to the school and talking to the relevant staff member, and when there has been questions or conflict meetings usually resolved situations.
To be clear, by “Parental Rights” they claim the right and demand that a limited group of parents, in the majority white, Christian, conservative ones, should be given the power to control the education of all other parents’ kids who, if they are not white, Christian, conservatives, have no say, and that screaming at and threatening school personnel on campus or at school board meetings is an exercise of that right..
Nationally, approximately about 75 of the new bills call for bans or severe restrictions on classroom discussions, curriculum, and library books that mention Gay issues, and are so vague it is unclear whether educators or students could even mention their own sexual or gender identity or even that of their parents.
50 bills seek to ban Transgender youth from playing competitive school sports on school teams.
29 seek to ban gender-affirming medical care for Transgender youth, which primarily involves hormone therapy to delay the onset of puberty, so that if it comes to that, there is no going back to undo what was done by puberty or is part of the transitioning process.
While supposedly dealing with schools, legislators want to make it a crime to provide such care to children and young teens, and, in contradiction to the claim the laws are to protect Parental rights in the education and health of their child, many of these laws, passed, proposed, and being discussed, would also make it a crime for parents to sign off on such care, thus removing parental rights and putting this decision in the hands of politicians and the government.
The bills do not just exercise the parental rights tactic, but at least a dozen states are sticking with toilets as there are also about 15 or so Anti-Trans “bathroom bills” out there and they apply to Transgender students and Faculty.
In 2019 there were 18 anti-Gay bills with a heavy concentration on Transgender people of all ages. In 2020, a big election year, that number rose to over 100.
The whole Judeo-Christian tradition begins with a story of a flawed product incredibly produced by an all-powerful, omni-present, and omniscient Being that failed its first major test about obedience being good and disobedience bad, by eating the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil which at the time the rule was issued meant that neither Adam nor Eve had no idea that some things were good and somethings weren’t. Disobedience, like everything else was a neutral thing, a Schrodinger’s cat. God gave the Test without covering the topic in class.
Adam blamed Eve, Eve blamed the snake, and that set the Judeo-Christian tradition of blaming everyone and everything else, real or imagined for their own failings. There has to be someone to blame for their own shortcomings so that their failures are not their own but that of someone else.
“The devil made me do it” excuses the Christian of fault, and the devil who forced them to sin can conveniently be whoever it is that they do not like. They did come up with incubi and sucubi to dodge responsibility for sexual activity between consenting, yet unwed, adults.
Throughout the bible there are countless retellings of the need to protect oneself from the evil of others and assigning the role of the evil-doer to anyone not from the tribe.
We cheer that the Israelites took over the promised land by killing off the Canaanites because those people were somehow, in their difference, evil and their mass killing justified because, well, the Israelites wanted their stuff and took it because, they claim, it was what God wanted.
The conservative, white, Christian approach is to label people as the “enemy of God”, and with God offering no clarifications, treating them in very unchristian ways, and with all his omnipotence could just snuff them out, allows young people to kill them off in ever undulating waves over the centuries and letting certain people. godly or not, tto benefit from that.
The overwhelming sentiment of the public when it comes to GLBT things is to just let it be and stop the obsessing in the name of religion.
8 in 10 Americans support laws to protect GLBT people from discrimination in jobs, housing, and public accommodations.
68 percent of Americans support same-sex marriage, a rise from 54 percent in 2014.
This means all this ant-Gay legislation is not what the American people want but is what will please partisan interests and voters in the upcoming election.
How to best help GLBT children is sacrificed to getting votes by promoting bigotry.
States are requiring school librarians to go through shelves and remove certain books that Christians might find uncomfortable, books dealing with gender and sexuality, unless, of course, they are about heterosexuality.
The ban on trans athletes competing on public school sports teams that passed the Idaho legislature was influenced by Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian legal organization founded in 1993 and employs a national network of Christian lawyers to fight for its Conservative Christian beliefs encoding them in laws that apply to all of us and helps lawmakers craft legislation and provides legal support.
Joining in with ADF in promoting Christian anti-Gay laws are the Heritage Foundation and the Family Policy Alliance, each of whom published a list of positions on Transgender and Gay rights that are included in these restrictive new state bills.
Together they are the Promise to America’s Children coalition, and it supplies legislators with boiler plate anti-gay legislation that state legislators can pass off as their own.
To fill in background,
The Alliance Defending Freedom filed a Supreme Court amicus brief in Lawrence v. Texas case, argued in favor of Arizona’s right to maintain sodomy laws, has defended parents’ right to have their LGBTQ children undergo conversion therapy, which uses unproven and often dangerous, but Christian, psychological, physical, or spiritual interventions in an effort to make a Gay person Straight, and, spreading the Christian message as Jesus told them to, has worked to get other countries to criminalize same-sex sexual acts.
Because its members and supporters believe that marriage between on man and one woman is the best institution for humans to flourish, they want the exercise of that belief to trump any beliefs of other religions or those not affiliated with an organized 0ne.
The coalition has stated,
“In the wake of COVID, with children engaged in remote learning, parents gained a new window into what their children were learning in the classroom. For some parents, this revealed curriculum which not only taught viewpoints about sex and gender with which they disagreed but taught them as fact to young children.”
And the operant words “Some parents’ assume they speak for all.
Because no one ever taught kids in school anywhere that creation in Genesis and Noah’s flood are facts that must simply be accepted when presented as such.
The American Principles Project, a conservative think tank, raised $750,000 to get Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to order the state to investigate parents of trans children who have received gender-affirming medical care.
South Dakota state Representative Fred Deutsch introduced in 2020a bill to ban gender-affirming medical procedures for transgender youth. It resulted from his attendance at an event hosted by the Heritage Foundation and is a good bill because the original bill he came up with
“was developed organically in the living room of my country home in South Dakota, surrounded by miles of corn fields.”
Apparently, this bucolic scene of law inspiring Americana , however, was before he got input from the Alliance Defending Freedom and asked the Heritage Foundation if he could share the bill draft.
Arkansas and Tennessee have already passed this bill not crafted by the needs of any state’s citizens, but as part of the agenda of national conservative groups.
Such laws put doctors in the untenable position of having to decide between legitimately helping a child or avoiding the penalty for breaking a law either by refusing to begin or stopping a successful course of treatment no matter where along it the person is.
This is legislated medical abandonment.
It is a choice between violating a major ethical tenet of health care delivery or risking a felony conviction. It is a choice forced on the doctors who may have their own children to help as their patient’s parents have allowed and with the parents face a felony conviction that will have a deleterious effect on their own children or deny the proper medical and Psychological care.
The vaunted “Parental Rights” in this case could result in prosecution.
Watching the SCOTUS nominee hearings, it was more than obvious that many questions were based on getting even. Throughout the hearings GOP senator after GOP senator mentioned the Bret Kavanaugh and Amy Barret hearings , while, of course, ignoring the full picture that included why they were even having a hearing, saying in so many words what Lindsey Graham at one point articulated, that any hardball questions were because of how Kavanaugh and Barret were treated, and this after Mitch McConnell had previously said this treatment of Democratically nominated justices for the bench would be treated just like Robert Bork was.
Like the hearing was Festivus, we were treated to the Airing of Grievances.
Over the years, GLBT people have been getting their constitutional and Creator endowed rights recognized and all these bills could be the poor sport backlash.
Treat people of color right, there goes the White race.
Recognize the civil rights of Gay people and Straight people’s rights go away.
What people like to claim are traditional values, traditional family values, basic Biblically allowed values, are being shown to be in support of human constructs not humanity. As more knowledge comes out and people’s understanding of the world and their place in it, some of the old ideas are showing their age, and some people cannot abide that.
They set up a chair on the Titanic’s deck as people were boarding lifeboats because they were told the boat could not sink, and, by god, they would not accept it might in spite of the evidence. They were surprised when they found the ship was gone.
The Alabama Senate passed a bill in February that calls for penalties of up to 10 years in prison and a $15,000 fine for anyone who provides gender-affirming care to a child or teenager.
The Idaho House passed this month that would allow librarians to be jailed for up to a year and fined $1,000 each time they are found guilty of disseminating material that is “harmful to minors,” harmful left vague.
But it is clear, when these library censorship bills come up, that as the sponsors only specifically bring up books that have GLBT themes or characters.
Florida, without looking up the meanings of the words, is dealing with a bill that would ban public schools from teaching about sexual orientation or gender identity in kindergarten through the third grade, and that any such instruction must be “age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students,” neither of which, like “harm”, are not defined, and Parents who believe an educator has violated the law may sue.
When Texas lawmakers did not pass a transgender medical care ban, its governor requested the public turn in parents to the state if they have or are providing gender-affirming medical care to their trans children which could result in a criminal investigation and potential charges. Abbott and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton consider this parental choice to be “child abuse.”
The Texas AG has officially opined that parents and guardians should be blocked from signing off on all transgender procedures “because children are legally incompetent to consent,” and they “infringe on the child’s fundamental right to procreate.”
Yet, parental control is what he wants when it comes to education and books, but not when it comes to a child’s health and wellbeing.
These laws attack GLBT people in ways beyond just the students.
They attempt to take away doctors’ ability to treat a patient by putting them between the rock and the hard place, legally pursue supportive parents who have arrived at their decision after much careful thought and uneasy discussion, ban teachers’ support, eliminate certain students from having a safe and welcoming school and forcing them to be someone they are jot, and, really bad for kids, separate them from their teams and coaches.
Five bills have been passed by states which contain actions that curtail the rights of trans children and their families, and a dozen bills would require medical care providers and educators who learn of a child’s sexual orientation and gender identity to notify parents in spite of the consequences, and teachers could be charged with violating the law if they did not reveal what they knew for the sake of the child’s safety.
Regardless that more than 170 major U.S. corporations have signed a statement condemning the bills, and Disney CEO Bob Chapek formally apologized to employees this month for the company’s silence on the Florida “Don’t Say Gay” bill announcing Disney would pause all political donations in the state after the financial contributions statement showed it gave to lawmakers who championed that bill.
But pass or fail, the GOP is using these bills and the fictitious reasons they are needed for political gain while destroying the lives of children, their heterosexual and Homosexual parents, and their friends, and, most sadly, the lives of their own sons and daughters who, seeing the anti-Gay vehemence, would, obviously, keep their truth silent.
Also, in their haste to pass these bills as if there is a deadline to get it done (election day, perhaps), the sponsors of the bills did not look up the word to find that every person has a sexual orientation and that heterosexuality is just one of them.
If there can be no discussion or acknowledgement of things related to sexual orientation, no straight kid could talk about families or dating, and all school activities that are modeled after the heterosexual model, like Prom Royalty and school dances must be expunged.
These bills are like Edward Gorey’s Cashlycrumb Tinies. Each one from Amy to Zillah rushed into an environment too hastily to assess if it was a good thing or a bad one to their peril.
What was seen at the Ketanji Jackson Brown hearing is just the tip of the racist iceberg. There is more behind the senators’ spoken words.
These anti-Gay bills are the tip of another iceberg.
In the event you have not noticed, the standard operational procedure among the red states is the attempt to one-up the severity of another red state’s attempts to deprive a chosen group of citizens of their Creator endowed and constitutionally protected rights.
Sadly, in the rush to win the contest, legislators make overly broad laws which affect more than the intended victims.
Florida recently passed the Don’t Say Gay law which, actually being a resurrection and reworking of the laws that used to exist to deny Gay students equal educational opportunities and inclusion in all school activities, bans classroom instruction on
“sexual orientation or gender identity in grades one through three or in a manner that is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards”.
The costs to do that would be the responsibility of the district, according.
Not to be left out of the race to the bottom, Louisiana came up with a similar bill which states that it will,
“prohibit classroom discussion about sexual orientation or gender identity in certain grade levels, prohibit teachers and others from discussing their sexual orientation or gender identity with students, and to provide for related matters.”
It goes on to say,
“ Sexual orientation, gender identity; prohibited instruction, discussion. No teacher, school employee, or other presenter shall cover the topics of sexual orientation or gender identity in any classroom discussion or instruction in kindergarten through grade eight. No teacher, school employee, or other presenter shall discuss his own sexual orientation or gender identity with students in kindergarten through grade twelve.”
Even though discussion about sexual orientation and gender identity “in certain grade levels or in a specified manner” is forbidden, neither what constitutes discussion nor what those specific manners are is not defined, parents could sue a school district if they believe there is a violation of any of these vague requirements or restrictions.
As with Florida and the other states who have entered the competition, the bill is vague and more inclusive than the red state legislators realize and reveals the ignorance that these bills are based on.
By definition, sexual orientation is
an enduring pattern of romantic or sexual attraction (or a combination) to persons of the opposite sex or gender, the same sex or gender, or to both sexes or more than one gender.
While these laws are obviously wrong because they ignore the reality that there are some first through third graders whose parents are of the same gender, yet this is to be ignored and any references to it by the teacher is banned, and it does not make clear what “age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate” means, it has a universal and school-crippling application if it is closely looked at because every kid in school has a sexual orientation as do all their parents, teachers, and other school personnel, so such discussions are unavoidable.
Sexual orientation is part of everybody and in relation to students its inclusion in policies protects all students as they all have sexual orientations. However, in their zeal to ostracize some students, teachers, students, and any other school employees cannot have wedding rings, pictures on their desks of family members, and will have to avoid references to their heteronormative family units.
In their race to out-do each other, before writing their bills, in states like these and the others proposing such bills, the sponsors never bothered to look up the definitions.
In their attempts to exercise bigotry based on religious liberty, in attempting to erase certain students, they forgot, or just do not know, that sexual orientation is not a fancy term for Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Nonbinary, but a term equally applied to Heterosexual as well.
Unless they can deny them their rights, a Heterosexual parent of a Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, or Nonbinary child could go after the teacher and the school for mentioning husbands, wives, and children on the campus during school hours while having at least one, most likely more family photos on desks, and presenting all kinds of reading materials, like literature, that speak of Heterosexual relationships (That means you, Romeo and Juliet), holding school dances, Homecoming and Prom Royalty competitions, because doing those things, grades one through twelve, as this is discussing and presenting a sexual orientation, or because elementary school dances and any other activity that would divide students into male and female couples would violate the requirements of age-appropriateness as the students are legally minors and children.
This is how out of control these politically and religiously based laws are. In their haste to hurt some, they did not realize they are hurting all.
The option exists, once they see how vague their present wording is, to make an official list of who in this country has rights and who doesn’t, which students have a full school experience and which don’t, which parents and families count and which don’t.
They do not even take the time to do the research that would define sexual orientation, and this could be because, knowing that such research would also show their assumptions and misperceptions to be wrong, they are presently comfortable in their willing ignorance.
So the choice facing these states, those that have passed the laws and those proposing them, is to devastate the educational experience of all students and their parents or make an official list of those groups of students that will be denied the education and educational experience allowed to other students.
Whenever the needs of GLBT students come up, the major rationale offered for objecting to their full inclusion in school policies and programs is because to openly include them in school policies would open a Pandora’s Box of frivolous lawsuits as students and parents would take advantage of the opportunity to make a lot of money by filing complaints about the most minor inconveniences in the name of equality, and that GLBT students would somehow disrupt the school system by demanding special treatment and control of all activities and programs.
This was often accompanied by claims that openly including GLBT students into full standing as students would bring on religious persecution and Christianity would be thrown under the oppressive heel of some sort of Gay take-over of society as we know it.
The only way to avoid chaos is to stay with the status quo because, obviously, the predictions of horror were well founded and nothing has contradicted them.
That was the thought and in a way the hope that the bad things would come to fruition and the objectors would be proven right, and winning was more important in this case than education
Things went a different way.
There is undeniable proof, however, that recognizing students as who they are will not destroy schools, districts, or the whole education system if not society as well, and this did not come from the expected places like the East and West Coasts where the liberal elite live and such open mindedness is expected, but from the Heartland where it isn’t.
And there is a definite line of demarcation separating the way it was and the way it became, and none of the negative predictions showed up in the after, just as they had not been in the before.
Because of timing, the students in the Oklahoma City Public Schools District who entered the first grade in 2010 and are about to graduate in May of 2022 will be the first class in that city and the whole state of Oklahoma to have gone through all twelve grades of public school with “Sexual Orientation and “Gender Identity” in school policies on bullying, harassment, and nondiscrimination, and nowhere in those twelve years did the predicted end of the world even hint at taking place.
As a matter of fact, while the benefits of making schools safe and welcoming for all students became more obvious as did the emptiness of the excuses to allow some students to be denied full standing in the district, the district later during those twelve years added to its policy language making it more inclusive.
It’s Student/Parent Handbook now clearly states,
“The Oklahoma City Public School District (OKCPS) does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex, disability, age, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, genetic information, alienage, veteran, parental, family and marital status in its programs and activities, or in its employment decisions, and provides equal access to the Boy Scouts of America and other designated youth groups.”
Not among the “elites” but in the heartland, rather than remaining entwined in speculation and assumptions, there is proof that accepting and respecting students’ Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Gender Expression does not bring about all the exaggerated excuses used to limit the full involvement of GLBT students in education and school activities because of who they are or the fear that allowing their full participation will somehow bring about conditions which has been shown to be not the case.
Beyond speculation, when those who go after GLBT students to deny them an equal education and involvement in school activities, clubs, and sports in a safe and welcoming environment which by law they must attend every day, especially the Trans kids who are victimized by ignorance, bigotry, and politics, present them with this factual example of reality that shows how wrong they were and continue to be and ask for an equally factual and relavant example to support their claim.
When the Oklahoma City Public Schools added “sexual Orientation” the district joined those many districts all over the country who had already done that. But when it also included “Gender Identity”, aware of it or not, it joined an extremely small number of school districts nationally that had done that leaving the rest to catch up.
They led, and that act of leadership has proven to have been the right thing to do as was ignoring the groundless speculation of the naysayers who have been proven wrong.
Now after the first class has gone the full twelve-year span of a public-school career and all the others are following behind, the district might also not be aware that they are the proof against the arguments to exclude and discriminate for political, religious, or personal reasons.
Even within the district, its own past arguments that there would be a cause-and-effect situation if it chose to protect GLBT students was disproven as the predicted effect never materialized.
You have your comeback to the unreasonable claim and the unreasonable fear it is based on which cannot be dismissed not only because of what happened and how long the proof was being accumulated, but where it happened, in the Heartland in the Buckle of the Bible Belt.
