In case you hadn’t noticed, Republicans are aggressively trying to roll back the clock on LGBTQ+ rights. How aggressively? Well with Texas making every trans family into child abusers and Florida’s legislators passing “Don’t Say Gay” to become law, we’re fully in the GOP political crosshairs. After our successes in the (not quite yet totally Trump overrun) Supreme Court — marriage equality in 2015 and workplace nondiscrimination in 2019 — you knew the convervative backlash would be coming.
But I was not prepared for how blatant and how, well let’s just say it, evil their campaigns would be. Calling loving parents of trans children child abusers. Keeping trans kids from playing sports. Stopping teachers from acknowledging LGBTQ+ people, history, families and students (and then making them out those students to their parents).
If they think they can wrestle one bigoted vote away from progress by making trans kids or other LBGTQ+ people Big Scary Things To Be Scared Of they will. According to the bipartisan Freedom for All Americans campaign, there are currently hundreds of anti-LGBTQ+ bills circulating statehouses right now. By the horrifying numbers:
- 195 anti-LGBTQ bills have been proposed around the countryAnd while Texas and Florida get all the heat, the states with the most anti-LGBTQ+ bills being discussed are:
- 76 anti-LGBTQ school policy bills
- 48 sports bans for transgender youth
-28 bans on healthcare for transgender youth
- Tennessee (30 bills)So, uh, how’s that equality feeling right about now? In short we’re pretty precariously teething on a precipice situation and the other side isn’t even trying to disguise the blatant hate. Trans people’s right to existence isn’t a political football. And what’s worse, these laws target the already most vulnerable and least represented groups of people in society already facing astronomical rates of bullying and violence. That, in turns, leads to astronomical rates of self-harm and suicide. A recent student of trans and non-binary youth found 60% engaged in self harm in the past 12 months.
- Iowa (19 bills, and Gov. Kim Reynolds already banned trans girls and women from playing sports last week while surrounded by a group of almost exclusively blond and white young women because you gotta have thatall-whiteall-right imagery I guess)
- Arizona (18 bills)
- Missouri (17 bills)
What do Republicans think taking them away from their loving parents, keeping them from playing sports and banning them from gender-affirming healthcare will do to that rate? Or is that the point? Like I was saying, evil. We need to call out these bills and laws for what they are, harmful to children and young people. And either as a country we support all children, or we think some are just things to vilify in order to win elections.
I moved to Iowa in 2007 to work at a small liberal arts college. It was summer, and the small college town had a festival of some sort. I remember as though it was yesterday, because I had NEVER seen more blonde people in all my life. I called my mom while taking it all in. I grew up in a steel town in Ohio with a LOT of immigrant families and other families that moved to the area for the work in the steel mills. My mom was a first-generation American. I was used to Greek, Italian, Black, Czech, Lebanese, and other combined families. The whiteness of Iowa was something I expected, I suppose, but it was literally jarring at first.
ReplyDeleteWell, maybe now we can get back to using words like LESBIAN, because too many women are treating that word as if it's a bnadge of shame instead of pride.
ReplyDelete