Ever-Sharp Culture Wars
Terry H. Schwadron
Oct. 28, 2022
A newly introduced “Don’t Say Gay”-inspired bill from 33 House Republicans shows what we’re in store for should the House and maybe the Senate turn up with a Republican majority after the Nov. 8 elections.
Rep. Mike Johnson, R-La., and 32 GOP mates have co-sponsored a national bill based on the controversial Florida state law that bans instruction on gender identity and sexual orientation in kindergarten through third grade classes but has affected teaching and protests about teaching through high school and college classes.
As things stand right now, the bill is a loser in both Democratic majority houses. After the elections, we’ll have a new lineup, with the House predicted to swing Republican and a toss-up in the Senate. Still, it is unlikely that such a bill would gather 60 Senate votes even in the post-election chamber.
Nevertheless, it is important to note the effort to nationalize right-wing thinking about what clearly has been the domain of local politics and school boards. At its broadest, this kind of bill affects not just instruction in schools, but also events and literature at any federally funded institution, a National Public Radio reportsuggests.
Johnson insisted that his bill was “common sense” prompted because “The Democrat Party and their cultural allies are on a misguided crusade to immerse young children in sexual imagery and radical gender ideology,” The “Stop the Sexualization of Children Act,” aims “To prohibit the use of Federal funds to develop, implement, facilitate, or fund any sexually-oriented program, event, or literature for children under the age of 10, and for other purposes.”
Timing Seems Politically Ripe
OK, let’s remember that this bill is emerging at the same time that the U.S. Department of Education released national test score information that shows standardized test results in reading and mathematics to have plummeted in most states after more than a year of covid lockdown.
It follows by a week the most recent school shootings in St. Louis where two students and a teacher were felled by a lone gunman.
It follows in a week in which Texas school officials were explaining about sending DNA sample kits home with students to help identify student bodies in the event that they go missing or, apparently, end up as victims requiring identification.
It follows reports about schools not spending covid monies or those who have diverted money for school construction work to improve safety against disease in ways now being prosecuted as fraud. It comes as we worry about mental health of students, protection of schools and a significant loss of teachers over pay and harassment.
It comes as at least a dozen states are considering new legislation that in several ways will mirror Florida’s law referred to by some opponents as “Don’t Say Gay.” The specific details regarding the bills vary between states. But overall, they seek to prohibit schools from using a curriculum or discussing topics of gender identity or sexual orientation.
So, right off the bat, there are two questions at play here: Aren’t there more important things to worry about than mentions of alternative lifestyles that exist in the lives of real students? And if we are going to worry this question to death, isn’t it a local or state problem? What’s it doing before Congress?
NPR says the language in the proposed legislation lumps together topics of sexual orientation and gender identity, with sexual content such as pornography and stripping. It would prohibit federal funds from being used to support any “sexually-oriented” programs, events, and literature; ban federal facilities from hosting or promoting such events or literature; and allow parents and guardians to sue government officials, agencies, and private entities if a child under 10 is “exposed” to such materials.
The bill asserts that some school districts have implemented sex ed programming for kids under 10, and that “[m]any newly implemented sexual education curriculums encourage discussion of sexuality, sexual orientation, transgenderism, and gender ideology as early as kindergarten.” It also calls out events such as drag queen story hours in libraries, which it describes as “sexually-oriented.”
The GOP Agenda
Would-be Speaker Kevin D. McCarthy, (R-Calif.) already has pledged allegiance to legislation in the new session that would build on “parental rights” measures, a Republican a rallying cry that applies equally to anti-vaccine thinking as to policing the books on school library shelves.
It is as if every student in America is reading so much from school libraries about sex that they never have time to pick up information from friends, on the street, from movies, entertainment, song lyrics, television, or radio. I don’t see too many public school classes on use of makeup and early sexualization, but somehow, magically, those traditional tween and teen concerns manage to filter down to our youngest students.
It must be the teachers’ fault.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law his “Parental Rights in Education” bill, which continues to produce enforcement problems about what actually to say to a student whose drawing of parents might include two dads or moms, or over whether a teacher can display a spousal photo on the teacher desk if it’s a same-gender snap.
The question of whether to talk about identity has filtered well past kindergartners and to state college campuses, where faculty unions are suddenly finding themselves having to defend against inquiries that would have never arisen previously under the banner of academic freedoms.
Naturally, this bill introduction has drawn the wrath of LGBTQ groups, The Human Rights Campaign, which advocates for the rights of LGBTQ people, and, generally, the political Left.
To the degree that Republican candidates are declining to talk solutions for immigration and inflation, a substantial number seem ready to open a full-scale war on what it means to be an American in America.
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