At this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference, the culture war reigned supreme.
“When our schools teach kids to be ashamed of America, when they teach the 1619 Project instead of our founding, we’re at risk,” said former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, a potential 2024 presidential candidate.
“All this woke, transgender athletes, CRT, 1619, they don’t teach reading, writing or arithmetic,” Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) said, perhaps less artfully.
Gender-related care for minors is “a demonic assault on the innocence of our children,” according to Tom Fitton, the head of the right-wing group Judicial Watch.
The most incendiary comments came from Daily Wire podcast host Michael Knowles, who called for “transgenderism” to be “eradicated from public life entirely.”
The list of terrors did not end there. Speakers warned of gay and transgender “groomers” preying on children to recruit them for sexual acts or to increase their own ranks. According to various presenters, men are terrorizing women in the bathroom by pretending to be women themselves; the very concept of the family is being upended as children change their gender behind their parents’ backs; and social unrest is brewing because some history teachers don’t emphasize patriotism to the exclusion of everything else.
The GOP appears to be pinning its hopes for the next election on this new culture war. But there’s nothing “new” about the fears they’re expressing, or the dire outcomes they claim are imminent.
Beginning in the 1970s, conservatives also organized a new political coalition following a wave of social and cultural change that saw successes for the civil rights and women’s and gay rights movements. Black people were finally to be treated as equal citizens with protections in elections, employment and housing. Women were moving out of the home and into the workplace. And gays and lesbians were asserting their right to exist in the public sphere.
Traditional hierarchies of power were being upset, and men ― particularly white men ― were being forced into economic competition with Black people and women just as the long period of post-war growth was coming to an end.
The conservative reaction to this was to slander gay people as pedophiles, warn of men in women’s bathrooms, decry the subversion of family authority and protest the inclusion of history that highlighted the country’s shortcomings, specifically on matters of race, as destructive to national unity.
We’ve heard this all before.
Singer-turned-political activist Anita Bryant called gays “human garbage” in her campaign against a Miami-Dade anti-discrimination ordinance.
AP
———————————————————————————-
Sex, Gender And Sexuality
“The homosexual recruiters of Dade County already have begun their campaign! Homosexual acts are not only illegal, they are immoral. And through the power of the ballot box, I believe the parents and the straight-thinking normal majority will soundly reject the attempt to legitimize homosexuals and their recruitment plans for our children.”
That’s what Anita Bryant, a famous Christian pop star, said in 1977, upon announcing her campaign to repeal an ordinance passed by Florida’s Miami-Dade County Council that banned discrimination against gays and lesbians in hiring and housing.
Bryant’s “Save Our Children” campaign featured all of the tropes that have become common in today’s attacks on the LGBTQ community, including the confusion of parents, the alleged subversion of the family and the supposed sexual predation of minors, particularly by teachers.
“When word came that there was an ordinance in Miami that would allow known homosexuals to teach my children, God help us as a nation to stand in these dark days,” Bryant said in speeches.
One Save Our Children ad warned that many “confused” parents mistakenly thought of gay people as “being gentle, non-aggressive types.”
“The other side of the homosexual coin is a hair-raising pattern of recruitment and outright seduction and molestation, a growing pattern that predictably will intensify if society approves laws granting legitimacy to the sexually perverted,” the ad warned.
“Only parents can reproduce,” Bryant would say. “In order to survive and sustain their lifestyle [gays and lesbians] are going to have to recruit.”
In other statements, Bryant called gay people “human garbage.”
These same sentiments can be heard today among those who attack the LGBTQ community as “groomers” or accuse them of harboring a secret agenda ― such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), who attacked opponents of his “Don’t Say Gay” law as “support[ing] sexualizing kids in kindergarten” and trying to “camouflage their true intentions.”
In an interview with the liberal Washington Post columnist William Raspberry, Bryant said she was trying to protect “our children” from “flaunting homosexuals” employed as teachers who, as role models, could “be able to stand up and say ‘I’m homosexual and I’m proud of it,’ implying to our children that they have another legitimate choice open to them.”
What Bryant didn’t want was homosexuality expressed “out in the open.” She wanted it eradicated from public life.
Raspberry, like a number of liberal columnists at elite publications today, was persuaded, at least in part, by Bryant’s arguments. “Anyone who tells you the question is easy is not to be trusted,” he wrote, musing whether it was “ignorance or bigotry at work” in the anti-gay cause or “mere prudence.”
Bryant wasn’t alone in warning about the subversion of the family and gender roles by movements for equal treatment. Conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly, fresh off a failed congressional run, came out in opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment in 1972.
The effort to enshrine women’s equality in the Constitution, supported by broad majorities and leaders of both political parties, was really an “attack on marriage, the family, the homemaker, the role of motherhood, the whole concept of different roles for men and women,” Schlafly argued.
Women would be drafted into the military, Schlafly claimed. They would lose long-sought protections that were secured in the 1963 Equal Pay Act and the 1972 Equal Employment Opportunity Act, and the right to alimony payments. Gay marriage would be legalized. Mothers would be forced to send their children to day care. And it would mean the end of sex segregation in sports, prisons, schools and bathrooms.
Phyllis Schlafly, national chair of the “Stop ERA” campaign, claimed that the Equal Rights Amendment would lead to men in women’s bathrooms.
BETTMANN ARCHIVE/HUFFPOST
——————————————————————
A pamphlet from Schlafly’s Eagle Forum distributed in the South warned of “the sexes fully integrated like the races,” including in bathrooms, as recorded in historian Rick Perlstein’s book “Reaganland.”
Today, the fear of men in women’s bathrooms has become a common trope in campaigns against the transgender community. At CPAC, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) highlighted the story of a teenage boy raping a girl in a Virginia high school bathroom. Gaetz falsely claimed that the boy identified as female. The story became a flashpoint in the 2021 Virginia governor’s race. The only problem with it was that the boy was not transgender.
The far-right John Birch Society also warned that the “Marxist pressures and abuses inherent in the ERA” would lead to “co-sexual penal institutions” and “the legalization of rape,” Perlstein writes. At the time, marital rape was legal in every state. It wasn’t until Susan Brownmiller’s book “Against Our Will” came out in 1975 that the concept was even discussed in those terms. The first conviction for marital rape would not occur until 1978.
“In desperation, the nation’s ownership has now gone back to the tried-and-true hot buttons: save our children, our fetuses, our ladies’ rooms from the godless enemy,” author Gore Vidal wrote in 1979. “As usual, the sex buttons have proved satisfyingly hot.”
The campaigns by Bryant and Schlafly both won. Anti-gay copycat campaigns followed across the country; most succeeded. In California, GOP gubernatorial candidate John Briggs put a referendum on the 1978 ballot to allow schools to fire teachers for the “advocating, soliciting, imposing, encouraging or promoting of private or public homosexual activity directed at, or likely to come to the attention of, schoolchildren and/or other employees.”
The initiative would effectively make it possible to purge any openly gay teacher, along with any straight teacher who discussed homosexuality or gay rights in any kind of positive way. This same drive to ban the supposed promotion of homosexuality (“no promo homo”) is expressed today in conservative efforts like Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law.
But the so-called Briggs Initiative lost. Gay rights activists in California organized to defeat it as a government-backed invasion of privacy. They even won the support of Ronald Reagan, former governor and future president.
“Whatever else it is, homosexuality is not a contagious disease like measles,” Reagan wrote in opposition to the initiative. “Prevailing scientific opinion is that an individual’s sexuality is determined at a very early age and that a child’s teachers do not really influence this.”
Conservatives today disagree.
Periods, Question Marks And Race
Just like the fight over sexuality and gender today echoes the battles of the 1970s, so too does the fight over the treatment of race in history and education. Today, conservatives back legislation to stop “woke indoctrination” by limiting the way race can be discussed in schools, colleges and universities. In the 1970s, conservative activists railed against secular humanism and multiculturalism. They all warned of the same horrors: the collapse of national unity and the end of American innocence.
The author James Baldwin recognized Americans’ desire for innocence and a sanitized version of their past. “The Americans have never even heard of history, they still believe that legend created about the Far West, and cowboys and Indians, and cops and robbers, and black and white, and good and evil,” Baldwin said at a 1965 debate with conservative William F. Buckley. “If the Europeans are afflicted by history, Americans are afflicted by innocence.”
The loss of innocence was on display in Kanawha County, West Virginia, in 1974, after the school board approved new curricula and textbooks that aimed to pro vide “multi-ethnic, multicultural balance.”
The textbooks in question made secular comparisons of Aesop’s Fables to Biblical tales; included mention of negative incidents in American history; and included more Black, Hispanic and Indigenous figures. One book featured a white girl handing a bouquet of flowers to a Black boy. “This is what it is all about,” the historian Perlstein recounts one protester saying in his book “The Invisible Bridge.”
“You are making an insidious attempt to replace our periods with your question marks,” one Kanawha County protester told a reporter for The Village Voice.
The protesters linked up with Texas textbook activists Mel and Norma Gabler, who began in the 1960s to review school textbooks for anything that would undermine the conservative Christian worldview, like the teaching of evolution. The Gablers also scoured for what they deemed problematic approaches in teaching American history, including deviations from “lost cause” Confederate mythology.
Norma Gabler at a press conference, July 20, 1977.
ANTONY MATHEUS LINSEN/FAIRFAX MEDIA VIA GETTY IMAGES
————————————————————-
They also received support from the Heritage Foundation, a then-new conservative think tank that sent two staffers to help coordinate the protesters and provide communications and legal help. The Heritage faction saw the protesters as part of an emerging majority political coalition opposed to recent social and cultural changes concerning race, gender, sexuality and secularism.
“Picking your fight is important. If you pick the right fight at the right time, it can be profitable,” James McKenna, one of the Heritage staffers, said in a PBS documentary about the protests.
After parents began a boycott of the schools, the demonstrations turned violent. Protesters attacked school buses, shooting them with shotguns, to prevent children from participating in the boycott by going to school. An elementary school was blown up with dynamite.
Controversies over school textbooks and the teaching of history continued for decades after. Congress gutted funding in 1975 for certain science textbooks after they were derided as promoting “cultural relativism.” One GOP congressman said the texts served as “cultural shock techniques” designed to teach children to reject the “national loyalties of their parents and American society generally.”
Similar controversies erupted in the 1990s when the federally funded National Council for History Standards released new standards for history teaching that expanded the range of people, events and organizations in American history considered worthy of attention.
Lynne Cheney, the former head of the National Endowment for the Humanities under George H.W. Bush, which funded the new history standards project, denounced it as “grim and gloomy.” It did not focus enough on the great men and great moments of American history, opponents argued ― and when it did, it failed to cast them in an entirely positive light. Instead, the standards only gave “unqualified admiration” to “people, places, and events that are politically correct,” which is to say, they were Black or female or Indigenous. Today’s conservatives would probably call them “woke.”
“From the arrival of English-speaking colonists in 1607 until 1965, there was one continuous civilization built around a set of commonly accepted legal and cultural principles,” Newt Gingrich wrote in 1995, in response to the standards. “Since 1965, however, there has been a calculated effort by cultural elites to discredit this civilization.”
Alabama state troopers are seen with Black youths who were arrested during civil rights demonstrations.
BETTMANN VIA GETTY IMAGES
————————————————————
The Voting Rights Act became law in 1965, legally ending the Jim Crow exclusion of Black people from the American political community. But further efforts toward their inclusion, and the inclusion of their stories, remained contested.
This same conflict erupted again in 2019 with the publication of the 1619 Project in The New York Times Magazine. This project of historians, journalists and columnists provided a historical perspective from the point of view of Black America, beginning with the arrival of the first enslaved people in 1619. In the ensuing years, further attacks on history education ― especially anything focused on slavery and civil rights ― unfurled over the teaching of so-called critical race theory.
In response, conservatives pushed legislation, like DeSantis’ “Stop WOKE Act,” banning the teaching of certain concepts concerning race. The result is a purge of books, classes, teachers and subject matter that focuses on Black history and the Black experience in the U.S.
From Anti-Communism To Anti-‘Wokeness’
The culture war attacks in the 1970s worked to bring religious, social and Southern conservatives into a majority political coalition with libertarian business conservatives and anti-communist hawks. This fusion proved potent. Conservatives won control of the Republican Party, which won five out of six presidential elections between 1968 and 1988.
Anti-communism served as the glue that held this coalition together. Communism, it was said, sought the subversion of traditional hierarchies, the American way of life and the American free enterprise system. Anyone who deviated from the norm, or protested the conditions of women or racial minorities, could threaten the social fabric in service of communism.
“Communists and queers … have sold 400 million Asiatic people into atheistic slavery and have the American people in a hypnotic trance, headed blindly toward the same precipice,” Sen. Joseph McCarthy, a Wisconsin Republican, said while denouncing gay people employed by the State Department.
In a 1952 piece by R.G. Waldeck, the right-wing publication Human Events postulated the existence of a Homintern or Homosexual International, similar to the Comintern, or Communist International.
“Members of this International constitute a world-wide conspiracy against society,” Waldeck wrote.
Fears of the Homintern did not end in the 1950s. At the 1992 GOP convention, Rev. Gene Antonio denounced the gay rights movement as both “a Homintern” and “a homosexual gestapo,” whose “goal” was to “break the back of every church.”
That was the first presidential election cycle following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. With the glue of anti-communism gone, conservatives sought a new adhesive to hold their coalition together.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) delivers remarks at the 2022 CPAC conference at the Rosen Shingle Creek in Orlando, Florida, Feb. 24, 2022.
JOE BURBANK/ORLANDO SENTINEL/GETTY IMAGES
—————————————————————————–
Former Nixon aide and GOP presidential candidate Pat Buchanan paved the way at that same 1992 convention with his blood-and-soil call for an all-out culture war. The external threat was defeated, he warned, but the internal threat remained.
“There is a religious war going on in this country,” Buchanan said. “It is a cultural war, as critical to the kind of nation we shall be as was the Cold War itself, for this war is for the soul of America.”
As Buchanan’s heir, former President Donald Trump reoriented contemporary GOP priorities toward countering so-called subversive activities. As he said in a video posted on March 16, “the greatest threat to Western civilization today” is “probably, more than anything else, ourselves.”
“It’s the collapse of the nuclear family and fertility rates, like nobody can believe is happening. It’s the Marxists who would have us become a godless nation worshiping at the altar of race, and gender, and environment,” Trump said, in his list of the many woes supposedly caused by liberal and left-wing opponents.
But just like before the end of the Cold War, the Republican Party remains wedded to a free-market libertarian economic program of tax cuts for the rich and corporate deregulation ― one that its more downscale voters, an increasingly large part of the party, don’t think of as a priority.
During the Cold War, dissenters within the conservative coalition could be kept from bolting by the shared goal of fighting communism. This helped Republicans win a national majority.
With the GOP having lost the popular vote in eight out of the last nine presidential elections, their hope is that they can resurrect the fears of the 1970s under the brand of anti-“wokeness” to build a new majority coalition. Instead, it increasingly looks like a desperate effort to hold together the party’s divergent voting and donor bases.
This is a web site I really enjoy. Especially when I don’t feel well as it gives the facts and clear information in easy to digest segments. Randy introduced me to it years ago. Here is a sample of the author’s work. Hugs
Over the last 50 years while the democrats pursued only the highest offices in the land the republicans were pushing hard to take over state government and the churches rushed to take over the school boards. I remember that in the 1990s in Palm Beach Conty that the big churches were fielding stealth candidates to take over the boards and change what was being taught. It was underway back then! Now the right wing /maga republicans are using their complete control over the levers of state power to end right, roll back protections, to take the states back to a time of strict gender roles for the sexes and a time when minorities were second class citizens who either knew their place or they were not allowed in society in any way. In fact they are not just trying to return society where gays were a shame to the family but they want a time when gays could be arrested along with denied working for any level of government being banned from security clearances. They are driving hard for this. Look at the red states trying hard to bring back banned conversion therapy that has been well and full debunked as not only something that doesn’t work but was found to be very harmful to those subjected to it. They again want to deny the medical science because it shows their ideology is wrong. Being gay or trans is not a choice, it is not a disease needing to change or cured. People are born gay / trans and while some manage to hide it, they should have to. They should be able to live their lives freely as they really are. Plus now they want to set up secret hidden police where neighbor spys on each other and reports to hotlines those not following the party rule. Hugs
From the Arizona Department of Education:
Arizona schools chief Tom Horne has launched the Department of Education “Empower Hotline” so that Arizonans can report inappropriate public school lessons that detract from teaching academic standards.
These include those that focus on race or ethnicity, rather than individuals and merit, promoting gender ideology, social emotional learning, or inappropriate sexual content.
The hotline provides the opportunity for constituents to provide feedback, concerns or complaints, which is a standard service offered by multiple government agencies and private-sector businesses.
It is available at 602-771-3500, or through email at empower@azed.gov. The phone line will be staffed during normal business hours, but after-hours phone calls as well as emails will be accepted at any time and followed up appropriately.
Horne explained, “Some say critical race theory (CRT) is a graduate study, not taught in K-12 schools. The evidence is to the contrary. I have a list of 250 Arizona teachers who signed a shocking statement promoted by the national teachers’ union, that if critical race theory were banned, they would defy the law.
“They would not have signed if they were not already teaching it. They come from 25 school districts, including the largest ones. Teachers must teach academics, not use their power over a captive audience, to promote their personal ideology. That is unprofessional conduct.”
Horne added, “I promised to establish this hotline so that anyone could report the teaching of inappropriate lessons that rob students of precious minutes of instruction time in core academic subjects such as reading, math, science, history and the arts. That promise is being kept.”
While Arizona state attorney general, Horne threatened to sue cities that recognized out-of-state same-sex marriages. That same year he proposed legislation allowing public school teachers to carry guns. Horne has faced multiple allegations of campaign finance crimes and has a lifetime trading ban by the Securities and Exchange Commission related to an investment firm he founded before running for public office. As you can see below, he is a supporter of QAnon freak show Vaseline Woman.
Superintendent Horne said, "There’s nothing more outrageous than religious prejudice…The person who raised this on the school board describes herself as a ‘neuro-divergent queer.’ And when she says that, she expects you to be tolerant of her."https://t.co/yzR4OWxkzA
— Arizona Department of Education (@azedschools) March 14, 2023
.@electtomhorne: “When @KariLake becomes Governor, and I become Superintendent of Schools and the other Republicans are elected, we’re gonna get CRT out of our schools.” pic.twitter.com/cl1WzWmFEX
Isn’t it odd that they think that they can actually change someone from being gay to being straight after months or years of therapy, but they also think an entire classroom of children will become gay after hearing a guy in a dress read them a story. Fuck these people and their hatred of the LGBTQ community. They want to exterminate us. Ain’t gonna happen.
Granted, I went to Catholic school, but half of my report card was based on behavior. So it’s wrong to teach children social skills like how to behave in class and with each other?
I hope that students flood the call line with reports of teachers talking about their heterosexual spouses, or wearing crosses and talking about their faith.
Horne explained, “Some say critical race theory (CRT) is a graduate study, not taught in K-12 schools. The evidence is to the contrary. I have a list of 250 Arizona teachers who signed a shocking statement promoted by the national teachers’ union, that if critical race theory were banned, they would defy the law.
He missed a great opportunity to use the phrase “I have here in my hand…”
So he has a definition of what CRT is? I wish he would share it with the rest of us. Is it that white treated black people bad, killed them, and kept them as slaves for decades in this country? That’s not a theory, that’s true….. This is just what Arizona needs for their teacher supply. It is a common belief among teachers around her that two places you don’t want to go teach is Colorado and Arizona. The pay and benefits are very low. This won’t help the state find teachers.
Arizona Republican Gestapo thinks kids are too stupid to hear anything non-negative about LGBT people, but does think they’re qualified to tell the state to fire their teachers over ‘not meeting the academic program’ before they even learn the material, never mind what the vaguely-worded ‘standards’ are supposed to be?
Umm, the thing is, education on history and racism is not what ‘Critical Race Theory’ is, but you use it as a buzzword to ban or silence any mention of actual things in the laws.
This Canadian immigrant, son of Polish immigrants, cost Arizona millions of dollars when as Attorney General he got the Republican-run legislature to ban Mexican studies here in Tucson. Went all the way to the Supremes, who told this old fuck to fuck the fuck off. The bill he promoted banned well-known history books because they mentioned discrimination against Mexican-Americans. Always interesting to see immigrants coming to the US and promoting hatred towards other immigrants (e.g., Rupert Murdoch).
Superintendent Horne said, “There’s nothing more outrageous than religious prejudice…”
Nothing? I can think of a few things:
– pastors who sexually abuse children – revivals – evangelical parents who brainwash their children – “ex-gay” torture – Anti-Semitism – racism – rape – laws that dehumanize and persecute LGBTQ people – Republicans – Trumpvangelicals – QAnon cultists – White/Christian Nationalists – book bans – the dissemination of far-right propaganda – everyone who works at Fox
Posting it mostly because this picture has been making the rounds in transphobe twitter as an example of why trans women shouldn’t be allowed to play womens’ sports… but this is actually a trans man, not a trans woman.
Ultimately the attempts to ban certain women from sports is stupid, it’s the same logic that leads the Olympics to banning all three medalists in the 800 meter race from participating unless they take feminizing drugs.
These medalists were all AFAB and identify as women.
The Ohio legislature is contemplating banning trans folks from high school sports.
The Ohio schools athletic association said there are 4 trans students (didn’t identify male or female) in the high school sport system. But only 2 would be playing any sport this year. Out of almost 500,000 high school students, the legislature is all about 2 of them. Wasting time about 2 students.
Anything they can do to force a regressive return to a time before progressive civil rights and a progressive society that valued people for who they were including women, minorities, ethnic groups, and the LGBTQ+. Look all those groups / people have been around and part of us since the dawn of man, but the ability of those people to live openly in equality as they are, to live normal lives in society is something new in the last 80 years. That is something the wealthy barons, the religious fundamentalists, and those unable to accept the changes in society are desperate to deny and reverse.
I am sorry, I wish I could do more to promote this story. I simply am not up to it. Don’t just stop at the article I post, go to the story. Things are changing fast and badly in Florida. This is vitally important to what is happening in Florida due to the republicans under the direction of DerSantis. It is a story of not allowing the majority to prevent the minority from forcing an ideology, a ridged ideological regressive conservative rule on a public that doesn’t want it. This a group of ideologs that got a little authority and gerrymandered / voter suppressed it into a majority party win, and each time they gained more power they did everything they could even as their party shrank to increase their lock on power. This is about big corporation money to force a government into office that will allow them to disregard human life while increasing profit. Profit is king and greed is good. But having ideas that support the importance of people or the government using its power to assist or support the public interferes with profit. That cannot be allowed. So in Florida they managed to get a few republican state legislature wind even using illegal means that still let the illegally elected person stay in office, then trump managed to get a failing far behind candidate for governor elected and the minority part who did not have a majority of the state’s votes changed everything to give themselves great advantages meaning large wins. The situation in Florida is the public is 50/50 or even leaning blue but the republicans have made it almost impossible for a democrat to win in a lot of places and even if a democrat looks to win in at least three documented elections republicans violated laws to make sure the democrats cannot win. Republicans want a one party rule which equals a dictatorship, just look at the governments around the world they support. So to stop any free thought or kids getting the idea that there is any other way than republican ideology they make it illegal to teach it, to mention it, to disagree with the grand republican party and its minority rule will not be tolerated in the schools, in higher education facilities and now not even in the press or media. Is this what the US wants? Don’t you see examples of this in history? Sorry I must go lay down. Hugs
Comments are disabled as most posts going forward will be. Due to health reasons. Hugs. Scottie
Public dress codes separated due to gender assigned at birth. Soon don’t you women dare wear pants, men make sure you have your beard and regulation hat when you leave the house. This is the US Taliban. No miniskirts you women, be respectful with skirts at knee length and dresses covering your ankles. Plus as JMG says let’s protect kids by making dress up illegal but allow teenagers to carry guns. The republicans are a minority party that has to gerrymander and suppress the right to vote to insure they stay in power, but they rule like they have a landslide majority. I really think this comes down to a religious motive. Men shall not dress as women, women shall not dress as men or men might start sleeping sexy with men dressed as women. Oh no! Hugs
Tennessee House Republicans on Thursday moved to prohibit “adult-oriented” entertainment from public property and restrict it to age-restricted venues in legislation filed after a flurry of controversies over drag shows across the state.
The bill classifies “male and female impersonators” as adult cabaret performers and bans “adult-oriented performances that are harmful to minors,” as defined in Tennessee’s obscenity law.
Bill sponsor Rep. Chris Todd, R-Madison County, filed the legislation after he fought a public Pride drag show in Jackson, Tennessee. Todd at the time called the drag show “child abuse,” though he said he wasn’t aware of the actual content the show would contain.
House Bill 9 and Senate Bill 3 would ban those performances from public property or in a location where they could be viewed by minors. The bill addresses performances like “topless dancers, go-go dancers, exotic dancers, strippers, male or female impersonators who provide entertainment that appeals to a prurient interest.”
The bill passed as amended with 74 in favor and 19 against. News Channel 11 reached out to the office of Governor Bill Lee regarding the bill. A spokesperson for Lee said he intended to sign it when it came to his desk.
The bill now returns to the state senate for a procedural concurrence vote before heading to the governor’s desk, possibly as soon as tomorrow.
Rep. Chris Todd first appeared on JMG in April 2022 when he authored a successful bill allowing 18 year-olds to carry handguns. Because he so wants to protect young people. Last year he forced a local Pride organization to cancel drag performances in a public park.
The Tennessee General Assembly passed a bill prohibiting the hosting of drag shows in public venues or anywhere minors might be present. | @ariblaffhttps://t.co/ngOlJgyK2R
This is step one. Once they get away with this they will go to the next steps. Eventually, being publicly or openly gay will be a reason for being arrested.
I still frequently see comments that try to hit back at these things using logic or accusations of hypocrisy. And I’ll keep saying: These bigots don’t give a shit that their laws make no sense or are hypocritical. They just want to lock us up and kill us.
Thank you! I’m 67 years old at went to school at a time when we learned about how this encroachment begins. We’re in for some hard times. And I’m not being Chicken Little about this. Trump’s Supreme Court has already been unleashing their terror on women.
The only solution is civil disobedience and acts of malicious compliance. Defy the law, stage your performance and let the cops pull you out in handcuffs. This isn’t 1962, there’s camera everywhere. Let America see.
And maliciously comply. Put together your drag bunch, market it as a drag brunches but have a group of of cis women do the performance in modern drag style costumes and makeup. Confuse the shit out law enforcement when they come to make the arrest.
It’s also not 1962 in that there’s an entire media industry created by the right that exists just to deny sympathy when the police start cracking skulls.
Also most evangelical christmas and Easter shows feature men in dresses. Report that shit to the cops, organize call trees and place hundreds of calls for each performance.
Also add Jesus, a man clearly in drag, to each drag show…doesn’t have to be reverent, just have Jesus. He could serve wine.
Yes, I have been saying that for a while. Get some straight ally women to dress up in drag-style and host a drag brunch. Confuse and frustrate the police.
Also, the law says “…male or female impersonators who provide entertainment that appeals to a prurient interest”. I can’t think of anything less prurient than someone dressed in a full-length gown reading to kids.
Unfortunately, it’s going to take some arrests and lawsuits to get this shit over with. But we know that drag queens have some of the biggest balls out there to do it.
Please, these bills have nothing to do with “protecting minors.” Just like anti-abortion bills have nothing to do with “protecting the unborn.” These bills are all rooted in the desire to suppress female sexuality.
To the MAGAts, drag queens are a form of “female liberation.” The right to express, the joy of expressing, “female-ness.”
To those same morons, abortion rights threaten the right of men to control female bodies. The right to suppress female bodily autonomy.
Interesting that “Mrs. Doubtfire” the musical is coming to TPAC (Tennessee Performing Arts Center) in Nashville this coming season. I hope that the whole season gets pulled.
The coup d’ etat continues unabated. Get ready because if you live in a red state this and so much more is coming to you. Soon the bills to not recognize same sex marriage will start coming out. Pride marches will be banned. Then people will see why cops had no business being in those parades because now those same cops gonna be splitting your skull if you get out of line
The Christian Nazis have taken over a liberal arts college that the Deathsantis wannabe king hated as it taught respect and compassion for others along with all the other life skills of education. I am so worried that we did not realize how behind the curtain these groups were building up power. Remember the first time he got elected governor Deathsantis barely won, he was almost defeated. But by giving into the hate and discrimination demanded by the minority haters who cannot accept that time has moved on from cavemen days and stoking that hate into action DeathSantis created a large following. He won this last election with a wide margin partly due to the corporate democrats insisting on putting a former republican up against him. Think about it, Democrats don’t want a former republicans who vetoed everything they wanted and the republicans don’t want a republican lite. Those of us in the state knew this would be the result but the national democratic committees claimed they knew better, as they always do and they are always wrong. Notice the first thing this new right wing Christian Nationalist insisted on was opening with a prayer to his god, not anyone else’s god but his Christian god. We are lucky that DeathSantis cannot run again for governor but the state is seriously fucked now as much as other southern states. Yet it was a blue state not this way when I moved here in 1994. Sorry I hurt too much to colorize it. Hugs
A new president, new board chair and new legal counsel all will be up for discussion Tuesday when the New College of Florida board meets, along with the possibility of ending faculty tenure, terminating all employee contracts and rehiring anyone who fits into the school’s “new financial and business model.”
Speir, a Christian school founder appointed by DeSantis to the board, wrote a Substack post over the weekend saying he wants to “Discuss need for new president and possible motion to give Pat Okker title of Interim President.”
The agenda also includes “Election of the Board Chair and Vice Chair” and “General Counsel to Board of Trustees.” Speir appears to be a driving force behind some of these discussions.
Speir and other new board members have criticized the college’s leadership.
Speir clashed with legal counsel David Smolker over his request to open the board meeting with prayer. He said Smolker initially denied the request, but in his latest Substack said that decision was reversed and an opening prayer will be allowed.
Speir writes in his Substack that he wants to “dismiss General Counsel from the Board, NOT the school.” He also makes it clear that he wants to remove board Chair Mary Ruiz.
“My concern is that Chair Ruiz will not resign and/or delay resignation,” he writes. “Thereby halting and/or delaying the necessary clarity that NCF needs as soon as possible.”
New College Professor Amy Reid, director of the school’s gender studies program, urged board members to be more deliberative and not move “rashly” to replace leadership.
“We’ve heard a lot of saber rattling from individuals, but we still haven’t heard from the majority of the board” Reid said. “I encourage the board to find out more about the institution, to really look before they leap when it comes to leadership changes.”
It’s not clear if a majority of board members would back a leadership shakeup at the college.
Mark Bauerlein, one of the board members appointed by DeSantis, told the Herald-Tribune recently that he has “no idea” if he would support Okker’s removal.
“I haven’t seen any records about her, but our phone call the other day was pleasant and informative,” Bauerlein said.
Speir has a long list of motions he plans to make at Tuesday’s board meeting.
Among them is a proposal to identify “wokeness” as a “set of beliefs” akin to religion. He then wants to identify aspects of wokeness that are “shared values” worth preserving, that are “dogmatic” and should be excluded from curriculum and that are “pledges of fealty” that should be actively fought against.
“One such example of a pledge of fealty is the demand that woke pronouns are used,” Speir writes.
Speir also wants to explore ending faculty tenure and “terminating all contracts for faculty, staff and administration and immediately rehiring those faculty, staff and administration who fit in the new financial and business model.” He wants to board to send a letter to “the new counsel” seeking a legal opinion on the feasibility of such a plan.
Another motion Speir plans to introduce would remove some media members from the meeting.
“I move that we remove USA Today and its affiliates from the list of approved media outlets until an apology is received with a commitment from USA Today to adhere to its own policies,” Speir writes, referencing Herald-Tribune parent company Gannett’s flagship newspaper, USA Today.
The Herald-Tribune is part of USA TODAY Network – Florida. Speir is upset about comments made by Herald-Tribune readers.
The Herald-Tribune reached out to Speir for comment Monday morning and has yet to receive a response. When contacted for comment last week, Speir said “I’m still waiting for a formal apology” from the Herald-Tribune and the removal of reader comments.
New College Board of Trustees meeting
The New College of Florida Board of Trustees is meeting from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. on Tuesday, Jan. 31 at Sudakoff Conference Center, 5845 General Dougher Pl Sarasota, FL 34243.
Visit the Herald-Tribune’s website – http://www.heraldtribune.com – for live coverage of the board meeting. A full report on the meeting will be in Thursday’s print newspaper.
Yet the right says the democrats are the ones indoctrinating students. These are upper levels of schooling, college and universities, that they are removing any talk of equality, racism, and so much more. Professors having to scrub their courses and presentations of anything that might upset the ruler / dictator DeathSantis. Imagine this country wide. Talk about the Taliban or moral / vice police. This is stunning and worse it is not getting any national attention or scrutiny. It is scary how fascist the state of Florida has become in several short years. With DeathSantis making Florida a maga white Christian paradise the state is being flooded with intolerant people who won’t accept any social advance since the 1850s. Plus notice the drive is to make a public school be just like a conservative Christian college. Hugs
Yovanna Pineda, hired more than a decade ago to teach Latin American history at the University of Central Florida, rebranded one of her signature courses last fall. Striking references to “dictatorships” and “human rights” from the title, she decided to simply call her class “History of South America.”
Pineda said many of her colleagues are making similar changes, either because they fear blowback from state leaders who say they are trying to eliminate “indoctrination” from university campuses or because they don’t want the hassle of additional scrutiny.
DeSantis continued his campaign last week, appointing far-right activist Christopher Rufo to the Board of Trustees at New College of Florida. Rufo is best known for launching a national campaign against critical race theory. Rufo told The New York Times he and his new colleagues seek to transform New College into a public version of Michigan’s Hillsdale College, a conservative Christian school.
Read the full article. That’s Rufo standing appropriately on the far-right in the screenshot above.
UCF professors are renaming courses and removing phrases like “human rights”, “social justice”, “equity” and “equal” to avoid being targeted or tracked by the state.
This is happening in 2023 in the United States under the new McCarthyism of Ron DeSantis.https://t.co/Z7Xrzx8WNp
UCF professors are renaming courses and removing phrases like “human rights”, “social justice”, “equity” and “equal” to avoid being targeted or tracked by the state.
This is happening in 2023 in the United States under the new McCarthyism of Ron DeSantis.https://t.co/Z7Xrzx8WNp
“And faculty members say they’ve seen other signs that the governor has gained a foothold on their campuses, including the removal of the words “social justice” from the name of an office at UCF, which has been rebranded as the Office of Civil Discourse.“https://t.co/Z7Xrzx8oXRpic.twitter.com/VI4WkSlCWu
If you want to see true hypocrisy, look no further then Cuban Republicans in FL who scream about how evil socialism and Castro are while applauding everything DeSantis does. They hate socialism but love fascism.
Like openly gay Florida state Rep. Carlos Smith (seen above), I am a graduate of UCF, which is now the nation’s largest public university by enrollment.
So the ‘academic freedom’ they’re so loudly in favour of just means the ability of professors to use slurs and misgender their students without being talked to by HR. I mean we knew that, but nice to see it actually being confirmed in real time.
In the Fascist State of Florida, the remaking of education continues on course. Henceforth, all institutions of learning will be used to groom children into fascism and eliminate anything that does not support/agree with fascist theory.
What I don’t understand is why the ACLU or some other organization hasn’t brought suit against the governor for violation of the First Amendment. This is exactly what the amendment was designed to prohibit: governmental interference with free speech.
Why even send your children to Florida universities at this point. Soon none of the institution live up to the normal standard of operation. Moron Death Sentence is hell bend on turning Florida into a shit hole state.
And the administrations of these schools are unable to protect academic freedom for their professors because of fear of retribution and firing. DeSantis is Big Brother.
All public educators, at all grade levels, should simply walk out. There is no way Florida would be able to replace every single teacher and college professor in the state. The federal government would be forced to step in.
Zac Anderson
Scottie's Playtime 