I posted this last year when it first came out. I want to repost it. The message at the end is so vital and important to what is happening today. If you are not willing to listen to Beau and you should, he relates the tale that 30 years ago he was dating a girl who it turned out her father was a die hard racist bigot. The girl was mortified by this. The point that Beau makes at the end of the story is that just as the people who protested and railed against the mixing of the blacks and whites back then are thought of as weird stupid bigots the people doing this to the LGBTQ+ people today will be thought of in the same way. Of course Beau is more generous than I am, if these bigots manage to make the US the Christian nationalist theocracy they want then no one will be free to look back badly on them, look at Iran, the Taliban in Afghanistan, and Saudi Arabia among other religious countries that are ruled by church doctrines instead of secular laws acknowledging advancements in understanding of all things since their holy books were written. Hugs
Category: Racism
How the Nazi Regime’s Pink Triangle Symbol Was Repurposed for LGBTQ Pride
https://time.com/5295476/gay-pride-pink-triangle-history/
Is history repeating itself? Are the Nazi fascist rising again, using their favorite targets again? You know the gays, the non-whites, the Jewish people. Look what is it the fundamentalist Christian nationalist racist bigots want so badly? To return to a time when the white people were given automatic privilege and superiority in the country. A time socially where white men were automatically assumed to be in charge and women were subservient as well as dependent on men. When society catered to the white cis heterosexual people with no mention in public of those others. All they are doing with these ban laws is to return to those days by banning all advancement in society, in our culture. Here is the most important paragraph in the article, I think. Hugs
According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), that changed when the Nazis came into power in the 1930s. Hitler saw gay men as a threat to his campaign to purify Germany, especially because their partnerships could not bear children who would grow the Aryan race he wanted to cultivate. During that period, gay-friendly bars and clubs started being shut down, authorities burned the books at a major research institution devoted to the study of sexuality, and gay fraternal organizations were shuttered. These efforts only increased after the Night of the Long Knives, the 1934 purge of Nazi leaders who were accused of trying to overthrow Hitler; they included Storm Troopers leader Ernst Röhm, whom the SS murdered, later citing his homosexuality as justification for his murder. A Nazi revision of the 1871 law took effect in September of 1935, outlawing anything as simple as men looking at or touching one another in a sexually suggestive way, and enabled authorities to arrest people even if they had only heard rumors that people had been engaging in such behavior. (Lesbians, however, didn’t face the same criminal penalties.) The Gestapo began to keep “pink lists” of violators.
Prisoners wearing pink triangles on their uniforms are marched outdoors by Nazi guards at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Germany on Dec. 19, 1938.CORBIS/Corbis—Getty ImagesWith LGBTQ Pride Month beginning June 1 — a month chosen to honor the history of activism epitomized by the Stonewall Riots of June 1969 — celebrants around the world will be getting ready for parades and other tributes. Symbols such as the rainbow flag and the pink triangle will abound; for example, Nike has announced a new line of LGBTQ history-themed sneakers, including two that boast pink triangles.
The brightly colored symbol is now often worn proudly, but it was born from a dark period in LGBTQ history and world history.
Just as the Nazis forced Jewish people to wear a yellow Star of David, they forced people they labeled as gay to wear inverted pink triangles (or ‘die Rosa-Winkel’). Those thus branded were treated as “the lowest of the low in the camp hierarchy,” as one scholar put it.
The roots of the Nazi persecution of gay people are deep. Since German unification in 1871, a section of the country’s criminal law widely known as “paragraph 175” had said that men who engaged in acts of “unnatural indecency” could go to jail. In 1877, the German Supreme Court of Justice clarified that to mean evidence of an “intercourse-like act.” But the law was only enforced sporadically. And the fact that it was almost impossible to convict anyone unless he confessed to such a crime in court meant that police just kept a watchful eye on gay bars and events, and Germany ended up becoming home to a vibrant gay community. Historian Robert Beachy argues that, ironically, the law spurred scientific interest in the study of sexual preferences, and that research tended to encourage a more scientific understanding of human sexuality, which further allowed the idea of gay rights to flourish.
According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), that changed when the Nazis came into power in the 1930s. Hitler saw gay men as a threat to his campaign to purify Germany, especially because their partnerships could not bear children who would grow the Aryan race he wanted to cultivate. During that period, gay-friendly bars and clubs started being shut down, authorities burned the books at a major research institution devoted to the study of sexuality, and gay fraternal organizations were shuttered. These efforts only increased after the Night of the Long Knives, the 1934 purge of Nazi leaders who were accused of trying to overthrow Hitler; they included Storm Troopers leader Ernst Röhm, whom the SS murdered, later citing his homosexuality as justification for his murder. A Nazi revision of the 1871 law took effect in September of 1935, outlawing anything as simple as men looking at or touching one another in a sexually suggestive way, and enabled authorities to arrest people even if they had only heard rumors that people had been engaging in such behavior. (Lesbians, however, didn’t face the same criminal penalties.) The Gestapo began to keep “pink lists” of violators.
Between 1933 and 1945, by the USHMM’s count, an estimated 100,000 men were arrested for violating this law, and about half went to prison. It’s thought that somewhere between 5,000 and 15,000 men were sent to concentration camps for reasons related to sexuality, but exactly how many died in them may never be known, between the scant documentation that survived and the sense of shame that kept many survivors silent for years after their ordeal.
From the few survivors and prison guards who have shared their stories, it’s been learned that those sent to concentration camps were segregated, for fear that their sexual preference was contagious. Many were castrated. Some were used as guinea pigs in various medical experiments to find a cure for typhus fever and a cure for homosexuality, the latter of which led the SS to inject them with testosterone to see if it would make them straight. At the same time, some Kapos (prisoners selected by the SS to keep fellow prisoners in line) are said to have demanded sexual favors from prisoners, who were known as “doll boys,” in exchange for extra food or protection from hard labor.
Yet in the post-war years, fear of arrest and imprisonment didn’t go away. The Nazi law stayed in place until a 1969 West German law decriminalized gay relationships among men over 21. As one of the USHMM’s curators has pointed out, even as the Allied powers carefully worked to scrub Nazism from Germany, they left that part alone — perhaps because they had anti-gay and anti-sodomy laws of their own. Paragraph 175 wasn’t repealed until 1994.
As the gay liberation movement grew in America in the ’70s and the ’80s, so did awareness of the persecution of gays during the Holocaust, as books and data about period started being published.
Former “doll boy” Heinz Heger’s 1972 memoir The Men With The Pink Triangle described SS guards torturing prisoners by dipping their testicles in hot water and sodomizing them with broomsticks. Data on these victims started to be cited in 1977, after a statistical analysis by sociologist Rudiger Lautmann of Bremen University claimed that as many as 60% of the gay men sent concentration camps may have have died. The first reference to pink triangles in TIME also appeared that year, in a story about gay-rights activists in Miami who attached the symbols to their clothes as a show of solidarity while protesting a vote to repeal a law protecting gay people from housing discrimination. When the magazine noted that the symbol was “reminiscent” of Nazi-era yellow stars, a reader wrote in to note that they were in fact analogous, not “reminiscent,” as both the star and the triangle were real artifacts of that time. “Gay people wear the pink triangle today as a reminder of the past and a pledge that history will not repeat itself,” he added.
And while the Miami effort did not succeed, the activists did succeed in bringing national attention to the way they had reclaimed the pink triangle as a symbol of solidarity. In 1979, Martin Sherman’s play Bent, inspired by Heger’s memoir, opened on Broadway; in the play, one of the characters trades in his pink triangle for a yellow star, “which gives him preferential treatment over the homosexuals,” as TIME’s review put it. The magazine called the play “audacious theater” and a “gritty, powerful and compassionate drama.” Sherman later said that he had also based the play on research by Holocaust scholar Richard Plant, who was having trouble finding a publisher who would turn it into a book, as the topic was still considered taboo. It was later published as The Pink Triangle: The Nazi War Against Homosexuals.
By that time, the gay community was facing a very different threat: HIV and AIDS. The activists who formed the organization ACT-UP to raise awareness about this public health crisis decided to use the pink triangle as a symbol of their campaign and alluded to its history when they declared, in their manifesto, that “silence about the oppression and annihilation of gay people, then and now, must be broken as a matter of our survival.” Avram Finkelstein is credited with designing the campaign’s pink triangle — which is right-side up, instead of the Nazi-era upside-down pink triangle — after conservative pundit William F. Buckley suggested that HIV/AIDS patients get tattoos to warn partners in a 1986 New York Times op-ed. Earlier this year, Finkelstein said that the op-ed was a “galvanizing moment,” at a time when there was “public discussion of putting gay men into concentration camps to keep the epidemic from spreading.” This bolder stance required a more boldly colored triangle. He explained that the triangle in the middle of the campaign’s signature “Silence=Death” poster was fuchsia instead of pale pink, as a nod to the punk movement’s adoption of the “New Wave” color. (He said the background of the poster is black because “everyone in lower Manhattan wore black.”)
More recently, pink triangles have been visible during gay rights demonstrations worldwide that were sparked by reports that gay men were being persecuted in Chechnya. For example, outside of the Russian embassy in London on April of 2017, protesters scattered pink triangles with messages written “Stop the death camps.” Three months later, the German parliament voted unanimously to pardon gay men convicted of homosexuality during World War II, awarding €3,000 to the 5,000 men still living, and €1,500 for each year they were imprisoned. The vote came about 15 years after the issuing of an official apology and almost a decade after the unveiling of a memorial to gay Holocaust victims in Berlin. Another well-known memorial is the Pink Triangle Park in the Castro district in San Francisco, which calls itself “the first permanent, free-standing memorial in the U.S. to gay Holocaust victims.”
The last death of someone forced to wear the pink triangle during the Nazi era is believed to have come in August of 2011, with the death of Rudolf Brazda at the age of 98. The symbols of pride that will be proudly worn around the world this month are a reminder of both what he survived and the pride that came after.
College Board says it won’t alter AP courses to comply with Florida’s laws
The pushback is beginning. The public is not going to accept nor tolerate the bigotry and racism of a small minority of fundamentalist conservatives who demand that only history that shall be taught is propaganda that shows the US is the best light, shows the greatness of white people, and minimizes any injustice or harm to black people. I cannot understand how DeathSantis got as much racism and bigotry passed into law as he did. I remember a few years ago in a Texas state education board meeting, the leader of the board said basically it was much better that students learn the made up history and believe it than that they learn the true history and act on it. The LGBTQ+ community exists and always has, even before we had the words we now use to describe it. There are LGBTQ+ kids in every school, most families, and history is full of contributions from gay people that the fundamentalist Christian nationalists want never mentioned, never taught, and deleted forever. But what is worse is that these laws as written would also prevent the use of heterosexual sexual orientation and heterosexual gender roles. The laws don’t just ban gay sexual orientation or gender identity different from assigned at birth as they are written but that is how they are being used. But the bigots that wrote them just wink it away. Look to separate bathrooms for boys from girls is gender. Miss teacher or Mr teacher is gender. Mrs teacher who is married to Mr teacher is OK to show pictures and talk about family which pushes heterosexual orientation, but Mrs teacher married to Mrs teacher is totally banned. But the law is written to ban all mention of gender or orientation. That is why they are called don’t say gay bills. Hugs
The College Board released a letter Thursday putting its foot down on further demands from Florida to change any of its Advanced Placement (AP) classes, the latest development in the ongoing feud between the company and the administration of Gov. Ron DeSantis (R).
“[College Board] will not modify our courses to accommodate restrictions on teaching essential, college-level topics,” the company told the Florida Department of Education Office of Articulation.
“Doing so would break the fundamental promise of AP: colleges wouldn’t broadly accept that course for credit and that course wouldn’t prepare students for careers in the discipline,” it added.
The College Board says the Florida office recently asked it to modify any courses that conflict with the new Florida rule restricting teaching on sexual orientation and gender identity in the classroom through 12th grade.
In a May 19 letter to College Board, Florida demanded the company do an audit of its courses and relay which ones would need to be modified to comply with the new rule by June 16.
DeSantis, a 2024 presidential candidate, had said in January that the AP African American Studies course would not be allowed in his state. Although the company says changes were in the works before the governor’s comment on the class, the course was regardless amended, causing outrage from those who believe the College Board bowed to DeSantis’s demands.
“We have learned from our mistakes in the recent rollout of AP African American Studies and know that we must be clear from the outset where we stand,” the College Board said.
Although Florida did not directly mention the AP Psychology course, that is the one the company focused on in its rebuttal Thursday.
It noted the American Psychological Association says college-level courses need to have a foundation on topics such as sexual orientation and gender identity.
“We don’t know if the state of Florida will ban this course. To AP teachers in Florida, we are heartbroken by the possibility of Florida students being denied the opportunity to participate in this or any AP course. To AP teachers everywhere, please know we will not modify any of the 40 AP courses—from art to history to science—in response to regulations that would censor college-level standards for credit, placement, and career readiness,” the College Board said.
The Hill has reached out to the Florida Department of Education for a response.
DeSantis: I Will Restore Army Base’s Confederate Name
Think how the black members of the military and other black workers at the base feel about working in a place named for someone who fought to keep them property to be used and abuse by whites. Of course, the racist white Christian nationalist DeathSantis would force black soldiers to work at a base named for a white man who fought to keep them slaves and property. Of course the racist white Christian nationalist bigot DeathSantis loves them confederates that attacked the very government he wants to lead as president. DeathSantis and his followers agree with the losers who committed treason against the US government, and formed a union based on the right to deny civil rights and human personhood to a segment of the population. They are doing it now to the LGBTQ+ community. The right / republicans seem driven to deny others their humanity, rights, and freedoms they demand for themselves. Think of it, they are demanding the right to oppress other members of the public, demanding that other people live according to the precepts of their church doctrines and racist bigotry even as they demand ever more privileges for themselves along with more accommodation of their beliefs. What scares me is how powerful DeathSantis has become, all due to right wing media and his willingness to gaslight and lie to the public to get what he wants. And make no mistake, what he wants is a white Christian ethnostate based on 1950s social norms. Hugs
The Raleigh News & Observer reports:
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, speaking at the NCGOP convention Friday night, said if he’s elected president he would reverse the recent decision to change the name of Fort Bragg to Fort Liberty.
The promise by DeSantis to restore the name of the major military installation just north of Fayetteville, which earned loud cheers and applause from a ballroom full of Republican delegates at the Koury Convention Center in Greensboro, came just as President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden left newly named Fort Liberty after meeting with members of the armed forces.
“I also look forward to, as president, restoring the name of Fort Bragg,” DeSantis said to raucous cheers from the crowd. He added that he would “thank the people that have served there, and they’re proud of their service there.” “It’s an iconic name and an iconic base, and we’re not going to let political correctness run amok in North Carolina,” DeSantis said as the crowd continued to cheer.
Read the full article.
Braxton Bragg was not only a famously inept Confederate general who, per historians, “wantonly shot his own soldiers,” he personally owned over 100 slaves. USA! USA! As I did last week, I encourage you to watch the US Army’s excellent clip below about the name change.
Nazis Wave Swastika, DeSantis Flags Outside Disney
Need I add anything more. DeathSantis supports everything the Nazis do, but his biggest concern is that the Democrats are noticing and talking about it. In other words, he wants his Christian Nationalist bigoted racist views ignored while he makes laws based on them, demanding no one criticize him for them. Hugs
Florida Politics reports:
Gov. Ron DeSantis is in Oklahoma delivering a political speech, but that doesn’t mean disturbing news isn’t happening closer to home. Rep. Anna V. Eskamani tweeted on Saturday video of Nazi demonstrators outside of Disney World. A second image, from Twitter user Shannon Watts, contends that “two dozen white supremacists are outside the main Disney World entrance in Orlando right now, marching with signs featuring Gov. DeSantis’s face, swastikas, the n-word and homophobic slurs.”
DeSantis has had to address neo-Nazi demonstrations in Orlando before, including back in 2022 when group of neo-Nazis lined a bridge in eastern Orange County, hanging the swastika flag and banners — including a banner with the pro-Donald Trump slogan “Let’s Go Brandon” — and yelling profanities and antisemitic slurs at passing cars. He was more concerned with Democrats talking about the issue in remarks after the fact.
Read the full article.
I notice those brave, brave nazi’s are still covering their faces.
Fucking pusses
They’re pussies for traitortrump, and traitortrump is putin’s pussy.
It’s a daisy chain of pussies.
Hate makes a guy pretty ugly…
And, without fail, all of their cohorts and sympathizers on twitter were calling them feds.
Remember: never tolerate nazis in your presence if you can do something about it.
Charming. I’m sure that’s going to do Florida’s tourism industry a world of good. /s
To me the one of the saddest part to these neo-nazis is some of their Grandfather’s and Father’s died or served fighting against Nazis
Yes, they would be so disappointed.
What is it about the (R) Party that attracts Neo Nazis?
Or the other way around???? What is it about the Nazi party that attracts republicans????
GOP FL Prosecutor Didn’t Pursue Six Voter Fraud Cases In Red County, Unlike Those Charged In Blue Counties
This was just another republican stun to suppress votes in democratic leaning areas and promote the votes of the republican leanings areas. Republicans understand that the majority of people don’t want what they are selling, the majority of people dislike the republican way. Most people want to progress, not regress. Most people want equality and to be able to live in diverse communities that blend in to a greater whole. The current republican fascist mode is driven by the fundamental religious need to force everyone to regress to the norms of 1950 to ensure their religious / ethnic superiority. Basically these Fundy groups need the society to regress to return to when their male white prestige was unquestioned and their churches made money from more white people having more kids sitting in the pews. They want that because they claim the richer they get, the more pleased their god is and when everyone follows their church doctrines their god will come back and give them everything ever and ever and ever … they are trying to force the country to follow the dictates of a 2,500-year-old myth based on a geopolitical book written for a people long dead. For their own profit and self power. For that they are willing to fuck over the majority of the population that wants to live in the current socially progressive time gaining ever more public understanding. Understand, in the republican strong hold of the Villages there have been five or six convictions on republicans repeated voting and violating elections laws. There were more that were not charged. But this was a wealthy republican retirement development that deathSantis caters to the developer. So you don’t hear about them, and the DeathSantis election police avoids them. Here is a description of the place. Hugs
Is The Villages a Republican stronghold?
With square footage larger than Manhattan, The Villages, a sprawling retirement community in Central Florida, has long been considered a Republican stronghold. The retiree haven increasingly reflects Florida’s changing politics. It isn’t a purple battleground — 75% of its voters are registered Republicans.
Wilhoit’s law
“Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.“
Yes different standards for everything.
The GOP way, every day
GOP FL Prosecutor Didn’t Pursue Six Voter Fraud Cases In Red County, Unlike Those Charged In Blue Counties
As Lord Pudding Fingers demands
WOW! How SURPRISING that we would see a far-right fascist prosecutor ignore other far-right fascist voter fraud cases!
Two standards in Florida for everything. Never going back there.
Whatever GQPers are accusing others (esp Democrats) of doing, they are doing themselves. Look at Shiny Happy People (docuseries on Amazon) for ample evidence that THEY are the groomers they are accusing everyone else of being. The same goes for voter fraud. They are doing what they claim Democrats are doing. It’s all about projection with this crowd.
I may be wrong, but isn’t selective prosecution grounds for overthrowing convictions?
I think so, but it’s difficult to prove. Since no two cases are exactly alike, prosecutors can usually find some after-the-fact justification for why they did or didn’t charge someone.
As conservatives target schools, LGBTQ+ kids and students of color feel less safe
https://apnews.com/article/lgbtq-race-ban-schools-4c4df1728f5265eee3684268035570c2
*** seriously this is a very important read to understand how the laws red states are enacting to restrict access to history, to black history, to LGBTQ+ protections, and to stop bullying are effecting the students. It is tragic. All for the white Chritian adults to be happy we are destroying the schooling and school years of minority kids. The artical is long and I couldn’t color it like I want to do, but it is super worth the read. Hugs ***
Oh for some reason my spell checker is refusing to work on these open tabs, so sorry about any thing I mispelled. Hugs
This is the republican fundamentalist Christian nationalist racist bigots right wants to happen. Cruelty is the goal, causing hurt and pain to anyone different from themselves. So disheartening. This made me ill to read, it is heart breaking that kids in 2023 have to go through the bigotry and hate that I did as a gay teen in 1970s. Us gay kids felt so alone and unable to find others like us. I now know that many kids at school were gay, but all of us were terrified to reach out to others or being found out. The lifelong damage that caused to me and so many other kids. The open bullying that was not stopped and even encouraged by homophobic conservative teachers. There was no safe space, no rainbow flags, nothing to read giving any insight to why I felt different. No positive role models or good gay characters in media to counter the hate coming from the religious right pushed hard by Anita Bryant with accusations of the most disgusting kinds. We cannot go back to those times; we must stop this regression somehow. Our elders were fighting for us then, putting their lives on the line to do so, we must do so again. As one student says in the article ““Taking away a whole group of people’s right to be who they are, that’s just like, this is a typical day. I think I was more scared that that was a reality than I was sad about the bill itself.”” On the errasing black history one student was forced to go outside the school to learn about the true history. Attending predominantly white schools means Harmony has had to go out of her way to learn about Black culture and history — often outside of school. That has shaped where she wants to go next. She’d like to attend a historically Black college and pledge a Black sorority. Hugs
NOLENSVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — The first encounter with racism that Harmony Kennedy can remember came in elementary school. On a playground, a girl picked up a leaf and said she wanted to “clean the dirt” from Harmony’s skin.
In sixth grade, a boy dropped trash on the floor and told her to pick it up, “because you’re a slave.” She was stunned — no one had ever said anything like that to her before.
As protests for racial justice broke out in 2020, white students at her Tennessee high school kneeled in the hallways and chanted, “Black lives matter!” in mocking tones. As she saw the students receive light punishments, she grew increasingly frustrated.
So when Tennessee began passing legislation that could limit the discussion and teaching of Black history, gender identity and race in the classroom, to Harmony, it felt like a gut punch — as if the adults were signaling this kind of ignorant behavior was acceptable. The law was broad, but to her, the potential impact was crushing.
“When I heard they were removing African American history, banning LGBTQ, I almost started crying,” said Harmony, 16. “We’re not doing anything to anybody. Why do they care what we personally prefer, or what we look like?”
As conservative politicians and activists push for limits on discussions of race, gender and sexuality, some students say the measures targeting aspects of their identity have made them less welcome in American schools — the one place all kids are supposed to feel safe.
Some of the new restrictions have been championed by conservative state leaders and legislatures, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who say they are necessary to counter liberal influence in schools. Others have been pushed by local activists or school boards arguing teachers need more oversight to ensure classroom materials are appropriate.
Books have been pulled from libraries. Some schools have insisted on using the names transgender students had before they transitioned. And teachers wary of breaking new rules have shied from discussions related to race, gender and other politically sensitive topics, even as students say they desperately need to see their lived experiences reflected in the classroom.
Among them are a transgender student at a Pennsylvania school where teachers are directed to use students’ birth names, a bisexual student in Florida who sensed a withdrawal of adult support, and Harmony, a Black student outside Nashville alarmed by efforts to restrict lessons on Black history.
For these and other students of color and LGBTQ+ kids, it can feel like their very existence is being rejected.
‘NEUTRALITY’ POLICY MAKES SCHOOL FEEL LESS SAFE
In late 2020, during the pandemic school closures, Leo Burchell started using different pronouns, trying on new clothes and shorter hair. The changes felt right.
At school outside Philadelphia, Leo started telling teachers about using a different name and they/them pronouns, and the teachers were immediately accepting. A shift to using he/him pronouns followed.
“I changed my name to Leo, and for a while it was tough,” he said. “I told some of my friends. I told the people close to me, but I wasn’t ready to come out to everybody yet … and I had the space to do that in my own time.”
To tell his parents, Leo shared a poem he had written about his transition. He worried it would be hard for them, as parents who had always identified as “girl parents” to three daughters. His mom, dad, older and twin sister were all supportive.
Then, over the last year, the Central Bucks School District’s board barred staff from using students’ chosen names or pronouns without parental permission.
The board passed what it called a “neutrality” policy that bars social and political advocacy in classrooms — a measure opponents have seen as targeting Pride flags and other symbols teachers use to signal support for LGBTQ+ students. Reviews of the appropriateness of books have mostly targeted LGBTQ+ literature.
Each step felt like chipping away at the spaces that made Leo feel safe enough to explore his gender identity.
Across the district, parents and students told the board stories of slurs, hate speech and sometimes violence directed toward transgender children. But other adults pressed forward in their effort to restrict inclusion. During one board meeting when a transgender student was speaking, rather than listening, a group of parents whispered to each other. One adult audibly asked: “Is that a girl?”
One man told the school board transgender people posed a risk of violence in bathrooms. Leo expected another adult in the room to interrupt what felt to him like hate speech. No one did.
So at the next board meeting, Leo spoke up. “Attacking students based on who they are or who they love is wrong,” he said. Leo has spoken regularly at meetings since.
Leo worries about what school will be like for younger transgender students.
“I don’t want my friends to be misgendered and deadnamed every single day just because they don’t want to come out to their parents,” Leo said. “It really just breaks my heart to know that some of my friends, you know, might not want to go to school anymore.”
NEW FLORIDA LAWS ‘TOOK THE AIR OUT OF ME’
Jack Fitzgerald, a high school student in Broward County, Florida, came out to friends by accident at first.
At a book club meeting, he blurted out: “I don’t really like romance books unless they’re gay.” He hadn’t told anyone he was bisexual, but it came out easily in a place where he felt comfortable and safe.
Later, he would come out to his mother while watching television.
“So, I am bi,” he told her.
“And why are you telling me this?” she said. A lifelong conservative, his mother told him she had long known about his sexuality. It was not a problem.
The confidence and relief he felt led Jack to start his school’s gender and sexuality alliance club. Last year, as a junior, he led a school walkout to protest a new law that banned instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity for kindergarten to third grade. The law, part of the anti-LGBTQ+ legislation pushed by DeSantis, was dubbed “Don’t Say Gay” by critics and recently expanded to encompass all grades.
Jack was surprised by two things. Most students initially knew little about the bill. And once they learned about it, support for the walkout was overwhelming.
Teachers have been more cautious.
Jack remembers talking to his debate teacher about covering some controversial topics. “You have to realize, … teachers have families,” he told Jack, who took it as a comment on teachers worried about losing their jobs.
In another class, Jack recalls an environmental teacher told the class she could not answer a question during a discussion on climate change or she would be seen as “too woke.”
There also was a school board member, Debra Hixon, who won Jack’s admiration when she spoke last year at a town hall event for teens. Hixon, who became widely known after her husband was killed in the 2018 Parkland school shooting, expressed support for LGBTQ+ students.
“I think I even told my mom. I was like, ‘Oh, we’ve got to vote for her next time because she seems so impassioned, and she genuinely came across like she cared,’” he said.
When Jack asked her in April how the school district would react to the new laws, Hixon said they were going to comply with the law.
The response shocked Jack. He thought back to how the district had stood up to the DeSantis administration over COVID-19 policies like mask mandates. When it came to protecting LGBTQ+ students, it seemed, there was no appetite for defiance.
“They didn’t even try to act like they were going to try, you know?” he said. “And it was so disappointing. It really took the air out of me.”
Hixon said she felt badly that Jack had the impression she was not defending LGBTQ+ students.
“We have a lot of new laws to navigate, and I am still processing what they mean for our district, so I don’t want to overstep and say something that is incorrect or inappropriate,” she said. “I am more guarded with my responses, but I promise I will continue to defend our students to ensure they feel safe and welcome in our schools.”
AFTER SPEAKING UP, SOME STUDENTS FACE BACKLASH
In Harmony’s freshman-year English class, a boy started playing with his mask and joked, “I can’t breathe, just like George Floyd,” Harmony recalled.
“I was really upset. And I called him out on it. And I was like, ‘Are you kidding me? Someone died,’” she said.
She told her teacher, who said she was sorry it happened but there was not much she could do. Nothing happened to the boy, Harmony said.
To be a Black student in this environment, and to see efforts to minimize the teaching of Black history, Harmony said, is a reminder of why it’s important that a full version of history is taught. A law passed by Tennessee in 2021 banned schools from teaching several concepts on race and racism, leading many teachers to avoid discussions related to race.
“If people are taking this out of schools, it’s making the ignorance go on, because they’re not understanding the pain and agony we have to go through,” she said.
The incident led Harmony to join the Forward Club, which works to promote cultural and racial inclusion t her predominantly white high school. The club’s members come from a diverse array of backgrounds — including the children of some adults who have disparaged the group.
At times, students who speak out against new policies have been targeted for harassment. In Williamson County, Tennessee, where Harmony goes to school, a political action committee accused another high school’s Black student union of promoting segregation. The PAC posted the time and place of the student group’s meeting on social media. Elsewhere, trans and nonbinary students who have spoken up about bullying have faced only more insults on social media.
For some, the hostility can be exhausting. Milana Kumar, a rising senior in Collierville, Tennessee, who is genderqueer, is comfortable with their identity among friends. But it’s not a conversation they bring up at school, where they said teachers and other students often do not respect chosen pronouns.
“I’ve never tried to navigate that, I think just as a response to save myself from a lot of hurt that would happen,” Milana said.
Recently, Tennessee passed a bill that would protect teachers from discipline or other consequences if they misgender their students. At the time, Milana was at the Capitol testifying on other legislation. She thought about how routine a day it was.
“Taking away a whole group of people’s right to be who they are, that’s just like, this is a typical day. I think I was more scared that that was a reality than I was sad about the bill itself.”
Attending predominantly white schools means Harmony has had to go out of her way to learn about Black culture and history — often outside of school. That has shaped where she wants to go next. She’d like to attend a historically Black college and pledge a Black sorority.
What Harmony wants, ultimately, is to be able to go to school like any other teenager and focus on learning. To go to a football game without hearing racial slurs. To stand up for herself without being seen as an aggressor.
Meantime, it’s something she’ll continue to speak up for.
“My sister is going to be an incoming freshman this year, and I want her to have a safe learning environment where she doesn’t have to really deal with all the ignorance and things,” she said. “I want her to be able to enjoy high school.”
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The Associated Press’ reporting around issues of race and ethnicity is supported in part by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Giggle … Clam down
Let’s talk about Chick Fil A going woke….
As he says woke is just a code word, a dog whistle for what ever group the republican religious conservatives chose to target. Listen up, which group will they target next. Hugs
GOP Rep: Low-Income Housing “Discourages Marriage”
Talk about pushing your religious views on to people so poor as to need government assistance. This is more of the fundamentalist rights war on women. Look at the things the republicans have pushed, removing a woman’s right to her own reproductive care via abortion, removing a woman’s right to contraception, in 7 states the republicans are trying to outlaw no-fault divorce thinking it will force people to stay married, and of course outlawing anything but straight relations by overturning the right of marriage equality. This guy wants to force low income women to marry a guy, any guy, to be able to have a place to live. Plus the guy is a white supremacists racist. Hugs
“For whatever reason, the people who put together this bill, knew we needed work requirements for SNAP but they said we shouldn’t have them for Medicaid, which kind of, I predicted. But they left low-income housing untouched.
“I think as far as discouraging work and discouraging marriage, I think low-income housing is even a more dangerous program than the food stamps.
“So, I’m including low-income housing in the mix of having work requirements. The amendment is drafted to include Section 8 housing, which is an error on my part because there are other low-income housings as well.
“But that’s what we have before us.” – GOP Rep. Glenn Grothman, during last night’s House Rules Committee debate on the debt ceiling bill.
Grothman appeared here last week when he complained that Biden won’t nominate “straight white guys” to the federal judiciary.
He also appeared here in January 2023 when he posted a flag associated with the Christian nationalist movement outside his Capitol office.
Months earlier he gave a floor speech condemning the US Census for collecting data on LGBTQ Americans, which he found “horrifying.”
Before that he appeared here in June 2021 when he authored a bill that would ban teaching the history of racism in Washington DC public schools.
His first appearance here came in September 2011 when as a Wisconsin state senator he authored a successful bill that banned mentioning contraception in sex ed classes.
Grothman opposes recognizing Kwanzaa and Martin Luther King Jr. Day as state holidays. In 2015, he authored a bill to place a ban on same-sex marriage in the US Constitution.
Grothman ran unopposed in the 2022 election.
Scottie's Playtime 