The tattoos and camps are coming

[Scooter]

Republicans introduce federal Don’t Say Gay bill just weeks before midterm elections

House Republicans have introduced a bill that would ban any entity that receives federal money from talking about sexual orientation or gender identity to children under the age of 10, going far beyond Florida’s Don’t Say Gay law.

Thirty-two House Republicans have signed on as co-sponsors of the bill introduced by Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA), which he called the “Stop the Sexualization of Children Act.” The bill would cut federal funding to libraries, school districts, hospitals, government entities, or other organizations for “hosting or promoting any program, event, or literature involving sexually-oriented material.”

The bill defines “sexually-oriented material” as “any topic involving gender identity, gender dysphoria, transgenderism, sexual orientation, or related topics,” which could include an elementary school teacher keeping a picture of their spouse on their desk or a sign at a hospital with a rainbow flag on it if kids enter the hospital. It’s unclear if simply allowing an LGBTQ person to work in a role where they interact with children would be considered a violation of the law.

Johnson’s bill also bans “any lewd or lascivious depiction or description of human genitals.” Basic instruction on body parts is often a part of lessons aimed at helping victims of child sex abuse speak out and get help. Instead of defining what exactly is prohibited by the bill’s vague descriptions, it allows parents to sue if they believe a government entity violated the law.

“The Democrat Party and their cultural allies are on a misguided crusade to immerse young children in sexual imagery and radical gender ideology,” Johnson said in announcing his bill.

He said that his bill would stop “events where adults dance salaciously or strip for children” without citing any examples of recipients of federal money that have hired strippers to perform for kids. Instead, he mentioned an Air Force base in Virginia that hosted a Drag Queen Story Hour, even though drag isn’t a form of stripping; in fact, it often involves wearing an excessive amount of clothing.

Opponents of Don’t Say Gay bills say that they isolate LGBTQ youth and the kids of LGBTQ parents, teaching them that they and their families are too shameful to discuss in public, contributing to the outsized suicide rate among LGBTQ youth.

“Last year, nearly half of LGBTQ+ youth contemplated suicide, but that didn’t stop 33 of my GOP colleagues from introducing a federal ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill today,” out Rep. Mondaire Jones (D-NY) wrote on Twitter. “I’m confident the people introducing this bill are more likely to go to Hell than the kids they’re causing harm.”

With Democrats controlling the House of Representatives, the Senate, and the White House, this bill has no chance of passing. Instead, it was likely introduced just before the midterm elections to make it an issue for Republicans to campaign on and drive their base to the polls.

The bill’s co-sponsors are Republican Representatives Bob Good (VA), Brian Babin (TX), Jeff Duncan (SC), Vicky Hartzler (MO), Doug Lamborn (CO), Markwayne Mullin (OK), Lauren Boebert (CO), Gregory Steube (FL), Debbie Lesko (AZ), Daniel Webster (FL), Ralph Norman (SC), Randy Weber (TX), Van Taylor (TX), Mary Miller (IL), Lance Gooden (TX), Louie Gohmert (TX), Glenn Grothman (WI), William Timmons (SC), Clay Higgins (LA), Steve Womack (AR), Tracey Mann (KA), John Joyce (PA), Scott Franklin (FL), Burgess Owens (UT), Matt Rosendale (MT), Russ Fulcher (ID), Tom Tiffany (WI), Nicole Malliotakis (NY), Doug LaMalfa (CA), Andrew Clyde (GA), Michael Guest (MI), and Dan Bishop (NC).

While his colleagues face reelection battles in November, Johnson is running unopposed.

LGBTQ youth suicide is a feature, not a bug, of these odious bills. The hope is that LGBTQ people will exterminate themselves. If that doesn't work, I have no doubt that the next move will be herding us into extermination camps so they can finish the job.

[BoSoxGal]

MAGA is going death con 3 on a whole bunch of folks if they get back into power.

[Sue U]

“The Democrat Party and their cultural allies are on a misguided crusade to immerse young children in sexual imagery and radical gender ideology,” Johnson said in announcing his bill.

Where do they come up with this and what does it even mean? If you want to talk about "radical gender ideology," it's the ideology that insists every individual must strictly conform to a prescribed set of social and behavioral norms dictated solely by the appearance of their genitals. Why are Republicans so obsessed with looking in other people's underwear?

[Gob]

House Republicans have introduced a bill that would ban any entity that receives federal money from talking about sexual orientation or gender identity to children under the age of 10, going far beyond Florida’s Don’t Say Gay law.

≠

[MajGenl.Meade]

A rather offensive comparison that.
(or it would be if anyone on the right was making it)

[BoSoxGal]

Really how is it? Hitler exterminated many LGBTQIA people, and they were in many cases not even acknowledged as victims immediately following the fall of the Reich.

https://www.hmd.org.uk/learn-about-the- ... ay-people/

As we skip along the path to fascism I’m finding myself feeling like the old rules about not comparing anything to Hitler and the Nazis no longer apply. I don’t want to be debating the issue from inside a reeducation camp a few years from now.

[MajGenl.Meade]

Bring up Hitler and the Nazis as much one wishes - no problem. But comparing transient political trivialities s to the Holocaust is not acceptable to me at any rate, whoever is doing it.

[Big RR]

Perhaps, but then I would bet there was a time in Germany in the 30s where ideas like expulsion and eventually extermination of "undesirables" might have been considered "transient political trivialities" by many. I don't agree they are equivalent (or even inevitable consequences), but I am not so sanguine to believe one step will not lead to another worse one here. Hell, I never thought I'd see the day where kids were locked in cages, far away from their parents, because they dared to cross the border, but we can see where "transient political trivialities" can lead.

[MajGenl.Meade]

Perhaps, but then I would bet there was a time in Germany in the 30s where ideas like expulsion and eventually extermination of "undesirables" might have been considered "transient political trivialities" by many. I don't agree they are equivalent (or even inevitable consequences), but I am not so sanguine to believe one step will not lead to another worse one here. Hell, I never thought I'd see the day where kids were locked in cages, far away from their parents, because they dared to cross the border, but we can see where "transient political trivialities" can lead.

Do you consider this idea to ban teaching children about certain subjects below the age of 11 to be at all similar to the progress of events in Germany between March 1933 and June 1933? If so, at what point do you anticipate an Enabling Act to provide legal dictatorial powers to whom (?) eventually leading to the banning of other parties, attacks on unions including arrest and placement in camps and so on?

I'm interested in the hyperbole. Now if someone wants to argue that the current climate is redolent of the 1850-60s, then that's another matter.

[Jarlaxle]

This is a fever dream.

[Bicycle Bill]

This is a fever dream.

This is someone whose eyes are willfully closed to what's going on around him.
Either that or he is gleefully counting down the time until his demonic vision of a New World Order emerges fully from the darkness.

-"BB"-

[Joe Guy]

I don't know what others think, but I'd rather have a middle of the road elected leader in office than a genuine bigot, extremely obvious liar and tax cheater who demands blind loyalty and obedience from others. He has some type of mental problem that causes him to exaggerate everything when it benefits him (no matter how obvious his lie is) and to dismiss anyone else's accomplishments (except for Putin).

In my opinion, Trump needs to be confined to a freshly constructed six foot deep plot. I would admire him if he were to kill himself but I would never say anything positive about him before he's dead. (that doesn't mean that I can think of anything that he has done that is positive).

As my doctor once told me, "D J Trump is the Devil Incarnate" and that was the nicest thing he had to say about him.

[BoSoxGal]

Meade I can’t work out if you are just a bigot or something isn’t firing properly with your synapses. You have access to all the evidence which proves the former president’s plots to hold onto power and his extensive connections via his very closest allies Bannon and Stone et al. to the farthest right of the white nationalist right and do you not recall Camp Auschwitz T-shirts and 6MWE (6 Million Wasn’t Enough) T-shirts and JEWS WILL NOT REPLACE US!! and if you spent some time paying attention to the vile murderous hatred being spewed on social media all over the internet you would realize that it is a perfectly rational fear if one is Jewish or lgbtqia or a DemonRat of any other ilk that violence directed at you is a predictable likelihood of a future in which a fascist regime under Trump and the many monsters who have risen up in his shadow comes to pass.

The time to stop it is not after it happens. The time to state the obvious is not after the blood starts spilling more frequently in the streets - because it has already spilled. We are already in a civil war it is simply slow moving but very discordant and we are a mere 18 days from when the forces of the anti democracy right wing are likely to take to the streets to challenge election results and do we really think they’ll leave their guns and ammo at home?

[Crackpot]

The problem with this stuff is it almost makes sense if you don’t think about it too hard afetet all it makes sense tos shield kiss’s from growing up to fast. The problem is people mature at different rates and as such will need/want information at different time as and legislating arbitrary nombers for what in fact is mere exposure to knowledge is objectively stupid.

[Big RR]

Do you consider this idea to ban teaching children about certain subjects below the age of 11 to be at all similar to the progress of events in Germany between March 1933 and June 1933? If so, at what point do you anticipate an Enabling Act to provide legal dictatorial powers to whom (?) eventually leading to the banning of other parties, attacks on unions including arrest and placement in camps and so on?

Maybe, maybe not; but it does bear watching. Face it; why do we need a federal law covering this? Or any law at all for that matter? I don't really think that it will inevitable lead to that end, but a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

[Scooter]

The problem with this stuff is it almost makes sense if you don’t think about it too hard afetet all it makes sense tos shield kiss’s from growing up to fast. The problem is people mature at different rates and as such will need/want information at different time as and legislating arbitrary nombers for what in fact is mere exposure to knowledge is objectively stupid.

There's that, and there is also the (probably deliberate) vagueness of the language of the bill, which would permit or prohibit pretty much anything desired by those responsible for enforcing it.

For starters, it purports to prohibit "any topic involving gender identity, gender dysphoria, transgenderism, sexual orientation, or related topics". Gender identity and sexual orientation are facially neutral terms, so by rights the bill should prohibit anything involving heterosexuality or cisgenderism as much as it prohibits anything involving homo/bisexuality and transgenderism. But you know that the authors intend to prohibit any stories about gay dads raising kids, while permitting those about a mom and a dad raising kids.

And what if the mere presence of a LGBTQ teacher in a primary school classroom is deemed to constitute an "event...involving sexually oriented material" This bill would permit school boards to fire LGBTQ teachers in defiance of their rights under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, as decided in Bostock v. Clayton.

And yes, marking an entire group of people as a danger to children, inventing a false propaganda narrative about them so as to whip up public outcry (and violence) against them, banning any type of literature or discussion about them, and potentially targeting them for dismissal from employment, is too similar to what happened under previous regimes to be ignored until it is too late.

[Jarlaxle]

This is a fever dream.

This is someone whose eyes are willfully closed to what's going on around him.
Either that or he is gleefully counting down the time until his demonic vision of a New World Order emerges fully from the darkness.

-"BB"-

Naah, I'm just pointing and laughing at the doomsayers running around and screaming.

[MajGenl.Meade]

Meade I can’t work out if you are just a bigot or something isn’t firing properly with your synapses . . . We are already in a civil war it is simply slow moving

I would hope that the answer to the question is, "neither". Perhaps I should qualify by saying that all people are bigots in some one else's view, so it may not depend upon the individual but upon what others believe about them.

First, I would not deny anything else in your post and have not done so. What I have done is object to equating the Holocaust with a not-a-chance-in-hell-of-passing "bill" that seeks to restrict what kinds of teachings are given to children below the age of 11 in pubic schools. It is not only hyperbole, it is trivializing the horrors inflicted upon actual people between 1933 and 1945 in places controlled by German military forces. What's lost here is any honest debate about what should and should not be taught to children.

A more apt comparison is your apparent agreement with my comment about the 1850-1860 period and the Civil War, which I prefer to think of as a war of Southern Aggression. That is precisely the point and the danger today is in many ways worse. At least in that conflict the armed belligerents were (mostly) separated geographically - there was a north and a south. Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, and couple of other states experienced self-division, with people mixed in allegiance.

Present day reality is that the equivalent ACW oppositions are thoroughly mixed throughout the U.S.A. I live amongst people who have F Biden posters in their windows, Trump flags waving at their doors and ten . . . a hundred times . . . that number who show no signs but believe MAGA is the way. I live among a college population in a town that remembers May 4th as more than a joke. The most common belief among us all, right and left? That democracy in the Union is threatened as never before in our lifetimes or those of our parents and grandparents. We differ as to who is the danger.

I have already cast my ballot, voting against Bragger Vance (R) and for AnyoneAtAll (D); voting against (R) in almost every case (OH Supreme court and various justices, etc); against taking control of State courts from the OSC and placing it in the legislative branch. I'm a registered Republican trying to find the party of conscience that was created in the 1850s. (Some hope). I would likely vote against this current proposed law about sex education (had I the chance) in school because it is wrong-headed in its approach and motivation (which is entirely political and not social) I'd like to dance on Trumps' grave.

But I am also opposed to teaching children in schools that I help to fund that abnormality and deviation are praiseworthy choices. And to answer Sue (was it?) I'm not interested in what is in children's underwear - it is the radical left that wants the underwear off and all children to be exposed.

Concern, awareness, readiness to defend the republic, alarm, action - yes. Using the Holocaust as a cheap slogan - no.

[BoSoxGal]

I read your post with a glad heart until this:

But I am also opposed to teaching children in schools that I help to fund that abnormality and deviation are praiseworthy choices.

That is simply a gross misstatement of reality and the misstatement is steeped in bigotry with an agenda to spread hatred and fear.

The science is clear about the range of human expression of sexuality - certainly a smaller number of individuals are intersex or any of the other expressions that are different from the more widely presented xx and xy, but that does not make them deviant or abnormal.

Whether you believe in God or are firmly grounded in science - or both - you are in the wrong to assert that anything in creation is abnormal or deviant when it is a natural product of creation. You in particular have repeatedly expressed an underlying hostility so strong that you would refuse to call a person by the names and pronouns they choose for themselves no matter it costing you nothing and causing you no personal harm. I find it sad that such a bigotry resides in someone otherwise intelligent and seemingly often thoughtful.

[MajGenl.Meade]

I read your post with a glad heart until this:

But I am also opposed to teaching children in schools that I help to fund that abnormality and deviation are praiseworthy choices.

That is simply a gross misstatement of reality. . .

Thank you for responding. I could have better phrased my remark but have no problem defending the choice of words.

Abnormal means "deviating from what is normal or usual". Deviation is "the action of departing from an established course or accepted standard".

Normal is that men are men and women are women. This is regardless of their sexual proclivity. Homosexual men and women are still men and women and are not the subject of my remark.

In my opinion, it is abnormal and deviant to teach children below the age of (say) 11 that "how I feel" can or should result in a determination to ignore reality and "decide" to be a boy or a girl or indeed to reject gender entirely. It is not now normal and should never become normal to teach that to infants.

What people of sufficient maturity (and I don't know what age that is) decide to do with themselves is entirely different to the compulsory social engineering of young children by an extreme minority to conform to their view of the world.

Everyone's a bigot, you know, even though it manifests as a disease confined to the people who disagree with us.