LGBTQ+ In The Age of _____

Last week, Ben Baker, a Republican Missouri state lawmaker filed House Bill 2044, which he calls the “Parental Oversight of Public Libraries Act,” which he hopes will eradicate Drag Queen Story Hours in the state by fining or jailing librarians who allow minors to access “age-inappropriate sexual materials.”

Like drag queens.

In Florida, seven Republican lawmakers—Rep. Anthony Sabatini, Sen. Dennis Baxley, Rep. Bob Rommel, Sen. Joe Gruters, Rep Michael Grant, Sen. Keith Perry, and Rep. Byron Donalds—filed four anti-LGBTQ+ bills late Monday night, just hours before the deadline to file new bills for the coming legislative session.

If passed, those bills would ban gender-affirming health care for transgender children, repeal municipal and county ordinances protecting LGBTQ+ workers, and legalize so-called gay conversion therapy in places that had banned the medically debunked practice.

In Tennessee, the Senate started the 2020 legislative session by passing its first bill of the year: a controversial measure that protects religious adoption agencies if they choose to discriminate against same-sex couples; it also prohibits the state from denying an agency’s license or grant application for public funds because of the group’s refusal to place a child with a family based on religious objections. The adoption agency would also be protected from lawsuits for such a refusal. The bill, which never made its way to the Senate floor in 2019, will now head to Governor Bill Lee for his signature, and he has said he will sign it into law.

Eight other states have passed similar bans since Trump was elected in 2016: Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Alabama, South Dakota, North Dakota, Virginia, and Mississippi have all passed similar bills since _____ brought hate to the forefront when elected in 2016.

In Kentucky, a  Christian school in Louisville expelled a student after  school officials discovered the girl had celebrated her birthday with a rainbow-themed cake.

Kimberly Alford says her 15-year-old daughter had been a freshman at Whitefield Academy until that offensive cake appeared on social media. Alford had had posted the photo on her Facebook page showing her daughter celebrating her birthday in December wearing a sweater featuring a rainbow design and sitting by a colorful, rainbow-themed cake. She says someone else shared the post with Whitefield Academy officials.

Whitefield Academy's head of school, Bruce Jacobson sent an email to Alford saying that the picture "demonstrates a posture of morality and cultural acceptance contrary to that of Whitefield Academy’s beliefs” and follows two years of "lifestyle violations."

And while the rainbow flag often is used as a symbol of the LGBTQ+ community, Alford said her daughter is not gay and the cake was just a fun treat, with the bakery receipt listing the design as "assorted colors." But, you know, even the appearance of anything gay, gay-friendly, gay adjacent, will cause a Christian school to close ranks and spew the hate.

It’s like this: _____ doesn’t like brown people so he cages their children.

_____ doesn’t like brown people so he seeks to ban them from entering this country.

_____ thinks brown people live in shithole countries.

_____ thinks trans Americans shouldn't be allowed to serve their country.

_____ thinks women are for belittling, denigrating, grouping or raping, unless they’re brown women, and then he tells them to go back home.

And lastly, America, under _____, who began dismantling LGBTQ+ civil rights progress the minute he took office—in that first month his administration erased the LGBTQ+ White House page—is now seeing his hatred for brown people, women, immigrants, and LGBTQ+ people grow and spread.

Stop it in 2020. Vote Blue in every single race in every single city, county, state in this country. Because if you don’t, no matter who you are, if you aren’t rich and white, he’ll be coming for you next.