Nice News ... From Texas No Less

Last week, Texas’ bigoted and transphobic and Republican Attorney General, Ken Paxton, sent a letter to the Austin Independent School District [AISD] saying their Pride Week was “breaking state law.”

Paxton says that by hosting Pride Week, the district “has, at best undertaken a week-long instructional effort in human sexuality without parental consent. Or, worse [the] district is cynically pushing a week-long indoctrination of [students] that not only fails to obtain parental consent, but subtly cuts parents out of the loop.”

Less than an hour after reading Paxton’s letter, AISD superintendent, Stephanie Elizalde, Tweeted:

“I want all our LGBTQIA+ students to know that we are proud of them and that we will protect them against political attacks.”

And then District spokesperson Jason Stanford announced that the AISD Pride celebration would continue as planned:

“We’re going to react to this by doubling down on making sure our kids feel safe and celebrating Pride.”

Now, to be fair, while this is amazing news considering its Texas, this is coming from Austin, a more liberal spot of the rabid red state.

But still, it’s a start.

And speaking of Texas, last week Texas’ GOP Senator Ted Cruz made a big production during the SCOTUS confirmation hearings about how wrong it is that children’s books promoting anti-racism are being taught at a private school in Washington, D.C., where Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson is a board member.

He kept talking about “Antiracist Baby” and now that book is Amazon’s No. 1 bestselling children’s book under the category of “difficult discussions,” the No. 6 bestselling children’s book under the category of “growing up & fact of life,” and the No. 15 bestselling book out of all children’s books globally.

See, even Ted Cruz can do some good, even though he doesn’t know any better.