This Is Worst Than The 50s, 60s, And The 70s

Back then we had the Lavender Scare, Antia Bryant, and “Save Our Children” now we have organized attacks by the evangelical Christians Republicans with right-wing think-tanks leading the a coordinated legislative attacks on our rights and women’s rights. Together McConnell and Trump packed the court fanatical evangelical Christian judges who put their version of the Bible before the Constitution.

As a result we have this wave of anti-women and anti-LGBTQ+ laws descending upon us.

10 anti-LGBTQ laws just went into effect. They all target schools.
Washington Post
By Anne Branigin
July 8, 2022


For most U.S. students, summer break is in full swing, ushering in days away at camp, by the pool or plowing through that summer reading list.

But starting July 1, queer and transgender students in six states could face dramatically different school environments from what they had in the past.

At the beginning of the month, 10 anti-LGBTQ laws went into effect, all of them related to education. The laws include Florida’s novel restrictions banning classroom discussions of gender and sexuality, which have become a template for other states seeking to limit what students learn about these issues and when.

Also effective as of July: restrictions on the sports teams that transgender students can join in Indiana, South Dakota, Tennessee and Utah, and an Alabama law that echoes Florida’s “don’t say gay” law but also prevents transgender students from using bathrooms, lockers and other such facilities that align with their gender.

These new laws are meant for one thing, and one thing only to marginalize us and force us back in the closet.

These bills will have lasting effects on LGBTQ students, said Sam Ames, the director of advocacy and government affairs at the Trevor Project, which provides support to LGBTQ youths experiencing mental health crises. And the organization’s surveys suggest that these policies may already be having an impact as young people observe nationwide debates over their place in society.

Ames believes it is not a coincidence that so many education-focused bills came into effect at the same time. And, they added, the different bills will affect different aspects of young people’s lives — whether that is forcing a trans boy to use a girl’s locker room; forbidding a child to talk about how they identify or who they’re attracted to; or mandating that a girl deemed “too masculine” have their sex confirmed before they can play a team sport.

The lawmakers who have introduced these bills have argued that they’re meant to protect children, promote fairness and, in the words of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), push back on “woke gender ideology.”

We have been here before, from PBS…

Anti-Gay Organizing on the Right

In January of 1977, the Dade County Commission passed a gay-rights ordinance, making Miami the fortieth US city with such a law. The vote alarmed Anita Bryant, a singer, former beauty queen, and born-again Christian, who began a campaign to repeal the ordinance. Within six weeks, Bryant had gathered the signatures necessary to put the issue to Dade County voters. Bryant formed an organization called Save Our Children, Inc., and based the campaign on the idea that "Homosexuals cannot reproduce, so they must recruit." In June, the gay rights ordinance was repealed by a vote of more than 2-to-1. The repeal in Miami led to a wave of repeals and gay-rights defeats in other states, including the passage of an Oklahoma law banning gay men and lesbians from teaching in the public schools.

By focussing on the idea that gays and lesbians were somehow threatening to children, Bryant had created an incredibly powerful rhetorical focus for social conservatives. In 1981, Jerry Falwell echoed her language in a fundraising letter that reminded his followers, "Please remember, homosexuals don't reproduce! They recruit! And they are out after my children and your children." By the beginning of the 1980s, the Religious Right had made the fight against gay and lesbian liberation one of its primary issues, and found it a particularly effective focus for fundraising appeals. The efforts of conservatives slowed the advance of gay-rights and established an organized anti-gay opposition. That opposition is still a force in US politics today. Gay rights and anti-gay conservatives have squared off in a number of recent battles, including the fight over gays in the military and efforts to legislate against civil rights protections for lesbian and gay men.

But now it is different, back then if was only a fringe of the Republican party now it has the full force of the Republican party juggernaut behind them along with right-wing think-tanks like the Heritage Foundation, Americans for Prosperity, and Alliance Defending Freedom who are funding in part with the funding from the Koch brothers and other billionaire oligarchs.

Like the “Save Our Children” campaign they say that they are only protecting our children.

The lawmakers who have introduced these bills have argued that they’re meant to protect children, promote fairness and, in the words of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), push back on “woke gender ideology.”

What they really want to do is stifle any discussion and force us back in the closet. This is very different from Antia Bryant’s “Save Our Children” campaign in that with Bryant’s push it just targeted gay teachers, now it is a whole ideology that they are trying to force on us.

Gross thinks the intent of these laws is to erase LGBTQ people and communities in as many ways as possible.

“[These bills] are all different pieces of the same puzzle, which is basically a nationwide attack on LGBTQ individuals,” she said.

They now want to control what is being taught and read in schools. They don’t want our children to learn from our past mistakes, they don’t want anything about slavery taught nor how slavery affected laws in the U.S. and social development, they don’t want children to learn anything about LGBTQ history nor read anything about us.

The Republicans dream of a Theocratic Authoritarianism government like Iran and Afghanistan

They want to lead us backward to the land of their dream world of “Father Knows Best” where the Blacks knew their place, immigrants were only good for mowing your lawn, religion was only Christian, LGBTQ were in the closet, and the wife was barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen.