It Is The Lavender Scary All Over Again

It is the Lavender Scary on steroids! Being pumped up by mega churches and billionaires.

Here's How Republicans Are Using Age-Old Anti-LGBTQ+ Language
As the midterms reach their fever pitch, a look at the origin of the slurs Republicans are using against LGBTQ+ people this election cycle.
The Advocate
By Brandon Tensley
October 28, 2022


Lawmakers across dozens of mostly Republican-led states have passed or introduced a record number of anti-LGBTQ bills this year, per a CNN analysis of data gathered by the American Civil Liberties Union, and this legislative assault has been attended by discourse on the political right denigrating LGBTQ people.

In June, for instance, members of the extremist group the Proud Boys barged into the San Lorenzo Library in California and interrupted Drag Queen Story Hour. One of the insults they reportedly tossed: "groomer" — a term that maligns LGBTQ people as child predators.

Mere days later, Christopher Rufo, the activist who powered the "critical race theory" panic, invited his fellow conservatives to "start using the phrase 'trans stripper' in lieu of 'drag queen'" because the former "has a more lurid set of connotations and shifts the debate to sexualization," and "'trans strippers in schools' anchors an unstoppable argument."

The following month, Florida Republican state Rep. Anthony Sabatini declared menacingly, "Florida to Groomers: your days are numbered." This perversion of the term "grooming" can draw attention away from the real scourge of child abuse often enabled by predatory adults who groom child victims. Notably, Sabatini also said over the summer that he intends to propose legislation targeting parents who bring their children to drag shows.

Notice how there are stirring up anger and making drag queens into something that they are not.

"If you're a more conservative-minded person, then you likely have a specific idea of what it means to be in your body and how to live your life," he told CNN. "Some conservatives see drag as 'indoctrination.' I would say that it's just showing that there are more options. You don't actually have to be confined to the little box you were assigned at birth."

That is the thing, most people don't have the faintest idea what drag is and more importantly what it is not.

Then the article going into "Parental Rights" the new conservative catch phrase...

 Johnson's bill shines a light on another example of anti-LGBTQ language.

"Parents and legal guardians have the right and responsibility to determine where, if, when, and how their children are exposed to material of a sexual nature," the text reads.

The measure is couched in the noble, seemingly anodyne language of parental rights. But the bill seems designed less to secure rights for parents and more to quash discussions about sensitive topics, including sexual orientation and gender identity. It's a strategy that many Republican politicians use to mask their deeper ambitions, according to the Pepperdine University law professor and historian Edward Larson.

They use the phrase to hide their bigoty behind just like their "religious freedom" is used to hide their discrimination against us.

In a Slate article, 

The “Parental Rights” Lie at the Heart of GOP Efforts to Target LGBTQ Youth
By Nicholas Seranfin
November 1, 2022


States throughout the country are targeting LGBTQ+ youth. Bills and regulations banning youth access to transgender medical care or forbidding discussion of LGBTQ+ issues in the classroom have been enacted or proposed in at least 25 states. Most often these bills are defended on the grounds that they protect “parental rights.”

The Florida House Judiciary Committee, for example, argued that HB 1557, the “Don’t Say Gay” Bill, protects “a parent’s fundamental right to make decisions regarding the care and upbringing of his or her child,” language echoed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp. Parental rights rhetoric has spread not only to other states but also to other right-wing causes. According to one Heritage Foundation report, parental rights require banning not just LGBTQ+ content but also “critical race theory” from the classroom.

The parental rights framing of these bills is likely effective. Who, after all, would deny that parents should be the primary decisionmakers when it comes their minor child’s upbringing? Certainly not the Supreme Court, which in the 1979 case Wisconsin v. Yoder declared that the “primary role of the parents in the upbringing of their children” was “established beyond debate as an enduring American tradition.” Indeed, parental rights are among the oldest fundamental rights still recognized by the contemporary court.

Herein lies another reason why the parental rights framing has gained so much traction: the foundational parental rights cases are now nearly a century old, and not well known to the general public. In its defense of HB 1557, the Florida House Judiciary Committee cited Meyer v. Nebraska and Pierce v. Society of Sisters, two canonical parental rights cases from 1925. Meyer, Pierce, and a similar case from 1927, Farrington v. Tokushige, are hugely significant in terms of Supreme Court doctrine, but they aren’t exactly a Roe, a Miranda, or an Obergefell in terms of public awareness. In other words, parental rights are an effective framing device because they’re something of a blank canvas: if you start with the general principle that parents have the right to control their child’s upbringing, then practically any assertion of control over a child’s upbringing—like forcing a kid to use a particular bathroom—can be portrayed as an extension of parental rights.

Here in Connecticut gubernatorial candidate Bob Stefanowski used "parental rights" though out his campaign. Nationally we are going to see a bunch of anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-women bill coming out of Congress and being vetoed by President Biden!