Will It Play In Peoria?

Thankfully the Republicans haven’t been asking that question. As they go off the deep end I think the voters are saying enough!

The Republican War On LGBTQ People Reaches A Fever Pitch
The HuffPost via Yahoo News
By Nathalie Baptiste
March 1, 2023


Gwendolyn Herzig, a transgender pharmacist, went to the Arkansas statehouse earlier this month to testify in support of providing transgender youth with gender-affirming health care. 

Herzig hoped lawmakers would take her expert background into consideration as they debated a law that would allow anyone who received gender-affirming care from a doctor as a minor to sue for malpractice for up to 30 years after they turn 18.

Instead, she was met with transphobia.

“You said you’re a trans woman,” Republican state Rep. Matt McKee said. “Do you have a penis?”

Herzig later told NBC News that the experience “was probably the most publicly humiliating thing I’ve ever gone through.”

Get a load of the fact that the doctor can be suited for up to 30 years! Can you imagine what that will do to doctors malpractice insurance? Of course that is exactly what the Republicans hope, that the insurance premiums will be too costly.

I have testified over a dozen times and I have always been treated with respect and dignity unlike southern Republicans. The south is always talking about “Southern Hospitality” and it just another lie.

“This Republican Party is playing politics with people’s lives and they’re painting a clear picture of what their priorities are,” said Heather Williams, the interim president of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee.

Yup, that is what I have been saying that they don’t care about the lives of trans children… they are just pawns on a chessboard.

Even in Virginia, where the number of Democrats in the state Senate all but guarantees homophobic and transphobic bills can’t advance, Republicans have tried to jam through a slew of extreme bills to prove to a blood-red base that they too are trying to restrict the rights of the LGBTQ community. 

They do it rally their base and get them angry because angry people vote and donate. We see that happening now in the House, they Republicans know that they don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of passing in the Democratic controlled Senate.

The bills also contain… now get this!

One such bill would require students to submit identification of their “biological sex” on a form, which requires a doctor’s signature, in order to play sports. The proposal is an attempt to ban transgender students from participating in athletics.

“If you think requiring 1.6 million students to have their genitals inspected  is good policy, a lot of parents are going to object to that,” Democratic Virginia House Del. Danica Roem told HuffPost.

[…]

“It’s not all partisanship. There are some true believers,” Roem said. “But any time they spend worrying about drag queens, that’s time they’re not worried about transportation infrastructure and overcrowded classrooms.”

As extremist groups protest outside of public libraries that host drag queen story hours and GOP politicians deride racial justiceand LGBTQ rights as “woke” ideologies, it seems that the deluge of bills is an easy way to score political points with a base that continues to lurch rightward.

And that is the job of their Sturmabteilung, the Republican shock troops, AKA the Proud Boys.

*****

They are so far out in left field that they are in Neverland! Get a load of this and it is a doozy!

Republican war on queer comic books is dystopian and cruel
Comics’ growing cultural cachet also correlates with greater cultural visibility for gay people. Now Maia Kobabe’s beautiful “Gender Queer” is caught up in the backlash.
NBC News
By Sam Thielman
July 19, 2022


At the end of May, The Virginian-Pilot, a daily newspaper in Norfork, Virginia, ran a legal notice in its classified section warning readers that it might become illegal to sell or lend a particular book.

Maia Kobabe’s comics memoir, “Gender Queer,” had been the subject of an obscenity lawsuit in Virginia Beach, and the judge in the case found probable cause to believe that the book was “obscene for unrestricted viewing by minors.”

The affecting story of a young person, assigned female at birth and struggling to define “eir” identity (Kobabe uses e/er/eir neopronouns), “Gender Queer” has won or been nominated for several awards. But its fate in Virginia will be decided by a retired judge, Pamela Baskervill, at the end of August.

[…]

That graphic novel storytelling is popular with LGBTQ authors shouldn’t be surprising. Since conservative politicians used comics as a scapegoat for juvenile delinquency in the 1950s, the medium has arguably been more hospitable to social outcasts than its more popular cousins, and LGBT creators have had a constant presence in its pages since the 1980s. The popularity of manga has also helped, influencing generations of American artists and introducing them to LGBTQ characters. Comics, frankly, are often just gayer than literary fiction or sci-fi.

There are a number of transgender super heroes and you can get arrested to given them to children. And you could get arrested by watching “Supergirl” reruns on CW with Nicole Maines.

This of course is backwards, cruel and dystopian. Queer comics should be celebrated, especially when they help young people learn to accept themselves. Kobabe’s memoir will go before a court of law at the end of August, but we ought to rejoice over it now. More than just a memoir of self-discovery, it stands in gratifying contrast to Kobabe’s predecessors, which often featured characters preoccupied with ostracization and loneliness.

Who or what will the next Republican target for extermination of the LGBTQ+ community be?

The Republicans have blinders on, because all this playing to their base is turning middle America off.