Federal Don't Say Gay? What are we really not talking about?

Driving LGBTQ folks back under cover or into the closet seems to be the current wave of the storm that started with CRT panic. And the stakes just keep getting higher. Which is why we need to remember what these Don't Say gay laws actually say. 

Florida's department of education has indicated that teachers who "intentionally provide instruction" about gender identity and sexuality will lose their teaching license. Which is nuts enough, but now we've got a proposal for a national law. 

The bill was introduced by Rep Mike Johnson of Louisianna. His previous legislative high points include a bill to allow discrimination against LGBTQ persons. He was on Trump's impeachment defense team, and was one of the 126 House Republicans who signed on the lawsuit to contest the 2020 election results. The bill has been co-sponsored by thirty other GOP House members*

The bill is all about forbidding the use of federal tax dollars on any kind of sexually-oriented program for children under 10 The bill does spell out that nude adults, stripping and "lewd or lascivious dancing" are not okay. The preamble of the bill mentions that drag queen story hour at a library is a bad thing, but what if the drag queen reads a non-sexual story in a non-sexual way? Do the bill's sponsors suggest that when a man puts on women's clothes, that automatically broadcasts sexuality? The bill's official definition lumps many things together:

The term ‘‘sexually-oriented material’’ means any depiction, description, or simulation of sexual activity, any lewd or lascivious depiction or description of human genitals, or any topic involving gender identity, gender dysphoria, transgenderism, sexual orientation, or related subjects

(The bill also includes a definition of stripping, just in case you were fuzzy on that one.)

As is the current trend, the federal bill proposes private right of action, meaning that any person who gets to feeling aggrieved by something vaguely related to the bill can drag someone into court. I guess we'll be living with the Texas Workaround for a while, as conservatives have found it useful to dodge government responsibility for enforcing crappy laws.by deputizing litigious citizens.

One huge problem--for the umpty-zillionth time--is the lumping in of the terms "gender identity" and "sexual orientation."

The Washington Post's Kate Cohen absolutely nailed it in her column about Florida's OG version of this gag law. Speaking of some of the politicians who backed it:

The truth is they don’t bother to use the words correctly because they don’t believe the words apply to them. They seem to think that only gay people have a sexual orientation and only trans people have a gender identity. Which is sort of like thinking that only foreign people have an accent. Or that “ethnic” means any food you didn’t grow up eating.

Opponents of these bills understand their true intent not because we are equally narrow-minded but because the culture we live in still sees “straight” as “normal” and gender as “boy,” “girl” or “made up.” We’re trying to change that culture, but we know it well. We know whom these laws mean to silence or shame. We get it.

A local school in my area is hosting a "Donuts with Dad" event, in which fathers are encouraged to take some time out from work (because, you know, they're dads) and come hang out with their children at school. This not-at-all-unusual event is so loaded with statements about gender identity and sexual orientation (Dads are males, and every child has neither more nor less than one of them, for starters) that, in many other school districts, it has simply collapsed under its own weight. But under the proposed federal bill, I could just go ahead and sue the district over this. 

You can find examples of this kind of thing, easily, every single day. But purveyors of these Don't Say Gay bills are sure that straight, traditional roles for men and women are not gender roles or sexual identities, but just "the way things are" and need no explanation, examination or justification, while everything else is a deviance from what Just Is and therefor must be explained and justified. As Cohen wrote, for some people, only LGBTQ persona have a gender identity or sexual orientation.

Furthermore, if the words mean what the folks who write and support such bills think they mean, then this bill outlaws any mention of transgender folks, as well as any LGBTQ folks. Under this definition of "sexually-oriented material," Peppa Pig episodes with the lesbian polar bear couple would qualify as sexually-oriented material. Anything that a child brought from a home, if home includes a pair of same gender parents, would be sexually-oriented material. By the law's definition, the mere mention of LGBTQ people makes a work sexually oriented and thereby verboten.

Let's roll the calendar back, they say, to the days when nobody had a gender identity or sexual orientation because everyone knew to settle into the default and Cole Porter wrote lovely songs and the Village People made that great song even your uncle can dance to and that Paul Lynde is always hilarious and maybe we could even enjoy some jazz from Billie Tipton with our spinster great aunt and her long time best friend and not ever have to think about that LGBTQ stuff instead pretending that it just doesn't exist, because of course there's only one real way to be in the world, and we all participate in that one way, right? No need to talk about gender identity or sexual orientation ever. Easier to have gags for you than blindfolds for me. 

I'm just sitting here waiting for the first big court case when some parents take a school district to court for using Berenstain Bears to indoctrinate children into certain gender identities and sexual orientations. 

*Representatives Bob Good (VA), Brian Babin (TX), Jeff Duncan (SC), Vicky Hartzler (MO), Doug Lamborn (CO), Markwayne Mullin (OK), Lauren Boebert (CO), Gregory Steube (FL), Debbie Lesko (AZ), Daniel Webster (FL), Ralph Norman (SC), Randy Weber (TX), Van Taylor (TX), Mary Miller (IL), Lance Gooden (TX), Louie Gohmert (TX), Glenn Grothman (WI), William Timmons (SC), Clay Higgins (LA), Steve Womack (AR), Tracey Mann (KS), John Joyce (PA), Scott Franklin (FL), Burgess Owens (UT), Matt Rosendale (MT), Russ Fulcher (ID), Tom Tiffany (WI), Nicole Malliotakis (NY), Doug LaMalfa (CA), Andrew Clyde (GA), Michael Guest (MS), and Dan Bishop (NC) joined Representative Johnson in cosponsoring the legislation.