Among the earliest — and worst — was a Tennessee proposal to bar the state from denying prospective foster and adoptive parents solely because of their “sincerely held religious or moral” objections to the existence of humans who identify as anything other than straight and/or cisgender — even if the child they hope to foster or adopt is one of those humans. The policy would also overhaul procedural guidelines for the Department of Children’s Services, striking explicit protections against LGBTQ+ discrimination and a requirement that the state consider a child’s background and specific needs when selecting a foster or adoptive home. The department can still do that. But it no longer has to.
You do not need to be a child welfare expert to understand that this is a terrible idea. As of last week, it is also state law, per the Tennessee Lookout.
Still flying. (Photo by Getty Images)
The law is another historic first for America, where lawmakers had not previously considered going out of their way to protect discriminatory behavior at the expense of children who have already suffered trauma and displacement. Those “values” have already taken hold in Tennessee, where officials scrapped a longstanding policy to provide children with care that “promotes dignity and respect for all children/youth and families inclusive of their gender identity, gender expression and sexual orientation.” That language is now “under review,” according to an agency spokesperson, and “will be updated on the website once the review is complete.”
If this seems absurd, that’s because it is, in fact, absurd. The guiding principle of child welfare services is to prioritize the best interests of each individual child, a pretty basic and obvious goal that does not need to be “reviewed” or “updated” in service of a law that grants outsize importance to the misguided bigotry of adults, advocates said.
“There’s a really high volume of LGBTQ+ kids in the foster system whose needs aren’t being met now,” said Molly Quinn, executive director of OUTMemphis. “The fact that the state would accept a family that is willing to discriminate into this broken system with such vulnerable kids is difficult to understand.”
Appropriately heartbreaking photo. (Photo by Getty Images)
There is no explanation for it, really, but proponents of the measure tried to explain it anyway, saying the bill was intended to expand the state’s pool of foster families, which has apparently dwindled due to the pesky perception that you should maybe not open your home to an LGBTQ+ child if you “sincerely” believe there is something wrong with a child who identifies as LGBTQ+. Once prospective parents see that it’s actually just fine to care for a child whose identity they abhor, they’ll be rushing to sign up, according to state Rep. Mary Littleton, a Republican and the bill’s sponsor.
“This bill aims to protect the moral and religious beliefs of adoptees and foster parents,” she said during a committee hearing in March.
The law would likely conflict with a federal proposal that would require foster homes to “establish an environment free of hostility, mistreatment, or abuse based on the child’s LGBTQI+ status.” The rule, currently under review, drew opposition from a coalition of 17 state attorneys general led by (yep) Tennessee AG Jonathan Skrmetti, who claimed the policy would shrink the pool of prospective foster families (always shrinking, that pool) and “further divert resources away from protecting foster children from physical abuse and toward enforcing compliance with controversial gender ideology.” Which is … certainly one way to describe a policy that would really just ask foster parents to not be supremely awful to vulnerable children who are already having a hard time.
“The green person is pushing a controversial gender ideology. You should play with the blue one.” (Photo by Getty Images)
Of course, they’re not big on that in Tennessee.
“At the end of the day the state should be acting in the best interest of the kids,” said Laura Brennan, associate director for child welfare policy for Family Equality. “This puts emphasis on the beliefs of foster and adoptive parents.”
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Friday emphasized the beliefs of … Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (?), suggesting to a crowd of young conservatives that public school teachers should be barred from wearing clothing that does not conform to traditional gender norms, the Texas Tribune reported. Honestly, this is so very stupid, and I would prefer to just ignore it, but I cannot because it’s Texas, which means there’s at least a 50% chance that some Republican lawmaker is already writing a dress code bill, oh my god I am so tired.
Abbott began the remarks, delivered at the Young Conservatives of Texas convention in Dallas (a rager, one assumes), by recounting the story of Rachmad Tjachyadi, a chemistry teacher who wore a pink dress to his high school’s spirit day earlier this year. This was, according to Abbott, an attempt to “normalize the concept that this type of behavior is OK.”
“This type of behavior is not OK,” Abbott said, according to an audio recording by the Texas Observer. “And this is the type of behavior that we want to make sure we end in the state of Texas.”
Schools have spirit! Except in Texas! Where Greg Abbott! Thought it excess! (Photo by Brocreative/Adobe Stock)
If I were Greg Abbott, I might be more concerned about other types of behavior in Texas, such as hordes of conservatives bombarding a high school with hateful comments because they’re big mad at a video of a guy they don’t know wearing a dress at a pep rally they didn’t attend. I might also have concerns about the fact that the those comments prompted Tjachyadi to resign even after the school district confirmed that he hadn’t done anything wrong, both because it’s incredibly crappy and because Texas, recently ranked as one of the least educated states, really can’t afford to be running teachers out of their jobs.
But I am (big reveal!) not Greg Abbott, a man who — credit where credit is due — clearly understood his audience. Almost immediately, Texas Republicans rallied around the remarks, saying Abbott was “absolutely correct” and “exactly right” that “perverts should not be teachers.” Abbott’s office did not respond to a request for comment, for which I cannot fault them, because what comment could possibly be left to give?
I have much more to say about the Women’s Liberation Front, a nonprofit that describes itself as a “radically feminist organization with real-world goals” but is actually just a hateful anti-trans group that somehow maintains tax-exempt status. The organization is the driving force behind anti-trans bills across the country, including a so-called “women’s bill of rights” and an Ohio proposal that would bar trans students from using bathrooms that align with their gender identity, the Ohio Capital Journal reported.
This squares with the group’s focus on “restor[ing], protect[ing], and advanc[ing] the rights of women and girls,” according to Sharon Byrne, its executive director. Because the existence of trans women is a threat to cis women, or something (it really isn’t oh my god).
“We feel that gender ideology is very threatening to women, and represents the erasure of women,” Byrne said. “Sex is biological, and you cannot change it.”
A transgender flag, which does not erase the existence of any other flag. (Photo by Greg LaRose/Louisiana Illuminator)
Kudos to Byrne for (inadvertently?) admitting that she understands the difference between sex and gender, but far more negative kudos for using that knowledge only to push legislation that actively harms trans people. That work goes far beyond traditional lobbying. In Ohio, Byrne was instrumental in shaping the fight over transgender issues, working behind the scenes with Republican lawmakers to craft a cohesive message based on tactics that succeeded in other states. Those discussions, revealed in emails obtained through public records requests, are peppered with details that make it clear Byrne knows precisely what she’s doing: Waging political war against a small group of people who have done nothing wrong.
In one particularly revealing email, Byrne notes the relatively small number of trans people and advocates in Ohio. They are, she wrote, “a smaller group with larger megaphones than Ohioans’ sensibilities overall.”
Ohio voters are “likely less progressive,” she continued before urging state Rep. Beth Lear to “try exploiting that division.”
“Call a press conference … and lay out a case that Ohioans expect the legislature to protect their children from unnecessary sexualized medical exploitation and to protect the rights of women and girls to safe spaces, such as bathrooms,” Byrne wrote. “This could gin up quite a bit of voter anger.”
Look, I know this is how politics works, but it’s still jarring to see it laid out in such blatant, cynical terms. It’s also jarring to hear Byrne insist that her organization is “fundamentally nonpartisan” and comprised mostly of “progressive refugees,” whatever that means. Perhaps they’re just “progressing” from center-right to far-right, or are at least conservative enough to be comfortable joining a group whose donors include known hate groups. Whatever you want to call it, it works, according to Maria Bruno, public policy director for Equality Ohio.
“It’s an incredibly sophisticated playbook. It truly is,” she said. “We have seen that there is a small, but very well funded and well organized group of organizations … Many of them have overtly anti-LGBTQ sentiments on their position platforms or are pretty open about the fact that they don’t believe that LGBTQ+ people should exist in peace.”
