Brad and Dan begin with a discussion about the new bill in Florida that would outlaw referencing gender and sexual identity. This new "Don't Say Gay Bill" is an attempt to create a patriarchal safe space in which all those who are not straight are considered outside threats to children. It shows how, despite all their ire toward the idea of safe spaces, Christian nationalists and conservatives attempt to create safe spaces as same spaces--a place where everyone is made to be, or assumed, to be the same so that no one is uncomfortable.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/dont-gay-bill-moves-forward-florida/story?id=82481565
https://www.vox.com/2016/7/5/11949258/safe-spaces-explained
The next segment looks at militia movements in California taking over rural counties and what this says about the state of trust in democratic institutions and the radicalization of the right.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/feb/03/california-county-controlled-by-militia-group
Finally, Brad and Dan look at Lauren Boebert's tweet wherein she suggests that the Constitution doesn't evolve. What does this say about her worldview and how does it relate to biblical inerrancy and constitutional originalism?
Subscribe for $5.99 a month to get bonus episodes, ad-free listening, access to the entire 500-episode archive, Discord access, and more: https://axismundi.supercast.com/
Linktree: https://linktr.ee/StraightWhiteJC
Order Brad's new book: https://www.amazon.com/Preparing-War-Extremist-Christian-Nationalism/dp/1506482163
SWAJ Apparel is here! https://straight-white-american-jesus.creator-spring.com/listing/not-today-uncle-ron
To Donate:
https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/BradleyOnishi
Venmo: @straightwhitejc
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Axis Mundy you you You're listening to an Irreverent Podcast.
Visit irreverent.fm for more content from our amazing lineup of creators.
Welcome to Straight White American Jesus.
My name is Brad Onishi, faculty at the University of San Francisco, our Socialist in Partnership with the Kapp Center at UCSB, and I'm here today with my co-host.
I'm Dan Miller, Associate Professor of Religion and Social Thought at Landmark College.
Good to be with you, Brad, as always.
Good to see you, Dan.
I know y'all are doing a snow day today, which is, I think, in some ways probably fun.
In other ways, I'm sure there are kids of yours who are not in school, and that's a whole other... I don't know if fun is the right word sometimes when that happens.
I think at this point when kids aren't in school it's just PTSD from like last year.
So it's like parents just want to hide under the covers and quiver.
So no, it's good.
It's better now that they're older and they're not death-seeking machines that you have to follow around trying to keep them from falling down stairs and stuff.
Just to highlight what's in your future with school days and closures, so you can look forward to that.
I do, I do.
All right, well, we want to get to a bunch of things today.
One is some new bills that are renewing this push to not say gay in classrooms, particularly in Florida.
We also want to talk about how a militia-backed set of candidates is Going to win elections in a county in California and the county will, in essence, be controlled by militia-aligned politicians.
We'll then get to some other things related to the Constitution and a tweet by Lauren Boebert about how the Constitution doesn't evolve and we'll talk about how that's incoherent and also is a tell, it shows something about that worldview.
So, Dan, I think we both have a lot to say about these new bills that are popping up.
Now, this is not new.
This is something that was happening in 2015, 2014.
You might remember George Takei saying, you know, just say Takei if you're not allowed to say gay, stuff like that.
But it's happening again, Dan.
There are new pushes to make it illegal for people to have lessons on sex and gender in schools.
So this is from AP out of Florida.
Florida Republicans want to forbid discussions of sexual orientation or gender identity in schools with a bill that activists say endangers children and echoes a previous wave of laws that sought to squelch LGBTQ conversations in the classroom.
Activists have dubbed the proposal moving through Florida's GOP-controlled statehouse as the Don't Say Gay Bill, and it has attracted condemnation from a number of people.
If passed, the measure would effectively silence students from speaking about their LGBTQ family, members, friends, neighbors, and icons, said Cara Gross of the Florida chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.
The bill emerged amid a national debate over how U.S.
schools should teach about race, gender, and history.
The broader re-examination of public education has often turned contentious and led to books being pulled from the shelves.
So the bill itself, Dan, reads like this.
School districts may not encourage classroom discussion about sexual orientation or gender identity in primary grade levels or in a matter that is not age appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students.
I have a lot that I want to say about this as it comes to safe spaces and patriarchy and infantilization, but I'll throw to you initial thoughts here.
Yeah, so I read, you know, the same article you did and some stuff.
You know, people can find this, ABC News, CNN, basically every news outlet has some good information on this.
So, yeah, a number of thoughts.
One was, you know, one of the ways that the GOP has worked in recent years is to try to flip the script on liberals and appeal to the kinds of things that, you know, buzzwords that liberals traditionally appeal to.
So things like choice.
Right.
So not about abortion or a woman's body, but choice about what goes on in the classroom.
And that's a big part of this.
And we can get to that.
Or calling themselves defenders of free speech, basically to license hate speech of different kinds or disinformation or whatever.
So one of it is that, you know, there's a lot of ambiguity the way that this is phrased, and it's because it's a it's a bill just with animus.
And so it's not intended to be nuanced.
But the first is that, you know, on one hand, we'll say encouraging classroom discussion, but then it's this language of prohibiting students from talking about their background or their family or their experiences or their identity is clearly just squelching any kind of speech or expression, which will get into the issues that I'll leave to you in a minute here about discomfort, that theme of discomfort and what makes people uncomfortable.
What stood out to me is this language of precluding consideration of these things in a manner that is, quote, not age appropriate or developmentally appropriate.
And that sounds good, I guess, or it makes it sound like it's robust and like there's a real thing and that there's this real threat out there that these things are being brought up in a way that's not.
Developmentally appropriate.
But two things about this.
One, we talk about xenophobia and we talk about racism on the right among Christian nationalists.
And one of the ways that that works is by they'll say, hey, we're not saying that anybody shouldn't come to the U.S.
We're just saying that if they do, they need to assimilate.
They need to become like real Americans.
And if they're willing to do that, we welcome them with open arms.
But what's off in the subtext there is that they also define whole groups of people as unable to assimilate.
Like, Muslims as such can't be good Americans because they won't assimilate.
So, in fact, we're saying Muslims can't be there.
That's the same thing with this, because if you talk to these groups, there is no age-appropriate time To listen to the stories of queer folk or to be aware of them, right?
There is no developmentally appropriate time because the worldview of the people pushing these is that this is not real.
It's not legitimate that identity gender identity is not a real thing.
You're just biologically male or female and what you feel is kind of Secondary to that.
So that's one way of smuggling this in.
Because if you were to say, I look at this and I can play that game and say, well, OK, cool.
I agree with discussing these with kids when it's age appropriate.
I have a queer child living in my house and she has a younger brother who's not queer and we have age appropriate discussions with him about that.
Cool.
No problem.
Except that's not really what's going on.
Right.
So that that's one piece of it.
Another one is, and this comes through in several places in this, but that language of development, and people will know that I've talked about the bills about trans inclusion in different places and things like this, but especially with gender identity, it reflects, at best, a lot of confusion.
I hear from people all the time, even in the progressive place where I live, and people who mean well, who when you talk about children and gender identity, right?
Five-year-olds don't have, in a lot of ways, a sexual orientation, right?
They haven't started puberty.
They don't feel romantic attraction.
Their body is not yet built to be physically attracted to other humans and all of that kind of stuff in a sexual way.
Great.
Cool.
Gender identity is different.
Thanks for listening to this free preview of our Swag episode.
In order to get access to the full episode and so much more, become a Straight White American Jesus Premium subscriber by clicking the link in the show notes.
It'll take you like two clicks, I promise.
In addition to getting access to this episode, you'll have access to the entire Swag archive, over 550 episodes.
You'll also get an extra episode every month, ad-free listening, Discord access, and so much more.
All that for less than six bucks a month.
And it helps us keep our flag up and continue to safeguard democracy from religious nationalism, extremism, and rising authoritarianism.
