While the bill in Florida has received more attention, South Carolina has its own Don't Say Gay bill on the docket. The bill would prevent instruction, presentations, discussions, counseling, or materials in any medium”that involve LGBTQ+ identities. It would prevent queer teachers fro being out to their students because that would constitute discussing such matters. It would prevent teachers from affirming or supporting queer students, offering them materials, or even assigning books that mention gender or sexuality.
Taryn Auerbach is a queer educator in South Carolina. She shares with Brad the devastating effects this bill would have on her and her students.
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Thank you.
Over the last few weeks, we have witnessed the emergence of new don't-say-gay bills across the country, most notably in Florida.
Well, today I had the chance to speak with Taryn Auerbach, who's a teacher in South Carolina, which has its own don't-say-gay bill on the docket.
Taryn takes me through all the ramifications and consequences that this bill would have for teachers, for students, for the ways that LGBTQ teachers and administrators might offer support and affirmation to queer students and others in the community.
It's harrowing to think about all the ripple effects that such a law would have, and yet it seems that its reality is closer than ever.
Amen.
Welcome to Straight White American Jesus.
My name is Brad Onishi, faculty at the University of San Francisco.
Our show is hosted in partnership with the Kapp Center at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
And I have an amazing guest today, someone who I, you know, teachers are always going to be near and dear to my heart.
My brother's a third grade teacher.
I think teachers are some of the most important people in the world.
And so I have a teacher on the show today, which is amazing.
And that is Taryn Auerbach.
So Taryn, thanks for joining me.
Thanks for having me.
So you are a teacher, high school teacher in South Carolina, in the Columbia area, and we've been interacting on Twitter because you had this amazing thread talking about the fact that a lot of folks, including myself, have noticed that there are some new don't-say-gay bills popping up, notably in Florida.
Florida gets a lot of attention.
governor, Uncle Ron DeSantis, gets a lot of attention.
He likes attention, it seems.
There's even more sort of heinous aspects of the Florida bill that are coming out seemingly day by day.
But you pointed out on Twitter that South Carolina has its own bill on the docket that could be passed.
And so I wanted to talk about that with you and just ask you, somebody who's on the ground teaching students, what this would mean for you as an educator, as a human being, as somebody who wants to support their kids.
So first of all, would you mind just helping us understand some of the details of the bill that are on the docket in South Carolina?
Absolutely.
And I just want to, you know, preface this by saying the bill that I'm going to be focusing on here is House Bill 4605.
But there are a number of, like, anti-truth, pro-censorship, in my view, bills on the docket right now in South Carolina, a lot of which bake in some of this language in multiple places.
So, you know, I'm going to talk about this bill, but even if this bill does not make it through, the danger is not gone.
So essentially, House Bill 4605 in South Carolina It does a number of things.
First of all, it starts by giving a list of topics that are described as inherently discriminatory.
And one of the things on that list is it would be considered inherently discriminatory to ask any individual to affirm, accept, adopt, or adhere to Language or definitions, quote, not universally accepted.
Some examples of this that they give are the existence of genders other than male and female, gender fluidity, non-binary pronouns, honorifics, or related speech.
And some other things.
It goes so far as to define unconscious and implicit bias as some of these not universally accepted things.
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