An "X" on US Passports" and More "Don't Say Gay" Bills: Reflecting on the March of Progress

There are some days in which the pathway of progress is a linear line going forward. There are other days in which progress is more circuitous, going backwards and forwards, up and down, taking baby steps, and sometimes running fast into the future.

Sometimes the moral arc of the universe bends towards justice. But there are also people who try to stop the bend from happening at all, and, with equal force, try to stop it from bending at all.

And there are somedays that moments in which the question is posed to us: I have some good news and bad news. Which do you want to hear first?

Good News? OK!

The US Passports will now have space or a box to mark "Male," "Female," and "X" for those who are gender neutral/non-binary identifying. On March 31, 2022, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said: "We reaffirm our commitment to promoting and protecting the freedom, dignity, and equality of all persons--including transgender, non-binary, and gender non-conforming persons around the world."

For more on this action, go to this link: https://www.usbirthcertificates.com/articles/gender-neutral-x-passports#:~:text=A%20gender-neutral%20passport%20is%20a%20travel%20document%20which,male%20or%20female%20on%20a%20US%20passport%20application.

And now the bad news. The attack on LGBTQIA2S+ people continues to grow across the US in terms of "Don't Say Gay" or no "Promo Homo" bills and laws. On her Twitter account, LGBTQIA+ activist Mary Emily O'Hara wrote last week that "what we are seeing is probably the most organized anti-LGBTQ backlash in history, in response to increased equality. I believe their goal is to flood the landscape with so many anti-LGBTQ policies that the Supreme Court will have to revisit and overturn every right we've won." 

Along with Florida, there are now the following states who are in the process of passing their own "Don't Say Gay" bills. This is from an NPR story by Dustin Jones and Jonathan Franklin, dated April 10, 2022:

• Alabama advanced a measure prohibiting early classroom instruction on sexual and gender identity.
• An Arizona bill aims to change the state's sex-ed curriculum to focus on biological sex and "not gender identities."
• In neighboring Georgia, lawmakers targeted private schools — which the state can regulate. But it failed to get any traction this year.
• In Iowa, a Senate proposal would require that parents opt in — in writing — to any instruction "relating to gender identity."
• In Louisiana, lawmakers introduced HB 837. It would limit discussion of sexual orientation or gender identity in some grades and prohibit it all together in others. A South Carolina bill is similar. 
• A Missouri bill would ban "gender or sexual diversity training" in public schools. An Indiana bill does the same. As would a Kentucky bill.
• In Oklahoma, a senate bill would ban books from school libraries that focus on "the study of sex, sexual lifestyles, or sexual activity." 
• Tennessee's HB 800 bans books and instructional materials "that promote, normalize, support, or address lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, or transgender issues or lifestyle."
• Ohio's HB616 has similar language used in the Florida bill.

These bills are a template by which Republican state legislatures will also pass bills that stop any discussion of systemic racism or issues of patriarchy and sexism, said Ames Simmons, at lecturer at Duke Law School.

Here's the article: https://www.npr.org/2022/04/10/1091543359/15-states-dont-say-gay-anti-transgender-bills

The struggle is real. The fight is on. As many non-LGBTQIA2S+, cisgender, white, "able-bodied," and middle class/upper middle class people, middle-aged or mature adults who have held power in the US feel that power drifting away because of the rise of a diversity of people in the US who are now in power, the "old guard" will fight to hold on to whatever "trick" brings them some semblance of power, no matter how gross and vile the attack. Power and greed are real.

And the trick? Convincing people that teachers and liberals are "grooming" children to be LGBTQIA2S+, through "propaganda" and "indoctrination" from kindergarten the third grade. The conservatives believe in education, and that parents alone know best how to educate the children (they don't). "Grooming," which once was only used as a term with a group of people known as "pedophiles," is now being used with liberal and progressive Democrats and Independents. 

We will take the good news with the bad news, celebrating the good, and struggling well to correct the bad.

Ready, set...