If Pride flags turn kids gay, do science books make them smart?
There's no hate quite like American Taliban Christofascist "love"
Check your privilege, Hitler! I'm a nut job, not an asshole.
Rick Remender, Tokyo Ghost, Vol. 2: Come Join Us
Difference in opinions has cost many millions of lives: for instance, whether flesh be bread, or bread be flesh; whether the juice of a certain berry be blood or wine.
Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels
I understand stupid, homophobia, Christian hypocrisy, and intolerance toward those who aren’t like them. They’re annoying and hurtful qualities, but I understand where they come from and why some people cling to them. But the idea that Pride flags are turning our kids gay?
Does wearing a Packers hat ipso facto turn them into a Packers fan? That would certainly explain what’s happened to one of my nephews. Poor kid; he had so much potential.
I honestly (and, apparently, naïvely) thought I’d encountered all of the myriad, astonishingly dumbass ways in which White Conservative Christian Cisgender Heterosexuals could come up with to hate those not like themselves. But, as I seem to learn when I start thinking in those terms, Tennessee Republican State Rep. Gino Bulso (R-Brentwood) proves how wrong I am.
Just when I think I have it figured out, I learn once again that there ain’t no hate like American Taliban Christofascist “love.”
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WKRN) – Tennessee could be one of the first states to ban political flags in all public schools.
Republican State Rep. Gino Bulso (R-Brentwood) has filed a bill to ban all flags in schools that aren’t the official Tennessee or United States flag.
Bulso said he drafted the bill after hearing concerns from constituents about pride flags being displayed in schools.
“I had some complaints from Williamson County parents and a Williamson County School Board member, in particular, about pride flags in some of our schools in Williamson County,” Bulso said. “The whole idea is that a school is a place where a child goes to learn, not a place where a child goes to be indoctrinated. So you’re focusing on just one purpose of the bill having to do with political statements regarding transgender ideology and other similar issues.”
Bulso said the country used to have a “very strong consensus” on what the nation’s values are, and these are the values he believes most parents taught in schools.
Yeah, we used to know who to hate and why. It’s becoming SO much more difficult to know who to hate. I don’t even care why so much anymore, but I wish someone would help me stay current. It’s becoming SUCH a challenge….
The biggest problem here, and Rep. Bulso practically admits to it, is that he’s living in the past. He doesn’t understand that the world we once lived in is not the one we inhabit now. Wanting to return to that world is spectacularly unrealistic and unhelpful.
Imagine if we were all driving the same cars or dependent on the same medicines we were 50 years ago. Rep. Bulso wants the benefits of progress while retaining the rules of the past, which is an unsustainable equation. You can’t have the progress of today without the problems we’ve inherited from the past.
“Certainly, you know, 50 years ago we had a consensus on what marriage is; we don’t have that anymore. One-hundred years ago, we had a consensus on sexual morality; I don’t think we have that anymore. So the values that I think most parents want their children exposed to are the ones that were in existence at the time that our country was founded,” he said.
Bulso said the pride and trans flag represent ideas he disagrees with, like the 2015 Supreme Court Obergefell v Hodges decision, saying the 14th Amendment requires states recognize same-sex marriage.
“That’s one issue that I think that flag represents this idea that, somehow, the 14 Amendment has an equal protection clause that extends this protection, which is obviously something I very much disagree with,” he said. “And I think a lot of parents and I would be included in that group, really think that this transgender ideology is probably the most dangerous one that comes under that pride flag.”
While I respect his right to disagree with what’s happening today, I don’t give a damn what he disagrees with, especially when that means he wants to force his “Christian,” fear-based morality on everyone else in the Volunteer State.
He’s free to dissent in whatever manner he deems most appropriate, but what he doesn’t have the right to do is to force his narrow, fear-based theology on all Tennesseans and, by extension, eventually the rest of America.
The fact that he’s making assumptions about who’s on his side is pretty frightening. Who is he to decide who is or isn’t with him when he has no idea?
And what about those who want to live their lives differently than Rep. Bulso? Do they not have a voice and the right to determine how they live? Are their voices not every bit as valid as Christofascists like Rep. Bulso, who wouldn’t recognize Christian love and charity if they showed up with a flashlight, a pair of kneepads, and a tube of lipstick?
“We live here; this is our home; this is our state; the capitol is as much our building as it is anyone else’s, and we’re not going anywhere,” said Brian Sullivan of the Tennessee Equality Project
Similar laws are being proposed in Utah, Florida, and school boards across the country.
In an open letter to any group looking to ban LGBTQ flags, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) called this a “disturbing new trend.”
“The U.S. Constitution also guarantees robust free expression rights upon which the flag bans unlawfully infringe. While speech in public schools may be subject to more restrictions than other arenas, the Supreme Court has repeatedly held that First Amendment protections extend to ‘teachers and students,'” ACLU attorney Li Nowlin-Sohl wrote.
Bulso is also representing Williamson County parents over a decision to keep books with “obscene materials” in schools.
Left to his own devices, Rep. Bulso would drag Tennessee back to the 18th century with all the attendant fear, ignorance, and prejudice. Is that really what the good people of Tennessee want? To be known as the state that hates? Given the legislature they’ve elected, one could hardly draw any other conclusion.
Of course, Rep. Bulso clear fails to grasp the reality that there’s no such thing as “transgender ideology.” And the only consensus that existed on “sexual morality” 100 years ago is that it was discussed in hushed tones…if it was discussed at all. Despite what he may think, ignoring a subject doesn’t mean that students won’t be exposed to it, and it doesn’t mean they won’t learn about it. Keeping “obscene materials”- whatever that might mean- out of schools only ensures that children will go elsewhere to learn about it. But they WILL learn about it.
Obscenity? I know it when I see it!! And I see it EVERYWHERE!!!
The naïveté of people like Rep. Bulso is almost comical. They believe that by keeping Pride flags out of schools, they’ll somehow insulate children from being exposed to LGBTQ issues when all a child has to do is get onto the Internet at home or on their cell phone to learn about anything they’re curious about.
Have these maroons never heard of Google or Wikipedia??
At no time have those who try to ban ideas or limit exposure to books, symbols, or concepts ever turned out to be the good guys. Rep. Gino Bulso is one more example of someone who believes he can insulate children from “bad influences.”
Here’s some breaking news- children don’t wear blinders, not with the unbelievable amount of information coming at them constantly. In my schoolboy days, we had a black-and-white television with four channels- ABC, CBS, NBC, and PBS. There was one AM radio station that we could pull in my small Minnesota town- WEBC in Duluth. There was the Minneapolis StarTribune newspaper. And I got a copy of Sports Illustrated every week. That was it. Porn was hidden behind the counter at the corner gas station, and you had to be 21 to buy it.
By contrast, today’s kids are drinking from a fire hose- all manner of news, YouTube, conspiracy theorys, porn, you name it- almost all of it free and available to anyone at any time.
Rep. Bulso lives in a fantasy world where adults can limit what their children are exposed to. The truth is that most parents have no idea what their children are doing on their computers. They might be in for a helluva shock if they took the time to find out.
Banning or limiting exposure to so-called “obscene materials” is not the way to achieve an otherwise laudable goal of protecting children. They’re smarter and more technically savvy than you think. And they’re certainly far more intelligent than Rep. Gino Bulso.
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