LGBTQ Roller Coaster: Extremist Speaker Elected but NHL, Scholastic Step Up

The struggle for freedom and inclusion intensifies with one big loss and two big wins

I broke down in tears yesterday when the U.S. House of Representatives elected Mike Johnson (R/LA) Speaker of the House. Johnson is not a household name, so for many Americans his accession is little more than an end to the chaos that has reigned in the House since Kevin McCarthy was ousted as Speaker on October 3.

But many queer Americans know Johnson all too well … and fear him. Johnson is one of the most extreme anti-LGBTQ members of Congress, and he is NOT playing a game for political gain. He’s the real deal, a true believer. Not only do his toxic views go back decades, he worked for decades as an activist and legal advocate, helping shape many of the anti-transgender, anti-gay laws that have been sweeping state legislatures for the last several years.

It’s not just queer people who should fear Johnson. He’s closely allied with legal activists in Texas (like Jonathan Mitchell) who are trying to criminalize people who help women travel out of state for legal abortions, calling such friends and family members “human traffickers.”

But more on Johnson in a minute. This week’s headlines are not all grim. It’s hard to smile through tears of fear, but two big stories cheered me powerfully.

Fantastic news from the National Hockey League

Let’s start with Travis Dermott of the NHL’s Arizona Coyotes, who just defied a new league ban on players wrapping their hockey sticks with rainbow tape. He told Outsports that he wants to send inclusive messages to potential players and fans because hockey has long had a problem with homophobic exclusion.

Outsports had compared the NHL ban to Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law that prohibits discussion of LGBTQ people or topics in public-school classrooms at all grade levels — the law that Speaker Johnson sponsored at the federal level in an even stricter form.

For the 27-year-old Dermott, who does not identify as LGBTQ, the “Pride tape” ban is deeply personal. He told a reporter, “I’d be lying if I said I haven’t shed tears about this on multiple occasions,” implying that he is supporting close friends and family members.

The great news here is that Dermott didn’t JUST shed tears, he defied the ban in the face of potential steep fines and playing-time penalties. Several NHL players had already spoken out against the ban, then after Dermott’s act of principled resistance, several more spoke up to say they would join him.

On Tuesday, the NHL reversed itself, announcing, “Players will now have the option to voluntarily represent social causes with their stick tape throughout the season.”

Maybe that doesn’t sound like such a big deal, but it’s HUGE! One of the biggest sports leagues in North America had started to teach people that LGBTQ Pride is too shameful for public expression, and players said in effect, “Hell no. We will not be complicit with exclusion and hatred.”

Scholastic reversed its widely criticized decision to segregate books about minorities

I cheered out loud when I read late yesterday that book publisher Scholastic is reversing its exclusionary new book-fair policy. I wrote about their move on October 21, describing it like this:

Scholastic Books, the leading bookseller to schools across North America, is facing criticism for segregating books about diversity so that schools have to opt in to receive them. Books by or about Black people, LGBTQ people, Native Americans, and people with disabilities (among others) are being shipped in optional boxes to Scholastic’s very popular school book fairs.

Scholastic says they are trying to protect librarians and teachers from laws designed to suppress books about diversity, but critics say Scholastic is making a poor moral choice — elevating profit over decency, doing what’s easy instead of what’s good.

I was far from alone. The prestigious author’s group PEN America released a statement saying, “Publishers have a dual obligation to fight growing censorship and make books maximally available,” urging Scholastic to:

explore other solutions so they can reject any role in accommodating these nefarious laws and local pressures, or being an accessory to government censorship. What we understand was conceived as a practical adaptation to keep book fairs going in a fraught legal and political climate is clearly at risk of being twisted to accomplish censorious ends.

Yes! When I first read PEN’s statement, I asked myself why Scholastic feels it necessary or good to help educators comply with laws designed to suppress stories about queer people, Black people, etc. Sure, I feel bad for teachers and librarians caught in the crosshairs of political hatred, but that doesn’t mean bowing down to unjust, immoral laws is the right thing to do.

Resistance is called for instead, just like with Travis Dermott. He wrapped his stick in Pride tape despite knowing he could lose a lot of money and professional opportunity. He did the right thing anyway.

He resisted, and now Scholastic is resisting too. Tuesday, Scholastic Trade Publishing president Ellie Berger sending the following statement to several authors and illustrators, some of whom posted it on social media:

I want to apologize on behalf of Scholastic. Even if the decision was made with good intention, we understand now that it was a mistake to segregate diverse books in an elective case… We will find an alternate way to get a greater range of books into the hands of children. We remain committed to the books in this collection and support their sale throughout our distribution channels… [Our] commitment to BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ authors and stories remains foundational.

The statement specifies that the publisher will resume distributing diverse titles throughout its offerings in the new book-fair cycle in January. They say they’ll take unspecified steps in the meantime to mitigate damage already done.

Back to Speaker Johnson and the GOP’s assault on LGBTQ equality

As Tucker Lieberman summarized this morning, Johnson built his career on anti-LGBTQ advocacy, first coming to national attention in 2003 when he wrote an amicus brief for Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) urging the Supreme Court to keep gay sex criminalized. He lost that case when the court ruled in Lawrence v. Texas that Texas violated the U.S. Constitution by arresting, charging, and convicting two men of a criminal offense for having sex in the privacy of their own bedroom.

Johnson wants that Texas law back. He has called homosexuality “inherently unnatural,” a “dangerous lifestyle” that would lead to legalized pedophilia and the destruction of “the entire democratic system.”

He says, “Your race, creed, and sex are what you are, while homosexuality and cross-dressing are things you do,” adding, “we don’t give special protections for every person’s bizarre choices.”

He says states have “many legitimate grounds to proscribe same-sex deviate sexual intercourse.”

Of same-sex marriage, he argued:

Homosexual relationships are inherently unnatural and, the studies clearly show, are ultimately harmful and costly for everyone. Society cannot give its stamp of approval to such a dangerous lifestyle. If we change marriage for this tiny, modern minority, we will have to do it for every deviant group. Polygamists, polyamorists, pedophiles, and others will be next in line to claim equal protection. They already are. There will be no legal basis to deny a bisexual the right to marry a partner of each sex, or a person to marry his pet.

(Same-sex marriage has been legal in every state since 2016. Seen anyone marrying pets or children? Didn’t think so.)

Johnson wants transgender people to disappear, calling them mentally ill and dangerous. He wants anyone in the U.S. to have the “religious liberty” to discriminate against same-sex married couples and trans people. He argues that judges and justices of the peace must be free to refuse to conduct same-sex weddings. Last year, he sponsored a federal bill that would bar discussion of transgender and gay people at all grade levels of public education — by defining such discussions as “pornographic” by default.

Fighting to marginalize LGBTQ people isn’t Johnson’s hobby. It’s not a recent interest. It’s not a political strategy to engage the GOP base. This has been his career since long before he was elected to Congress in 2016. He’s been a key player in right-wing White Christian nationalism all his professional life.

He also, by the way, endorsed wild conspiracy theories to argue that Donald Trump won the 2020 election.

The struggle for freedom and inclusion intensifies

These are frightening days for LGBTQ people and many other marginalized people. The struggle facing our nation is truly epic, as forces of hatred unite to erase minorities while further privileging White, straight, cisgender, conservative-Christian men.

Even a few years ago, I never would have believed so many states would be passing laws to silence, erase, and persecute transgender and gay people, but the headlines parade in front of my eyes every day.

Yesterday, things got much worse, as one of the major players in those forces of hatred was elevated to the third most powerful political position in the land — to practically unanimous Republic approval and celebration.

I’m encouraged that Americans of good will like Travis Dermott and the authors of PEN America are succeeding (for now) in keeping cultural institutions accountable. Most Americans, after all, want nothing to do with the kind of extremist hatred incarnated in Mike Johnson and his friends and allies at ADF and other Christian nationalist groups.

But we are on a cusp. If we don’t remain vigilant, if we don’t keep fighting, then bigotry and exclusion WILL become normalized, just like almost happened at Scholastic when books about diverse people came this close to becoming phantoms that exist only in catalogs.

Look, I know how exhausting it is to stay focused, to stay angry, to keep working for true justice and inclusion, but now is not the time to give into fatigue or despair.

Just ask a certain 27-year-old hockey player. He took a stand for love, and he won. We can do this! Together.

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