The Christian Right Is Winning Its War on LGBTQ People

A chilling wave of state laws and a case study

An unprecedented wave of state laws is destroying LGBTQ equality in the U.S. in ways almost nobody imagined possible even a year or two ago. Trans people and gay people are in the crosshairs, with teens hit the hardest. Is the Christian right winning? Serious commentators suggest they are. I’m going to explore that and present a case study to show you how one large public school system doesn’t even need new laws to shame and harm LGBTQ students. The Christians running that school are winning their war. But first …

How quaint does this feel?

Gay conservatives like James Kirchick and Andrew Sullivan were busy proclaiming only recently that the fight for gay rights was over, that we live in a “post-gay” world, that we should stop pretending we have anything left to fight for. Both of them did so while ignoring marginalized people like gay and bi folks who don’t live in wealthy, white liberal havens or who don’t choose to ape upper-middle-class cis/straight lifestyles.

Most pointedly, they ignored transgender people, who have always been critically bound up with the struggle for LGBTQ liberation. Recently, notorious gay transphobes like Sullivan and Katie Hertzog have taken to Twitter to complain (we’re shocked, we tell you!) that their anti-trans buddies have “suddenly” turned on gay people too. There’s nothing sudden about it. Anti-trans forces in the U.S. have always been anti-gay.

As trans columnist Katelyn Burns tweeted just the other day, “It’s literally the leopard’s eating faces meme.”

The Christian right’s war on LGBTQ people never ended …

… notes Sarah Jones in New York Magazine. Of the Supreme Court decision that legalized gay marriage, she says, “The high court was always the wrong place for liberals to look for progress, because no decision can alter the Christian right’s religious convictions… that have kept LGBTQ rights fixed squarely in their sights.”

Books by and about LGBTQ people are vanishing from shelves this year as schools and even public libraries engage in the largest purge of such books the nation has ever seen.

She says the real fight is “on the ground,” that the Christian right doesn’t care if gay and trans kids suffer or die by suicide, because their religious convictions matter more to them than LGBTQ suffering matters. She calls a resurgence of Christian anti-gay talking points striking and critical to face. She claims the Christian Right is winning the war that counts, the war on the ground. Is she correct? Let’s take a look at broad trends then dive into a case study of a large school system in Texas that has terrorized a diverse group of LGBTQ kids who used to belong to a thriving GSA club.

Most U.S. state legislatures are working on Don’t Say Gay Laws

39 U.S. states (that’s about 4/5 of all states for you math nerds) are considering Don’t Say Gay laws like the one Florida just passed. As The Guardian reports, these bills are just part of a much larger, “chilling wave of Republican legislation” seeking to censor teachers, gag transgender and gay students, remove books that send positive messages about LGBTQ people from library shelves, and create a system in which cis/straight people are presumed to be “wholesome” while queer people are presumed to be shameful and not fit for the public stage, especially when children are listening.

Mentioning same-sex couples is presumed to breach the borders of impermissible sexuality, while cis/straight couples are presumed nonsexual.

Transgender people are presumed simultaneously to be victims of child abuse and child abusers, treated as criminals even (as in Texas) when they’re following the consensus medical guidance of the American Academy of Pediatrics and American Medical Association, which has released a statement calling on politicians to stay out of private medical decisions taken by families and their doctors.

Georgia’s proposed Don’t Say Gay law, which lawmakers call by the Orwellian Common Humanity in Private Education Act, will have an even worse chilling effect than its infamous Florida inspiration, prohibiting classroom discussion of transgender and gay people much more boldly — showing students LGBTQ people are shameful and not fit to mention around children. Startlingly, it applies equally to public schools and private schools. Analysts expect it will pass and go into effect by next school year.

Louisiana's proposed Don’t Say Gay law makes things simple. No discussion of transgender or gay people in school, K-12. Period, end of story.

Indiana’s proposed law, expected to pass, requires parents to give permission for their children to be given any “instruction in human sexuality,” and requires schools to give parents instructional material to review in advance. The catch? Discussing the existence of trans or gay people is considered sexuality instruction. Discussing the existence of straight or cis people is not. Go figure.

Tennessee lawmakers are more open about the intent of their Don’t Say Gay bill, also expected to pass. They’re banning any instruction at any grade level that would “promote, normalize, support, or address lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, or transgender issues or lifestyles.”

Meanwhile, outside the scope of laws, books by and about LGBTQ people are vanishing from shelves as schools and even public libraries engage in the largest purge of such books the nation has ever seen.

Support for these laws is widespread, even among Democrats

A full 24% of Democrats recently told pollsters it should be illegal for teachers to discuss gender identity or sexual orientation in primary school classrooms. Only 52% of Democrats in a recent poll said they opposed Florida’s Don’t Say Gay law. Republican support is almost universal, but significant Democratic support illustrates a crisis for LGBTQ people. The Christian right has been hard-selling the notion that talking about trans and gay people is inappropriately sexual, and plenty of folks are buying in— even large pluralities of people on the left.

The war on the ground is often played out without respect to laws

Tyler Morgan, pictured above with a whiteboard message he wrote for his middle school music class in Fayette County, Kentucky, has resigned in the face of violent threats from the public and official harassment by school administrators.

His crime? Letting trans and gay students know they were safe in his class and that they were OK.

The school superintendent has issued a public statement that appears to condemn Morgan for expressing support for LGBTQ students in class instead of privately, implying that parents object to discussion or support of LGBTQ students, and telling teachers to stick to approved curriculum.

Fellow Fayette County teacher Laura Hartke objects: “There’s no teacher that just reads from a book and just delivers you content. Kids have questions. They have conversations. We are educating whole children. So the thought that the conversation being outside of curriculum is alarming to him, is alarming to me.”

Nonetheless, Morgan is gone. The combination of violent threats and his boss’s position drove him from the classroom, which is no longer a haven for LGBTQ students.

School district in Texas effectively terrorizes LGBTQ students while firing LGBTQ teachers

Up until last school year, MacArthur High in Irving, Texas was a pretty good place to be an LGBTQ student. The school’s GSA (Gay Straight Alliance or Gender and Sexual Alliance) club was thriving, and queer kids felt like they belonged. They say they experienced some bullying and threats, but with 50 to 60 of them meeting regularly after school, they felt a certain safety in numbers. They had friends, social circles, and teachers who looked out for them.

Then last year, their school district declared war.

One supportive teacher and GSA sponsor is being fired, another is preparing to resign in the face of threats, and a third has been removed from the classroom.

Administrators and district staff have interrogated GSA members, some students saying staff tried to force them to answer questions about the GSA, even in some cases physically restraining them after they declined to answer questions that they characterized as “hostile” and “demeaning.”

GSA members and former members say homophobic slurs and physical bullying by other students have increased to severe levels and staff now routinely ignore such bullying.

“It feels like a target was put on us,” Adaiah Knight told NBC News reporters recently. A junior who identifies as gender-fluid, Adaiah says they’ve been harassed personally and cannot get help from teachers or staff.

They aren’t getting much support from peers either. GSA attendance has shrunk from more than 40 students one or more times per week, to 5 to 10 students once a month.

The Irving School District say there’s “nothing to see here,” issuing a statement saying, “The GSA has not been and will not be suspended. Furthermore, rumors that the club has been prohibited from meeting and supporting fellow students are false in all respects.”

GSA members say otherwise. The prohibition may not be official, but it’s proven effective. A once thriving student-support club now barely exists.

“It’s like they’re being shadow-banned,” says Christine Latin, a dance teacher and one of five faculty sponsors of the GSA. She’s resigning to protest the district’s harassment of the GSA club.

What is the clash all about? Why is McArthur suppressing the GSA?

Stickers. Tiny rainbow stickers. The conflict in a suburb northwest of Dallas has nothing to do with new law or policy, or even with public pressure at school board meetings. It’s all about little rainbow stickers that a few teachers had long been displaying in or just outside their classrooms to let LGBTQ kids know they were supportive.

For some reason early this school year, administrators decided such stickers were unacceptable. Some teachers suggested (absurdly) that straight/cis students wouldn’t feel safe in classrooms with rainbows. Students say what really happened is that Christian parents complained they didn’t want their kids exposed to inappropriate “sexuality” at school. Sound familiar?

Sometimes late in August, staff scraped all the stickers off walls and administrators ordered they not be replaced.

Rachel Stonecipher, a journalism teacher and GSA sponsor who identifies as a lesbian, objected. She says, “The damage that was done by scraping them down was far worse than just never having them in the first place,” referring to the lesson in shame staff taught LGBTQ students and the entire student body.

She was placed on administrative leave in September and barred from communicating with teachers or students.

GSA students organized a walkout to protest the sticker removal and their teachers’ punishment. Hundreds of their peers participated, and then the school system came down like a hammer.

The GSA barely exists any more, LGBTQ students say bullying and staff hostility have surged, and they feel entirely unwelcome at school.

The district’s response?

“Labeling certain classrooms as safe havens for certain groups could communicate to students who do not see themselves reflected in that classroom’s decorations that they are unwanted or unsafe in those rooms.”

To date, no McArthur students report feeling traumatized by rainbows.

The Christian Right is winning its war on LGBTQ people at McArthur and all over

Nobody is fooled by the school district’s silly assertion that straight kids don’t feel safe in classrooms with rainbows. The real problem is clear, as McArthur queer kids are quick to clarify. Christian parents in the district object — strenuously — to any messaging that LGBTQ poeple are normal, healthy, or positive. Many Christian teachers in the district feel the same way, and so do key district staff members.

They cannot get rid of the GSA club without incurring federal legal trouble, but they can harass, disrupt, and oppress as long as they’re careful to keep toes and fingers inside legal limits. That’s exactly what they’re doing.

They don’t care if students are trans, gay, bi, genderfluid or any other flavor of LGBTQ; they want them in the closet or as silent as possible. They ignore bullies and openly anti-LGBTQ teachers and turn a high school into a hell hole for kids who are different.

That’s how the Christian Right is winning on the ground, and it’s not just Texas that’s the problem. Stories like this hit the LGBTQ press literally every day as the war ramps up.

We desperately need the federal LGBTQ Equality Act to give us powerful civil rights protections that could take down blatantly anti-LGBTQ school administrations, but that’s not in the political cards anytime soon, if ever.

The backlash burns on and the bonfire is growing. Is anyone outside LGBTQ circles paying attention?

James Finn is a columnist for the LA Blade, a former Air Force intelligence analyst, an alumnus of Queer Nation and Act Up NY, and an “agented” but unpublished novelist. Send questions, comments, and story ideas to [email protected].

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