The Republican Plot to Ban LGBTQ History in Public Schools
This Pride month, as revelers hit the streets to celebrate
LGBTQ history, Republican state legislatures are hard at work trying to erase
it. And it’s not just epochal events like the Stonewall riots, or towering
figures like Harvey Milk, that could be wiped from classroom instruction. In
public schools in Tennessee, Arkansas, and Montana, it may soon become illegal
even to mention Bayard
Rustin, the openly gay co-organizer of the 1963 March on Washington, or
educate kids about the AIDS crisis. In May, Tennessee became the first state to pass
what queer-rights advocates have branded as “Don’t Say Gay” laws, which either
forbid the teaching of LGBTQ history in K-12 schools outright or allow parents
to choose whether their children participate in lessons that include it. Within
days, Montana followed
suit. Yet another bill in Arkansas
awaits the signature of the state’s Republican governor. Similar bills have
been considered in West Virginia, Iowa, and Missouri, and even more proposals
are percolating through red-state legislatures. Akin to bans
on the teaching of critical race theory, these laws seek to preserve the
myth that the story of America is one of inexorable progress and unblemished
virtue.Akin to bans
on the teaching of critical race theory, these laws seek to preserve the
myth that the story of America is one of inexorable progress and unblemished
virtue, that we stand exceptional among nations as the gleaming embodiment of
democracy; they also imply that a great number of us don’t matter. In
particular, legislation forbidding the teaching of queer history aims to ossify
what remains of society’s moral disapproval of LGBTQ people and endangers queer
youth susceptible
to suicide. “It is a false representation of the past, one in which
LGBTQ people are imagined never to have existed,” said Anthony Mora, associate
professor of history and Latinx studies at the University of Michigan. “The
hesitancy to open up questions about the failures of the past—of not living up
to the goals of the republic—is less about the past than about not wanting to
change the present, to hold in place the status quo and not allow for real
moments of debate and change.”Mora’s group, the Organization of American Historians, and
the American
Historical Association released a joint statement
in May condemning the recent spate of “Don’t Say Gay” bills, which the
organizations say perpetuate homophobia, distort the historical record, and
deprive students—queer and not—of a complete education. “Among the many dangers
of these laws is that they will create a two-tiered system,” Mora said. “These
bills would harm students by keeping them from learning about the complexity of
our larger society and their place in it, depriving them of a fully rounded
education.”Politically, the bills reflect the resurgence of culture-war
politics at the state level now that Republicans are out of power in Congress
and the White House, and the religious right’s expanding moral panic over the
advancement of LGBTQ rights. The laws in Tennessee and Montana, as with the
bill in Arkansas, are in one sense narrow—designed, it seems, to invite legal
challenges at a time when an overwhelmingly conservative Supreme Court is
inclined to grant religious exemptions. In Tennessee, parents must now be given
30 days’ notice to examine any curriculum materials related to sexual
orientation or gender identity, and can request their children be pulled from
such instruction. Montana gives parents 48 hours to “withdraw the child from a
course of instruction, a class period, an assembly, an organized school
function regarding human sexuality.” A similar notification law in Arkansas requires school districts to tell parents in writing about “instruction of
any kind” about “sex education, sexual orientation, and gender identity.” In form, these bills are akin to religious exemptions
allowing businesses to refuse service to LGBTQ patrons, and raise questions
similar to those that the Supreme Court declined to address earlier this month in Fulton
v. Philadelphia, as it did three years ago in Masterpiece
Cakeshop: Namely, where does “religious liberty” end and
nondiscrimination begin? Unable to stop our culture’s embrace of queer people,
the right’s best chances now stand with exempting itself from the new
social order. And yet, in the last several years, six other
states—California, New Jersey, Colorado, Oregon, Illinois, and Nevada—have passed
laws mandating the teaching of LGBTQ history. “It reflects the increased
polarization of the country,” said Marc Stein, a professor of history at San
Francisco State University who specializes in LGBTQ studies. “We could end up
in one of those moments where there’s an incredible degree of local variability
in politics related to sexuality and gender.” But the “Don’t Say Gay” laws that have passed are, in another
sense, also broad to the point of absurdity—a testament to how hard it is to write a
law discriminating against a group without mentioning it. If parents must be
notified of any material that involves “gender identity” and “sexual
orientation,” do teachers now need permission to tell kids George Washington
was a man? Or that JFK married Jackie O? “They are written in a way that purports to be facially
neutral, but the goal obviously isn’t to limit or treat as extra sensitive
information about the heterosexual spouses of important figures, or about the
mannerisms of gender-conforming people,” said Jenny Pizer, law and policy
director at Lambda Legal. “The unmistakable goal is to make it harder for
schools to share true information about the contributions made by LGBTQ people
so all students can better understand this aspect of human diversity.”Vagueness and unintended consequences were the rationale Arizona Governor Doug Ducey, a
Republican, gave in April for vetoing
a “Don’t Say Gay” bill that would require parents to opt in rather than opt out
(as they do in the state for sex education). Iowa considered a similar opt-in
bill before its legislative session ended with the measure stuck in
committee. Opt-in bills may seem like a minor variation on exemption
bills, but they come closer to bans than one might think. In the same way far
fewer iPhone users opt in to ad-tracking when presented with the choice,
requiring students to opt in to LGBTQ-inclusive education would mean a
significant number would decline by default. And as with sex ed, having to opt
in reinforces the idea that learning about queer people is inessential or even
dangerous.“There’s this notion of contagion and contamination and
recruitment in sexual politics,” Stein said. “We see examples of that with
parents who don’t want their kids to see gay people in classroom contexts
because they think the very exposure will encourage their children to
transgress sexual and gender norms.”But broader bans on teaching queer history are as active a
threat as more tailored measures. Another bill
in Tennessee sought to suppress any educational materials that “promote,
normalize, support or address lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT)
issues or lifestyles.” Republicans in West Virginia’s House of Representatives tried
earlier this year to “forbid the teaching of sexuality in public
schools.” In fact, limitations on the instruction of LGBTQ topics
already exist in six states,
remnants of another era of moral panic over sexual and gender politics: the
AIDS crisis under Ronald Reagan. In Alabama and Texas, students must be taught
in sex ed that being gay is “not a lifestyle acceptable to the general
public.” In South Carolina, you can’t talk about gay relationships outside
the context of disease transmission. Louisiana, Mississippi, and Oklahoma have
similarly homophobic restrictions on public education on the books.In considering the threats and implications of censoring
LGBTQ history, it can be easy to fall into the trap of thinking that teaching
about queer oppression, misogyny, or racism is only to show America’s dark
side, to expose the failures of our system of government. While the work of
these movements remains unfinished, their successes are, in fact, that gleaming
embodiment of democracy we should want the world to see. “The triumphs of the Black, women, and gay liberation
movements are three of the most uplifting stories about American democracy of
the last 50 years,” said Charles Kaiser, author of The Gay Metropolis, a
preeminent account of gay life in America. “The idea that ignorant people now
think the most important thing they can do is suppress stories that tell you
the best things about America is just repellent on every level.”
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