Carlsbad’s Christian Soldiers Take Aim at LGBTQ+ Inclusion

DEI Is This Year’s CRT for So-Called Parents Rights Groups

The Carlsbad Unified School District is having three “Listening and Learning Sessions” on Tuesday, May 23 at elementary schools as part of the process for developing a strategic plan for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) for the district. 

• Diversity, equity, and inclusion refers to organizational frameworks seeking to promote "the fair treatment and full participation of all people", particularly groups "who have historically been underrepresented or subject to discrimination" on the basis of identity or disability.

Acolytes from the Mission Church have organized a campaign to exclude LGBTQ+ students and issues from the district strategy. A Friday evening training session started out with the theocratic premise that God in government as an overall goal–as opposed to separation of church and state. Participants were given a series of talking points based on outlier studies and news coverage.

They’re asking for (an undefined) “full transparency” in terms of curriculum and parental rights, along with “no sexual identity or gender ideology curriculum, groups, or celebrations on public school campuses.” In other words, if you’re gay, you don’t play, because the Bible tells us so.

Mission Church’s earlier foray into local politics was hosting a 2021 event for Let Them Breathe and ReOpen San Diego, calling for the state to allow students to attend school without masks.

The doctrine of this church includes denial of evolutionary theory as it applies to humans and prohibiting women from serving “in church positions in which they exercise authority over men in teaching and in doctrine.”

DEI is the latest boogie man for right wing groups seeking to promote “parents rights” agendas with the ultimate goal of overthrowing elected oversight of schools so ‘traditional Christian values’ can be installed as the guiding force in curriculum. 

The sum total of Mission Church’s talking points is that inclusivity planning shouldn’t include LGBTQ+ humans. Or, by flipping the conversation on its head, these acolytes would like people to believe they are being bullied.

Here’s a example of the such testimony:(video):

• Pastor discussing high suicide rates among LGBTQIA+: “There are 6 million Jews that were under tremendous persecution in the Holocaust and the Jewish suicide was not increased to 54% ideology or 19% attempted. The African American slaves that were cuffed and put into bond and stocks and thrown into ships and treated horribly did not have an increase suicide rate. So this bears no logic historically or even presently…There is something definitely wrong. And what is definitely wrong is  you’re going against your own biology. Every cell in your body you’re going against, no wonder your life  isn’t worth feeling, worth living. You’re going against the true and living God.” 

Carlsbad area LGBTQ+ activists and allies are now organizing their own campaign to refute the misinformation of the theocrats and argue that inclusivity means everybody.

***

The Bigger Picture

Otherizing is a key component in developing authoritarianism as a political force. Anti-LGBTQ activism has jumped to the top of an agenda for right wing targets including critical race theory, library book collections, and abortion access.

There are active campaigns targeting the inclusion of LGBTQ+ activities, ranging from protests at drag shows, to school board protests, to disruptions of Gay Pride events.

After complaints from Fla. Sen. Marco Rubio, the Los Angeles Dodgers disinvited the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence to Dodgers Pride Night. (The Anaheim Angels responded to the Dodgers by inviting the Sisters to their Pride Night.)

From ABC7 TV News:

• The Los Angeles LGBT center and LA Pride have pulled out of the Dodgers Pride Night scheduled for June 16 after the team disinvited the Sisters of Perpetual of Indulgence, who some Catholic groups claimed was "mocking" their religion.

• The Sisters were scheduled to not only attend Dodgers Pride Night, but also receive an award for their work.

• The Sisters are a nonprofit that fundraises and volunteers for the LGBTQ+ community. They also sometimes dress in drag as nuns. But the group says they are not anti-religious, and that its mission is to spread joy and end hate.

Nationally, at least 417 anti-LGBTQ bills have been introduced in state legislatures across the United States since the start of the year — a new record, according to American Civil Liberties Union data as of April 3. CNN says that’s more than twice the number of such bills introduced all of last year,

Seven GOP-run states have now passed laws that mean school librarians face years of imprisonment and tens of thousands of dollars in fines for providing (LGBTQ or sex education)  books.

Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee are demanding answers from  Budweiser beer about how they ”allowed” a trans person to be on one of their beer cans and advertising.  This business decision has GOP Senators, who used to be known for wanting the government out of business, demanding internal corporate documents.

And then there’s Florida. The demonization and legislation aimed at LGBTQ people (among others) has civil rights organizations warning of danger should people travel to Florida. Four Gay Pride celebrations around the state have been canceled as organizers point to recent state laws creating a “climate of fear.”

Out on the fringes  –which have a remarkable record of becoming mainstream GOP policy– right-wing politicians and preachers are openly called for killing LGBTQ people. On a conservative talk show, Mark Burns, a failed MAGA congressional candidate from South Carolina, called “LGBT, transgender grooming” a national security threat and proposed using treason laws as the basis for “executing” parents and teachers who advocate for LGBTQ rights. 

From Heather Cox Richardson:

• Nonetheless, the rhetoric of demonization is working: Brian Tyler Cohen reports (with video) that “Christian” pastor Jason Graber recently called for the execution of all LGBTQ people as well as the parents of transgender people: “They just need to be shot in the back of the head and then we can string them up above a bridge.”

Robie Harris, the librarian author of It’s Perfectly Normal, one of the books often targeted by rightwing advocates, told a story last year while on a book tour illustrating the importance of not letting book censorship happen.

• Harris and her sex education books have been accused of a lot of things, but she remains grounded in the knowledge that education is powerful, and that kids deserve access to reliable information about their bodies. “How can we hold back writing about powerful feelings, or not include certain information children crave and have the right to know, simply because we are afraid?”, she wrote in 2012.

• The most illustrative story she shared, though, was about a 10-year-girl in Delaware who picked up her book when at the library with her mother. Her mother let her check the book out, and when they came home, she showed her mom the chapter on sexual abuse and said, “This is me.” She was being abused by her father, and it was the first time she’d spoken about it.

• The father was convicted, and the judge said, “There were heroes in this case. One was the child, and the other was the book.” Harris wrote in to add that the mother was also a hero in this story, for listening to her daughter, and that the librarian who ordered the book and kept it on open shelves also made this possible.

The far right and their Christian supplicants are using mythology about children being “groomed” for sexual exploitation as the justification for their campaigns of hate aimed at LGBTQ+ people.

The reality is far different. Just take a look at arrests for pedophilia and similar sex crimes reported in the news media; they’re 99% about individuals who are able to use their perceived power to manipulate victims. I doubt you’ll find any drag queens in those stories. I know you’ll find an extraordinary number of religious authority figures. One only has to look at the billions the Catholic church is paying to victims to get the picture.  

If the people spreading this hate truly cared about children, regulating firearms would be a top priority…or child poverty… or healthcare…

Bonus Bits of Biggish News

Back in hoodies and gym shorts, Fetterman tackles Senate life after depression treatment Via Associated Press. Mental health coverage about treatment. Yay!

• Another Democratic colleague, Illinois Sen. Tammy Duckworth, said she noticed that Fetterman was “inwardly focused” when he arrived in Washington. But he’s now gregarious and cracking jokes.

• “It’s really, really great to see, it’s a good message to send to people to seek help,” Duckworth said. “It makes a difference.”

***

Letters from an American Via Heather Cox Richardson

• The list of 500 banned Americans that Russian president Vladimir Putin released on Friday makes it clear that Putin is openly aligning himself with Trump and today’s MAGA Republicans. The people on the list are not necessarily involved with U.S. policy toward Russia; they are Americans who are standing in the way of the Trump movement’s takeover of our country. 

***

DeSantis’s celebration of vigilantism is a new low in MAGA extremism Via the Washington Post

• When Ron DeSantis defended Daniel Penny, the former Marine accused of killing a man suffering from mental illness on a New York City subway, the Florida governor didn’t just laud Penny as a hero. He also cast the law enforcement apparatus prosecuting Penny as presumptively illegitimate.

• In so doing, DeSantis joined many on the right seeking to transform Penny into a martyr being punished by the “deep state” for supposedly defending civil order. But this is particularly sobering coming from DeSantis; it suggests the two leading contenders for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination — DeSantis and former president Donald Trump — are open celebrators of vigilante “justice."

***

You can follow me at:

• Post News—→DougPorter@wordsdeedsblogger

• Tribel ——> DougP Porter@dougporter506

• Mastodon ——> DougPorter506@mastodon.social

• Spoutible —>@dougporter506

• Facebook —----> https://www.facebook.com/WordsAndDeedsBlog

Email me at: WritetoDougPorter@Gmail.com