Live Oak is a small town in North Florida. It’s named after the sprawling trees that often reach across roads and open spaces to form shady canopies. I know it well since I have family in the area.
It’s a conservative community where Republicans outnumber Democrats by about two to one. Trump got more than 75% of the 2020 vote in Suwannee County, where Live Oak is the county seat and home to this charming old courthouse, pictured below in a photo taken in the 1940s.
Live Oak is also home to Ms. Jean Eckhoff, who teaches history to middle school and high school students in the town. Eckhoff was interviewed by New York Magazine in a feature story on Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill, which the governor is expected to sign into law soon. DeSantis signaled his intent to sign by recently thanking the wingnut state legislature for passing the bill and “letting me and my wife be able to send our kids to kindergarten without them being sexualized.”
The governor is saying that teachers like Ms. Eckhoff, who’s been at her current post for 17 years, are a threat to children. Eckhoff heard him. She describes being a gay teacher in Live Oak, Florida and the threat the bill poses to her livelihood:
“It’s like ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,’” she says. “Everyone knows I’m gay, but as long as I don’t talk about it, it’s okay.” And the limit of her activism was “when I went to Pride in New York City.”
Under a bill proposed by Republicans in Florida, just saying those words could cost Eckhoff her job. “I feel targeted,” she says. “It would be very easy for a parent to say, ‘There’s my dyke teacher teaching my kid to be gay,’ and sue the school.”
It’s important to note that DeSantis and other Florida Republicans always lie to the public about the bill’s content, which the article thoroughly unpacks. When state officials aren’t suggesting that the bill’s opponents are pro-pedophilia by calling it the “Anti-Grooming” bill, they pretend it’s about parents’ rights. Parental rights have have been the fake theme of the just-concluded legislative session, which also banned discussion of CRT and mask mandates, etc., under the same rubric.
Emphasizing the vigilante component of the Don’t Say Gay bill, NYM calls it the “Don’t Discuss Anything About Queer or Trans Existence and Don’t Counsel Trans or Gay Kids (Instead, You Must Out Them to Their Parents) or Else Parents Can Force a State Investigation of the School, Get Money Damages, and Probably Get You Fired” bill. That sounds about right. But Ms. Eckhoff doesn’t plan to knuckle under to the bullies:
“This bill empowers bigotry in the same spirit as we’ve seen anti-Semitic, anti-Black, anti-immigrant bigotry,” says Eckhoff. “It’s normalizing degradation.”
Still, Eckhoff says that if the bill becomes law, she won’t back down. “When I first saw the headline ‘Don’t Say Gay,’ I thought, I might lose my job over this,” she says. “But now I say, ‘Bring it on.’ I’m not asking for trouble, but I’m 52 years old — why should I play this game? I can’t go along with this. This is my life.”
She’s a hero in my book, and she’s one of millions of other Floridians who did not ask for and will not accept this bigoted bullshit. I’m not sure what will happen this week, let alone in November. But I do believe people like Eckhoff in Florida will ultimately prevail over the DeSantis types.
As Gandhi said, “When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they can seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. Think of it — always.”
Open thread!
Baud
?
Excellent post.
lowtechcyclist
I just wonder why teachers haven’t gone on strike over some of this legislation that tells them what they can and can’t teach, and how they must do it. It’s hard to find substitutes these days; they’re not going to be able to bring in a bunch of replacements beyond the babysitter level.
trollhattan
Can’t imagine what it feels like to have your hard-won and presumed rights liquefy beneath your feet. Suppose with the current SCOTUS I’ll be finding out personally, three time zones away from Florida.
Stay safe, Jean Eckhof.
JML
@lowtechcyclist: probably because teachers end up having to save the strike for when they’re getting screwed on salary, benefits, etc. Minneapolis teachers told the district to get fucked on their “last” offer because the district still wants to screw over support staff. good for them.
Baud
@lowtechcyclist:
I wouldn’t necessarily assume most FL teachers are all that liberal.
Suzanne
@lowtechcyclist: Many teachers aren’t liberal, or ideological at all, really. Also, most of them just want to do their jobs and take care of their families like normal people, and activism is a big sacrifice.
ETA: I wish the liberal left would remember this more often. There is a tendency to crap on the small things that people do and usually what follows is an exhortation to ORGANIZE or some such. Most people are just not going to do that. They do not have the time, money, skills, inclination.
Betty
I hope the school administration has her back. Not a given, but her years of experience there ought to count for something.
UncleEbeneezer
I’m so sorry you have to deal with this bullshit in your state. It’s so fucking gross. I really hope this shit turns off the Trump-to-Biden swing voters enough that the GOP will pay some electoral price. Outside of hardcore MAGAts, this shit really isn’t popular. Thanks, as always for fighting the good fight and raising awareness.
Brantl
@Suzanne: If you think unions “had the money” to organize in the 1920s and 1930s, think again.
Brachiator
Excellent post!
I hope that parents will reject this.
I don’t have much, but I will try to contribute to any necessary efforts to fight this.
Baud
@Suzanne:
Agreed. Activists are heroes precisely because few can do it, much less successfully.
Baud
@UncleEbeneezer:
The hard part is getting enough of the Outside to care.
Peale
@Brachiator: unfortunately, all it takes is one wing nut family to create a problem. These anti gay and anti crt bills were always going to make it impossible to be a gay or black teacher. “You’re being investigated for teaching CRT”. “I’m a math teacher”. “Yeah, but whitey mcwhite mommy knows you have to be bringing it up in class, given you’re race and all.”
Calouste
I hate the term “parents’ rights”. Parents shouldn’t have rights over their children, they should only exercise their childrens’ rights on behalf of them.
japa21
I think it is just a matter of time before some colleges refuse to accept students from certain schools and states.
trollhattan
@Peale: “Besides, math was invented by the Ay-rabbs.”
Eljai
Between this article and watching the overt racism of Republican senators for the past two days, I keep wondering “is this the last desperate gasp of the dinosaur?” They know they’re losing. Their views are definitely past the sell-by date. The demographics do not favor them. Their ideas aren’t popular. All they’ve got left is spittle-flecked hatred. Like Gandhi, I believe they will eventually fall (I’m not actually like Gandhi, but you get the drift, I hope). And yet, here we are still having to deal with their bullshit.
Rusty
The extra brutality of the various anti-abortion, anti-gay, anti-transgender laws slithering out of various state houses, is that they not only attack the people to which they apply, but they attack those that love and support those people. By attacking those that love and support those in need of an abortion, or LGBTQ+, the legislation seeks to dismember those relationships and isolate further those individuals that are under attack. In short, it’s criminalizing loving and supporting people in the LGBTQ+ community and woman seeking abortions. It’s heinous, a depraved kind of evil.
kindness
What’s scary is that the right’s ratcheting up the overt hatred of ‘others’ is just a side feature of the real intent which is to make all those ‘others’, non-persons…people who have no right to be there at all. Which sadly is the corollary to what happens next to non-peoples. Scary and sad. We’re seeing Germany in the 20’s/30’s recreated right here in the states.
Betty Cracker
I’m so glad the “Don’t Say Gay” framing stuck because Republicans lie about what’s in the bill and had hoped to do that unopposed. Watch DeSantis freak out when a reporter calls it the “Don’t Say Gay” bill:
Messaging matters. He knows that better than anyone.
KSinMA
I know it’s been a while since the Scopes trial of 1925, but in that trial the schoolteacher was represented by the ACLU. It sure would be nice to see them do the same kind of thing now.
The Moar You Know
@Baud: I no longer assume any teachers are. My wife discovered to her horror during her last stint as union rep that 40% of the teachers were registered Republicans. In California!
@lowtechcyclist: in our district the contract spells out why and when teachers can go out on strike, and curriculum is not one of those things.
Mowgli
@Rusty: well said. As the proud parent of an LGBTQ+ child that is the sweetest, most empathetic person I know, this stuff makes me quite stabby. Leveraging the ignorant hatred of yokels against innocents for pure political gain is about as evil as it gets.
@Rusty:
Peale
@Eljai: Yet they keep winning with this stuff. They were supposed to stop being able to win with this stuff when the cranky silent generation died off. And then when the cranky boomer generation started to die off. This is legislation that’s largely being written and implemented by GenX politicians. So…we wait another 20 years and hope for the best?
gvg
@Brantl: She was talking about the actual people, such as the teacher. Most people “normies” just don’t have time.
The Moar You Know
@KSinMA: people always forget the teacher lost that lawsuit.
Sister Golden Bear
Why it almost sounds like they’re “cancelling” certain people and certain types of speech.
@trollhattan:
Sadly it feels all too familiar. It’s been going on for a long time — remember California Prop Hate? Albeit as @kindness: notes, the amping up of the eliminationist rhetoric is getting scary.
@Baud:
Yes, the other part is feeling that on the whole, cisgender folks are — at best — like the Loki “Yes, very sad. Anyway.” meme. And even among “allies,” few of them remember that “ally” is a verb.
Feeling stabby on a daily basis sucks.
Suzanne
@Brantl:
I don’t think that.
But I do think there’s a tendency on the left to say things like, “You turned your picture to a black square on Facebook, but that’s not enough, that’s just performative. If you really cared, you’d ORGANIZE.” (I witnessed multiple of this interaction.) It’s dumb, and it’s alienating. I’m sick of criticizing my allies for when there are plenty of people who genuinely deserve it.
gvg
I want people to call it the LIAR bill. They are ordering teachers to LIE to students. Tell DeSantis and the others who voted for this atrocity, they want other people to teach the children LIES to their order. That will also end up discrediting the teachers in the eyes of students…
Bostondreams
@lowtechcyclist: It’s illegal for Florida teachers to strike. They will lose their license, and the union will be fined thousands a day. :-/
Also, Florida got rid of teacher tenure more than a decade ago. We are now an at-will state for teachers. You can be fired/non-renewed for just about anything.
Calouste
@gvg: Not a problem for Republicans, they have also passed laws that force doctors to lie to patients. It’s also not a problem for them because they lie all the time.
Eljai
@Peale: God I hope it doesn’t take another 20 years, but hope isn’t much of a strategy. I wish I had an easy answer. I honestly don’t understand why anyone would vote republican at this point. It’s downright painful to me when I see polls where people don’t give Biden or Democrats credit for improving the economy. We’ve got decades worth of data now that show the economy and job growth always goes up under Democratic administrations. All I can do is keep working to get more Democrats elected. Positive shifts in human behavior can happen and we don’t always see it coming. I do hope for the best, but I’ll keep doing what I can in the meantime. But yeah, fucking frustrating.
Sister Golden Bear
@Betty Cracker:
I’ve got mixed feelings. I absolutely agree about it being a Good Thing that the framing stuck.
OTOH, the whole trans erasure — which is a huge part of the bill, arguably trans people are more of a target than LGB folks — got, well… erased. As typically happens with reporting on this sort of thing. It also crowded out news about the far more vicious attempts by Texas to prosecute the parents of trans kids, and take their children away, for providing necessary trans healthcare for their children.
I dunno… admittedly this is insider baseball-y, but there’s a frustration among trans people that when things affect LGBTQ+ folks, the focus invariably ends up on cisgender LGB people* — especially cisgender gay men — sucking the oxygen out of the room at the expense of trans people. But I admit I’m feeling pretty salty lately.
*A reminder that trans people can also be LGB.
UncleEbeneezer
I hope there is a class action suit in the works on behalf of LGBTQ teachers. This seems very much like a protected class/discrimination issue for them.
Betty Cracker
I live in a town that’s not that far geographically from Live Oak and culturally about the same — it’s been home to my family for generations. One thing people who haven’t had the experience of being a blue speck in a sea of red might miss is that often, people like Ms. Eckhoff are beloved and highly valued members of their communities.
You hear about small town bigotry when something horrible happens. It’s real, and it’s appalling, and such incidents deserve the attention they receive. But there are also countless examples of people being who they are in towns like Live Oak and being quietly accepted and respected by their neighbors.
That’s where I find hope that someday this rebranded wedge issue and the other repackaged bigotries foisted on us will fail. I think horrible people like DeSantis, Cruz, Cotton, et al., also see that, and the implications scare the shit out of them.
Sister Golden Bear
@Peale:
Right. And even if things get better in 20 years, it’s like the people who said “We made it through the Reagan years, we’ll make it through this” blithely ignoring that many us LGBTQ+ people didn’t — in particular the generation of gay men that the Reaganite were happy to let die.
Betty Cracker
@Sister Golden Bear: Good points. I like the framing NYM gave the bill better:
But admittedly, that’s less catchy.
Also, I’m sorry to hear news about FL Republicans’ oppressive legislation is crowding out news about the TX GOP’s horrid law. I’ve definitely heard more about what’s happening in FL, but I figured that’s because I live here. Didn’t know it was a national thing…
Matt McIrvin
And the bad guys always come back later. As they say, the secret to a happy ending is knowing when to roll credits.
Sister Golden Bear
@Betty Cracker:
I can’t speak for Live Oak, nor personal experience living in rural communities.
But what I’ve heard from rural LGBTQ+ folks is that it’s very much a “don’t ask, don’t tell” situation. I.e. yes people know, they don’t want to know, and their acceptance is very much contingent that you don’t show any public signs of being LGBTQ+. No public PDAs, even handholding, no mention of having a same-sex husband or wife, and definitely no Pride flags. I had a friend from rural Ohio who once visited SF and was amazed by people smoking outside a gay bar — because doing that at home, at the single gay bar for miles — would risk getting shot at.
I hope life is better for those in Live Oaks, because even a bigger closet is still a closet.
lowtechcyclist
@Bostondreams:
It’s illegal in most states for teachers to strike. But a few years ago, they were striking all over the place anyway. You don’t call it a strike, and the not-a-union’s not involved so they can’t get fined. Have a sick-out or whatever.
Nearly a quarter-century ago, the college I was teaching at promoted a guy to president of the college. He and I had enormous differences in values. So I brushed up my resume and found another career.
Obviously most teachers can’t do that. But if a decent fraction of them respond to laws like this (and I’m not just talking about Florida – hey Tennessee, how ya doin’?) by deciding this is just one thing too many and retiring a few years early, or finding a new career, or moving to a more friendly state to teach there, the school systems have a problem, because people aren’t exactly pouring into the teaching profession right now.
Eunicecycle
@Matt McIrvin: I am 66 years old, and I seriously never thought we’d again be fighting the fight for abortion, gay marriage and birth control. I thought once the Supreme Court said something was a constitutional right, that was it. Boy was I naive.
UncleEbeneezer
@Sister Golden Bear: I’m routinely amazed by how bad my cis/gay/male (mostly white) friends are on Trans issues. Not blatantly bigoted per se, but ignorant, ambivalent and defensive about making sure THEIR issues are always prioritized in LGBTQ activism.
lowtechcyclist
@Betty Cracker:
This is very true, and whatever scary stuff the wingnut Wurlitzer is spreading about teachers in general, people know and mostly like the teachers they or their kids had in school. And many if not most teachers at small-town schools have been there for decades.
So I share your hope that if the wingnuts come after some of these small-town teachers, they get told where to stuff it.
Brachiator
@Sister Golden Bear:
RE: The hard part is getting enough of the Outside to care.
Ultimately we are all in this together. The idea of Who’s Outside and Who’s Inside is arbitrary and malleable.
The language and process of bigotry is following a playbook.
The false claim of religious freedom and parental rights has been invoked to attack gay and transgender people, then used in Texas and elsewhere to restrict abortions and now is being used again in Florida to oppress gay and transgender people.
This tactic will be used to come after others, for speech issues, for anything that DarthSantis doesn’t like.
We are all in this fight together.
Peale
@Sister Golden Bear: Yep. When I was a gay teen in small town Wisconsin, I figured I’d be dead by 30 from AIDS, but if I came out, it might be earlier. So I left. But the rhetoric this time around feels so much worse and it was plenty bad in the 1980s. I fully expect that barring untimely deaths of GOP Supremes, we’re looking at incarceration for married couples in certain states. I expect that they’ll try to overturn Lawrence and then being married will be taken as an admission of guilt. Being registered as a sex offender and forced move 200 yards from any playground will be proposed as the humane alternative.
Geminid
@Betty Cracker: I am also glad that Florida Democrats took the high messaging ground with “Don’t say Gay Bill.” One thing I noticed about the legislation is that while it has atrocious effects at all levels, the Republicans made a special point of singling out grades K though 3 for special attention. They wanted to make the argument about “grooming six year-olds” but the Democrats seem to have beaten DeSantis and his awful allies to the framing punch.
Carlo Graziani
I have a feeling that this one may actually be turn out to be a considerable self-inflicted wound.
I remember how quickly LGB went from being weird/threatening/ok to tell mean jokes about up to about the early 1990s (and, I am ashamed to admit, I told a few of those jokes myself) to practically overnight being accepted, normal, no big deal, out, by the GWB era (of all times!) Think about it. Two supreme court decisions bookend this thing, one allowing a state to criminalize “sodomy” in 1986, another permitting gay marriage in 2013. That’s practically an eye-blink. And compared to the rest of the world, the US — which we are accustomed to thinking of a rather culturally retrograde place — really led the charge.
What made the difference, in my opinion, is that enough gay men and women had the courage to come out, and suddenly enough straight people came to realize that they had brothers, children, friends, parents, loved ones, who were gay. Who were not monsters, were not “other”, could not be demonized without making false the cherished memories of a lifetime. It was a quiet revolution, subterranean, but it really moved the cultural needle all the way over.
This, I think, is one way to understand the right-wing freak-out over these issues. It happened so fast for LGB that it made the Christian Right’s head spin — they never saw it coming. And now here comes the rest of the alphabet, and the country and culture that they used to feel so comfortable in and in control of feels like an alien madhouse to them. Where did their authority go? Who can get it back for them? And, of course, any slick shill can exploit that kind of anxiety. Enter De Santis.
But the thing is, many people still have gay loved ones, and trans children who they don’t want to see hurt. And they have friends who know their stories. So we may see the same underground cultural backlash at work. De Santis is not kicking monsters. He’s kicking people’s loved ones. That’s not the smart move.
E.
@Betty Cracker: I don’t believe I have ever disagreed with you in the years I have been reading this blog, but as a person in a small (pop. 750) town that is strongly Trump-leaning, I know *local* people of color are tolerated and welcomed and gay people are not welcomed but are tolerated for the most part. But that’s in public. It’s an entirely different matter in private. This terrifies me.
MisterDancer
@KSinMA: You cannot sue on a bill that’s not yet passed. And the ACLU has been a vocal advocate on this specific issue for, per this Blog post, a decade+ now. Which also points out that these bills aren’t new, but (like so much in Alt-Right circles) recycled claptrap.
Indeed, the ACLU are active on many fronts, including filing suit on the Texas Trans “investigation” horror-show that, as others here have mentioned, hasn’t gotten as much press
louc
@Betty Cracker: My favorite story about such an example is the (sadly late) mayor of Silverton, Oregon, a totally red community in rural eastern Oregon. She was the first openly trans person to serve as a mayor. Radio Lab did a great story about her. (I use the female pronouns. Stu back in 2009 used male pronounces)
The best part of the story is the town’s counter protest at the end.
The Moar You Know
@lowtechcyclist: and then, when there are no teachers left (and the process you’re describing is happening right now nationally, save for the part about moving to a “friendlier state” – teachers are just leaving ASAP because the job is absolute shit) the conservatives get what they’ve always wanted: an end to public education, because nobody’s going to be left who wants the job of teacher.
So yes, the school systems will have a problem. Conservatives will have a victory.
debbie
O/T, but damn, Joe sounds great in this press conference!
sab
@Eunicecycle: Year older than you, but I agree. I thought these battles were fought and won, but here we go again.
Gin & Tonic
@debbie: I was impressed.
Calouste
@Carlo Graziani:
The US was the 17th country to have same-sex marriage nationwide, 14 years after the Netherlands became the first. In the front group, but not exactly leading the charge
Also, the Supreme Court decision was in 2015, not 2013.
Betty Cracker
@E.: Well I certainly didn’t mean to suggest that all rural, red-voting towns are universally and sincerely welcoming and accepting. They’ve earned their reputation for bigotry. Plenty of people who live here are irredeemable assholes.
What I’m saying is that’s not always the whole story. Things have changed over the past couple of decades. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. It’s not enough, and the gains are fragile and not always inclusive. But I know progress is possible. I’ve seen it.
Baud
@debbie: Is he in Europe?
Gin & Tonic
@Baud: He’s in Brussels.
Felanius Kootea
@Calouste: South Africa legalized same sex marriage in 2006!
Nigeria banned same sex marriage in 2014, as anti-gay evangelical pressure built. My great-aunt was married to a woman in the early 1900s in Nigeria, something many indigenous communities allowed independent of sexual orientation, since most marriages back then weren’t love matches.
Redshift
This frustrates the hell out of me, having experienced it last year in the Virginia elections, because they’ve successfully played these things as “parents should have the right to decide what happens with their child” but actually what they’re doing is (some) parents should have the right to decide what happens with everyone’s children.” We have to figure out how to get that across, but I’ve been stumped. If anyone knows of someone with an effective message about it, please point me to it.
Redshift
@Felanius Kootea:
Yeah, it’s awful how many places evangelicals have been able to leverage anti-colonialism to convince people that gay people are an evil brought by the colonizers, when in fact anti-gay bigotry is an evil brought by the colonizers. But it seems for evangelists, “thou shalt not bear false witness” only applies to other people.
Villago Delenda Est
The only faith that vile motherfuckers like DeathSentence have is bad faith.
Sister Golden Bear
@Redshift:
Especially much of that was driven by U.S. evangelicals. Not saying they didn’t find fertile ground to sow hate in, but after losing LGBTQ+ battles in the States, reactionary U.S. evangelicals specifically began pushing the issue in Africa, and pumped a fair amount of money into doing so.
Villago Delenda Est
@Redshift: The “good news” is hatred.
Redshift
@UncleEbeneezer:
I hope so too. It’s important to remember that despite the media’s fascination with swing voters, shifts in turnout are a much bigger factor. We lost the statewide elections in VA because their voters turned out at higher levels and ours turned out at lower levels, not because of voters who switched parties.
But that may be a good thing in this case — we don’t have to convince waffling voters to switch sides, we just have to convince people who thought getting rid of Trump was enough that if they don’t want to live in a country with all this crap, they have to do something about it.
Citizen Alan
@Bostondreams: I swear, if only someone had explained employment at will to me in 1987, I would never have wasted a full academic scholarship and 9 years of my life in education. I’d have just gotten an English degree and gone straight to law school.
Matt McIrvin
@KSinMA: The ACLU has been on it. I wouldn’t be surprised to see them jump in here.
Villago Delenda Est
@louc: Actually, Silverton is located in Marion County, in the Willamette Valley, but in a rural area, away from Salem, the state capital.
Villago Delenda Est
@Sister Golden Bear: To include my little brother. I can never forgive Reagan and his homophobic probably closeted minions for this.
Sister Golden Bear
@Villago Delenda Est: I’m so sorry.
gene108
@Eljai:
With the Electoral College, Republicans always have a shot at winning the presidency.
Demographic changes aren’t uniform. They will continue to have a stranglehold on enough states that they are never going to go away or be a permanent minority party.
They act like assholes because it helps them win elections. It engages their base, while most folks are too busy to pay attention.
Also, since most Americans do not vote, except during Presidential elections, turning out the base is what wins elections.
Republicans are a long, long way from going the way of the dinosaurs.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Something you all might consider, it’s Cold War 2; the inversion, and Putin has already defined his side as the god bothering anti-gay know nothings. There is a reason DeSantis was freaking when the press framed that bill as “Don’t Say Gay”, being the American Putin isn’t a good look. The ground is already preloaded that The Enemy are religious reactionaries with Al Qaeda, do note gay marriage and social attitudes changed after 911.
Our own Bible humpers got a pass because Al Qaeda was Muslim, but now it’s the Russians, who make a big deal about being Greek Orthodox. “If you don’t like western values, then go back to Moscow comradsky” is not that far off.
Sister Golden Bear
Speaking of cancel culture…. Texas AG Declares School District’s “Pride Week” Illegal.
Thankfully, the Austin school district being targeted told Pax to fuck off.
It’s worth mentioning that all the time and energy we have to take fighting this shit is time and energy taken away from actually taking care of our own community — like providing better support systems to reduce the shocking rate of suicide/suicide attempts among trans kids. (The only group with comparable rates are combat vets suffering from PTSD, because life is that hard for some of our kids.)
Geminid
@Redshift: I think a few Biden voters, probably Independents, came out again and voted for Youngkin. But the impact of those voters was still probably a smaller factor than the decrease in Democratic turnout. Both Democratic and candid Republican politicians attributed Democratic success In the elections of 2017, 2018, and 2019 to the power of Trump as a GOTV force for Democrats. So we may have seen a post-Trump slump in Democratic turnout.
The relative increase in Republican turnout last November interests me. Were there Republicans who found Trump so objectionable that they stayed home in 2020 but then came out last year? That could be so. I thought that the 12 point swing from 2020 to 2021 reflected poorly on Trump’s vaunted MAGA magic.
A small part of that swing might be attributable to a difference in campaign quality, but I did not follow the race closely enough to have more than an impression. I’d be interested in your opinion if you care to offer it.
SiubhanDuinne
@Sister Golden Bear:
By coincidence, my Fox-watching, anti-vaxx, flat-earth-believing, RWNJ (but I repeat myself) brother brought up Lia Thomas in an email last night, and we’ve been going at it hammer and tongs ever since.
I am grateful to you for your thoughtful comments in yesterday morning’s “Two Governors” thread (actually, I’m grateful for all of your comments over the years, and allowing us to share your journey) — I drew liberally from them, and the performance statistics in particular were helpful. Once my brother realised he was losing on athletics, he hauled out the hoary old canard that men put on dresses and go into women’s restrooms. I pointed out that transgenderism and cross dressing weren’t at all the same thing (and that in my nearly 80 years on the planet I had never once seen a man enter a women’s restroom).
Then he said he was just threatened by the demise of liberty. I asked, if he’s really so concerned about liberty, why not just leave Lia Thomas alone to live her life the way she chooses. His response was that he’s “tired of all this woke shit.” I asked him to define “woke” and am awaiting his response.
Anyhow, Sister GB, this is all a long and verbose way of letting you know how thankful I am that you are here and so good at pointing out the realities that transgender people have to deal with Every.Single.Day.Of.Their.Lives.
gwangung
@louc: They made a musical about them (was on an NEA panel reviewing it).
Betty Cracker
@SiubhanDuinne: Seconded!
Sister Golden Bear
@SiubhanDuinne: Glad it was helpful.
Plus… like a sign would actually deter a man with ill-intent from entering a women’s restroom.
Although as someone who identified as “just a cross-dresser” for years,* and who went out in public as such, I’d ask for a little gentleness for them. Bottom line, like cisgender people they just want to get in, do their business, get out — and hopefully have someone tell them when they’ve got toilet on their shoe.
*It’s purely a personal guesstimate on my part but “cross-dressers” are the vast dark matter of the trans universe — probably 10 for every late-life transitioner — but they’re generally deeply, deeply closeted.
The Moar You Know
@SiubhanDuinne: A lot of people freak out about change. All they know is that they got left behind and they’re not relevant any more.
You have two options: you accept that you are no longer relevant or you sit in your armchair watching Fox, sitting athwart history and yelling “stop” at the top of your lungs.
The people – and I’m running into a LOT of them recently – who are screaming about ‘woke shit” have just failed to realize it’s not their world anymore. They are no longer relevant. It belongs to the young people who are forming a very different world and culture than the one they were raised with.
That they’re going to be vicious and shitty and perhaps murderous about it is (to borrow a term from one of the greats) truly deplorable but is sadly inevitable. For those who think the clock is swinging back, well, it is. For now. But don’t forget, the Supreme Court ruled once that for all time a black person had no rights and was only 3/5ths of a person, unless they were female, in which case they were 0% of a person.
Things change.
Nobody here will see the end of all this but we can do our best to try and make it better.
Kelly
Silverton is in western Oregon’s Willamette Valley. Silverton’s two voting precincts when narrowly for Biden.
debbie
@Gin & Tonic:
I particularly liked how at the end, he explained why he had decided for run for president. That was his only wordy response, but one that was very much needed.
anon
move. out . of . florida.
Geminid
I would like to put in a good word for Live Oak. The Live Oak Tree, that is.. They are a member of the white oak family, and their wood is strong and rot resistant. In the first decade of the 19th century, shipbuilders in Philadelphia and Boston brought up Live Oak members from the southern coast to produce the oversized frigates that thrashed British warships in the War of 1812.
But since it’s not Arbor Day I will say no more.
Dan B
@Baud: As a gay activist in Chicago 1970 I had to learn how to avoid a mafia contract. The status quo fears change. When minorities get a bit of power there is much pushback.
Matt McIrvin
@SiubhanDuinne: I cannot believe we are going to talk ourselves into rounding up people into concentration camps over some imaginary sports issue. But it looks like we’re headed that way.
Brachiator
@SiubhanDuinne:
Enjoyed reading your note. Good luck with your brother.
I joked once about a guy who went to elaborate steps to disguise himself as a woman. Tight girdle, stockings, close fitting dress and wig, uncomfortable high heel shoes.
He could barely walk or move, let alone assault anyone.
Also, he discovered that he enjoyed cross-dressing.
Matt McIrvin
@Calouste: On the other hand, the first state in the US to legalize same-sex marriage (Massachusetts) did so in 2004, preceded only by the Netherlands, Belgium, and a few Canadian provinces…
…and, I suppose, the places (many in Africa) where it had traditionally existed for centuries.
Gravenstone
@Bostondreams: Good teachers likely become considered controversial or problematic and end up removed or run off. Replace with bottom dwellers who reinforce all the worst elements of human nature in their young charges. And thus “Florida man/woman” becomes a self renewing thing.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Sister Golden Bear:
I understand why this frustrates you. My basic feeling is that, after decades of progress, public support for gay rights is higher than public support for trans rights. The right wing is on a full scale hyperbolic panic about trans rights. The more the focus is on stopping trans rights, the more energized the right wing are about it. Even some on the left are uncomfortable with the idea of separating gender and sex. Stopping gay rights is less popular. More Republicans are uncomfortable with the idea of targeting gay people as some of them do have family members or coworkers who have been out to them for decades. The ‘Don’t Say Gay’ framing has a better chance of getting the bill killed.
CliosFanBoy
@SiubhanDuinne: Is he truly a flat-Earther? Seriously?
matryoshka
@lowtechcyclist: Exactly right. I left teaching after having the experience of kids being pulled out of my classroom–against school policy–simply because a homophobic guidance counselor was calling parents and telling them I was gay and that their kids were in danger. I wasn’t really out, but I lived with my partner in a town of under 100K. The school admin was happy to let parents and kids harass teachers who were even suspected of being gay. Not worth the trouble for the pitiful pay. I would never encourage anyone to be a teacher now.
I am happy to report that the principal subsequent to the one I worked for was an out lesbian, and my salary more than tripled after I left teaching.
Ruckus
@Baud:
Seconded.
Or where ever we are in the list.
Ruckus
@Calouste:
This.
Absolutely.
Children are a parents responsibility, they are not things to be owned.
Bostondreams
@lowtechcyclist:
The trouble is the losing the license part. The state is already working to pull the license of teachers that ‘indoctrinate’ their kids.
It’s all well and good to encourage a strike, but that license threat is a big obstacle.
Ruckus
@Eljai:
Their bullshit will not fade away peacefully, quietly, or rapidly.
Because it is their’s and it is bullshit. They didn’t just create it, they like it, they revel in it and do that proudly. If they only knew…..
Bostondreams
@Citizen Alan: I had a colleague, brilliant English teacher, who was non renewed because she agreed to sponsor a Gay Straight Alliance when her students asked her too. Such crap.
SiubhanDuinne
@CliosFanBoy:
I’m dead serious. He completely believes that the Earth is a disc with impassable icy mountains all around the edge (like fluting on a pie crust, I guess) to keep us from falling off. What we deluded sheeple call Antarctica.
The Moon landings (and, in fact, everything to do with NASA, the ISS, etc.) — all fake.
Dinosaurs roamed the (flat) Earth 2,000 years ago.
Needless to say, he’s totally on the truckers’ side. Needless to say, January 6 was a peaceful gathering of patriots.
Ruckus
@Eljai:
It would be far easier if humans were rational creatures but we aren’t by nature.
Rationality is a learned effect and to learn it one has to want to do so.
As long as conservative politics is about supporting money and not not giving a damn about people, this will be our lot in life. And it’s not that democrats don’t like money, we do, we just see that it isn’t the end all be all of life. Conservatives want to not just have it be the be all end all, they want to enshrine it and make it forever and ever.
matryoshka
@SiubhanDuinne: And he’s a product of a time when we had teachers! Imagine what’s coming when we don’t.
SiubhanDuinne
@matryoshka:
In fact, because of the way classes were assigned at our elementary school (K-8 in those days), Rick and I had all the same teachers for the same years and subjects , four years apart. It’s sad and baffling.
This has only come about in the past few years. He’s always been politically conservative (so was I, once) but was otherwise normal, for a country-rock musician. Heck, he used to be married to a NASA engineer at Langley, and was incredibly proud of her accomplishments and the work she was doing. But everything changed after they split. I think I know why, but it’s complicated, personal, and ultimately irrelevant.
Starfish
@Suzanne: Facebook couchtavism is lame. It is doing almost zero to actually support a cause.
Emailing a politician is slightly more effort and slightly more effective. I mean, they still don’t read the emails, but there is a chance that someone is counting numbers on each side of an issue, so it might do something.
Starfish
@E.: It depends on which groups you are hanging out with in private.
I grew up in a town in the deep south. The population was less than 30k when I grew up there. One of my mom’s closest friends was gay. Her politics were stupid conservative nonsense.
Several kids that I went to school with there were gay, but I did not realize at the time.
Several people I know are still in that state and gay.
My hometown is also the stupid place where some funeral home refused to do cremate the husband of a gay man.
It is full of contradiction.
Sister Golden Bear
@SiubhanDuinne:
I’m assuming the impassable icy mountains are intended to deal with the “well, if the Earth is flat, then how come cats haven’t pushed everything over the edge” counter-argument. //
cliosfanboy
@SiubhanDuinne: wow….. and I bet he thinks you’re the gullible one.. :(
SiubhanDuinne
@Sister Golden Bear:
Exactly that!!
You would be gouging your eyes out if you had to read the idiocy he’s still posting about Lia Thomas. I guaranfuckingtee you, he had never heard of her before she won the 500 last Saturday (ETA: neither had I). And in three-quarters of a century, I’ve never known him to evince the slightest interest in women’s sports.
SiubhanDuinne
@cliosfanboy:
Apparently so!
KSinMA
@MisterDancer:
Good to know, thanks.