Speaker 1: All right. Very interesting post to the David Pakman show subreddit yesterday by a
user named S Dega. And as Dega asks the question, will conservatives go after LGBTQ plus teachers
next? All the rhetoric about keeping kids, quote, safe from LGBT people is ridiculous. I worry they
might actually start targeting folks whose job it is to work with children. Parents want to screen
curriculum. Their child is presented is screening of their child's teacher next. The school I
recently retired from had about 75 professional staff. Several identify as gay or by one is a
trans man. One teacher is married to a trans man. LGBT people are in all our communities. I think
that it is almost a certainty that we are going to start seeing this, at least anecdotally around
the country. It's probably already happening anecdotally to some degree. Think about it. Okay?
The transition, think about the things they're already saying, discussions of LGBT people, sexual
orientation, transgender, etc., That's already bad. It's off the table. It's dangerous. Okay.
Drag shows, drag time, story hour, all of these different things. Very, very bad. Can't do it.
Can't do it. Using the pronouns that a student wants to go by shouldn't do it. It's very bad.
Should always use pronouns that match biological sex at birth. I guess they mean at birth.
The natural next thing would be to say not only is it dangerous to kids to hear discussion of
LGBT topics and the fact that LGBT people exist, it must be so irresistible for LGBT teachers to
talk about it that we have to be worried about the mere presence of LGBT teachers in the classroom.
Seems perfectly logical. If you follow the deranged Republican logic, they will use the
same tired arguments that we've heard for many years. They'll say, Well, listen, children at
age eight shouldn't be around any sexualization or indoctrination. And when I see my kids, gay
teacher or trans teacher, it is highly sexual and it is an indoctrination. So we've got to get rid
of them. Now, of course, they just want to silence and punish teachers who are openly LGBT. Many
of them probably believe if my kids teacher is LGBT, it might convince or brainwash my kid into
being LGBT or whatever the case may be. And it's really important to understand that they already
are using the framing of danger to children and parents rights. And so they are simply
going to adapt that existing terminology to LGBT teachers. Listen, I don't want my kid recruited.
I don't want my kid's development stifled in any way. I don't want this ideology pushed on them. I
don't want any of it. Now, these arguments are, of course, baseless, but they are so deeply harmful
to people who are either openly part of the LGBT community or not yet openly part of it. They are
discriminatory in I believe at this point every state it would be. And it's really important
to understand that these attacks on teachers who identify as LGBT will just be the latest attempt
to do the things that they wanted to do all along. We should stigmatize LGBT status. We should
marginalize those individuals. And they've already passed bills and laws of all sorts to do that,
including don't say, gay. So to the question, are they going to go after the LGBT teachers next?
I'm not a betting man, but I would bet that at least at the local level, on some small scale,
we're going to see it, if not through legislation more broadly. Let me know what you think