The rainbow connection

Daniel Desrochers

There’s a sweeping effort to pass anti-LGBTQ legislation in Republican-controlled legislatures across the country. Missouri is leading the way, but Kansas lawmakers have introduced their fair share as well.

Most of the bills are focused on transgender kids, either determining which bathrooms they can use, whether they can get access to gender-affirming treatment and whether they can play on youth sports teams that match their gender identity.

There are also some bills aimed at drag shows and at whether public school teachers should be able to talk about sexual orientation and gender identity in classrooms with students.

Often the messaging around the bill — when it doesn’t slip into outright bigotry and prejudice — centers around parental rights and protecting children.

Don’t parents have a right to know if their kid is going by a different gender in school? Don’t they have a right to ensure their child has the best chance of success in a sporting event? Don’t they have the right to have these conversations about sexual orientation with their children, rather than their child learning about it in school?

The argument isn’t exactly new. Take, for example, New York City in the 1990s.

In 1992, the New York City Public School system came out with a curriculum called “Rainbow Curriculum,” intended to teach children in the public school system about different cultures. Included in the curriculum were instructions to talk about gay and lesbian couples, in the hopes that it would help a child feel included if they had same-sex parents and would help humanize gay and lesbian people during what were the worst years of the AIDS epidemic.

One school district in Queens refused to adopt the curriculum, sparking a fight with the chancellor of New York Public Schools. It looked similar to what we’re seeing today, with parents arguing that the school shouldn’t be exposing their children to a lifestyle they didn’t approve of and the LGBTQ community arguing that the curriculum was simply intended to foster tolerance.

The focus on children remains a salient argument for conservatives. A poll by Pew last year found that 69% of Republicans thought it should be illegal to teach about gender identity in public schools, 72% of Republicans thought it should be illegal for doctors to help someone younger than 18 transition genders and 85% of Republicans were against allowing transgender students from playing on the teams that match their gender identity.

As is often the case in politics, winning elections can be placed above basic human decency.

Only about .6% of American adults identify as transgender, though the percentage increases with each generation. About .75% of Missourians between 13 and 17 identify as transgender, as do 1.05% of Kansans the same age, according to estimates by the Williams Institute at UCLA.

While there has been an uptick in young people questioning their gender identity, generally, any medical decisions require that the child see a psychologist. Then the family and their doctors find the best path forward.

While some of these laws take power from the hands of school boards and teachers and hand it to parents, others aim to take control out of the hands of parents and doctors and give it to the state legislature.

And typically absent from these discussions are the kids themselves.

LGBTQ students were less likely to feel unsafe in school if they have supportive school staff, according to a 2021 national survey of LGBTQ youth in schools by the advocacy group GLSEN. They were also less likely to miss school because they felt unsafe. At the same time, 60.7% said they were verbally harassed because of their sexual orientation and 57.4% based on their gender expression.

I’m gay and came of age during the gay marriage battles in the early aughts, as legislatures were pushing to ban same-sex marriage. I listened. A good Catholic boy, I knew where the Church, my parents and many of the adults I admired stood on gay marriage. It was among the reasons I pushed my feelings down and suppressed them. It has taken me many years to unearth all the ways I tried to bury my sexuality. I’m still working on it.

If we had talked about it more in school, would that have changed things? I don’t know. But I do know that when issues like this are politicized, there are unintended consequences. Even if well-intentioned parents think they’re looking out for the best interests of their children.

More from Missouri

After Missouri voters passed a ballot measure this November that legalized recreational marijuana in the state, lawmakers responded by trying to make it more difficult for ballot measures to become law. Instead of the current simple majority of more than 50% of voters needed to change the constitution, the bill would require ballot measures to be approved by 60%. If it passes both chambers, the measure would still need to be approved by a statewide vote in 2024.

Here are headlines from across the state:

And across Kansas

The Kansas Legislature has joined the push in Republican states to pass anti-LGBTQ legislation. Sen. Mike Thompson, who has introduced several pieces of anti-LGBTQ pieces of legislation in the past, filed a new bill this session that would prohibit any shows where people dress up as the opposite gender when minors are present. The sweeping language of the bill could apply to a broad range of performances, not just drag shows.

The latest from Kansas City

In Kansas City …

Have a news tip? Send it along to ddesrochers@kcstar.com

Odds and ends

Campaign finance

Missouri Democratic candidate Trudy Busch Valentine, who lent a lot of money to her U.S. Senate campaign last fall when she unsuccessfully ran against Republican Eric Schmitt, is getting at least $1 million back, according to her latest campaign finance report.

But that’s just a fraction of the $16 million she loaned her campaign. While it’s possible that she gets some more of the money back, it would mean continuing to raise money to pay herself. That means she probably won’t see that money again.

There’s another U.S. Senate candidate from Missouri with some outstanding campaign debts — former Gov. Eric Greitens.

According to his report with the FEC, Greitens owes at least $34,380 to the law firm Dickinson Wright.

Greitens racked up debt with the firm over the course of the campaign — in April he had $43,162 in legal fees with the firm. The purpose of Greitens’ legal spending is unclear, but he did face a complaint that he improperly transferred money from his governors campaign to his senate campaign. The complaint was dismissed by the Missouri Ethics Commission.

Committees

After losing a Senate seat in November’s election, Senate Republicans finally settled their committee assignments for the next Congress.

Sen. Eric Schmitt, who caused a bit of a ripple by asking other Republicans to step down from the Judiciary Committee so he could join, ultimately was placed on the Armed Services Committee, the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee and the Joint Economic Committee.

Schmitt will replace fellow Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley on the Armed Services Committee.

Because they lost a seat, every Republican had to give up a top committee and Armed Services is considered one. Hawley will instead join the Energy and Natural Resources Committee and he’s keeping his seat on the high-profile Judiciary Committee.

Sen. Jerry Moran picked up a spot on the Select Committee on Intelligence, which oversees the government’s intelligence communities. That means he’ll get access to classified briefings about threats to the country.

Basking in victory

Chiefs fans are basking in the glory of the team’s win last Sunday, even in Washington. Sens. Roger Marshall and Josh Hawley got some pleasure in seeing Sen. J.D. Vance, a Republican from Ohio, walk around the Capitol wearing Marshall’s Chiefs tie.

But, as we turn toward the next game, I have a confession. I grew up in what is basically the Johnson County of Philadelphia, on the New Jersey side of the river. I know all the words to the Eagles fight song, because we used to have to sing it during lunch in elementary school.

I wouldn’t call myself a fan, mostly because I don’t really care about football. But it’s also because Eagles fans are a different breed. I learned this as a child, when I’d listen to people call into Angelo Cataldi on WIP in the car with my dad and hear the way they talked about the team, as if they were in a toxic relationship they couldn’t quit (this was before they won a Super Bowl).

Arguably, every city has its top sports team, the one that people care about more than all the others. In Philly that’s the Eagles. At Phillies games, when they were literally in the World Series, fans would break out into Eagles chants.

This is a city that has to grease its street lamps in the playoffs to prevent people from climbing them. When they won the Super Bowl in 2017, Jason Kelce sang “no one likes us, we don’t care” at the championship parade. One fan literally runs into a pillar before every game because he thinks it’s good luck.

I won’t bring the snowballs at Santa thing into this. It’s an overused trope that happened more than 50 years ago, before man had even walked on the moon. But still, thoughts and prayers for the people who find sanctuary at the lone Chiefs bar in Philly next weekend.

(Sidenote: It isn’t a Chiefs bar because the owners are from Kansas City. It’s because they bet on the team in Super Bowl IV and won, which is the most Philly reason to like a team ever).

Happy Friday

Here’s an article about how a well-regarded conservative judge pushed back against the fringe effort to allow state legislatures to override election results. Know your enemy, have a Philly cheesesteak. Here’s Kermit the Frog.

Enjoy your weekend.

Daniel Desrochers is the Star’s Washington, D.C. Correspondent
Daniel Desrochers is the Star’s Washington, D.C. Correspondent

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