>>> Warning. This essay contains liberal political content. No chemistry here. This isn’t a “balanced discussion” of political values. I am flatly calling foul on WASPish conservatives who I maintain are destabilizing what has been an imperfect but productive US culture. <<<

No, the great knob of Florida isn’t DeSantis, although it is an amusing thought. Anybody remember when electronic devices had selector knobs that you would twist a certain number of clicks to the desired setting? The knob was constructed with detents that would hold the knob to a specific place in the rotation of a selector switch. It is a nice little simile for many things in life. For this writing, I refer to how the WASP (White Anglo Saxon Protestant) Republican party (GOP) of the US state of Florida is methodically clicking the legislative knob toward their ultraconservative model of the social order. This is to be expected, I suppose, except that lately Florida is taking very large steps in the direction of banning many resources and services that were previously not the subject of legislation. DeSantis is backed by a substantially older, low information base of Republicans.

DeSantis’ thin-skinned punishment of Disney, Inc., makes him a very waspish WASP. But Mickey was clever. He had the board write up an agreement containing the Royalty Lives Clause before the governing board was dissolved. What a hoot!

Knobs are clicking all over the country. States with similar Don’t Say Gay bills in progress are: Arkansas, Georgia, Hawaii, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan and of course, Missouri. This issue seemingly fell out of the sky in the last few years and has spread like wildfire. Sexuality has always summoned the Puritan in Americans, but homosexuality conjures images of the worst kind in them. Conservative leaders are leaping over one another to click the big knob while the MAGA people have their time in the sun.

[Side note] A old friend has been breathing fire on Facebook about the “liberal agenda” including imminent loss of the 2nd amendment and confiscation of guns. As usual, George Soros is blamed. Imagine the folly of attempting to confiscate guns in the US. It would be a complete disaster with widespread chaos and casualties. It ain’t gonna happen. Wackos with firearms and mass shootings will remain a baked-in feature of the US cultural landscape as far as anyone can see going forward.

Used to be, the radical right wing could be counted on to be squarely against “big government”. But now we find them burying their heads into public education like a tick. Recent legislation in Florida and other like-minded states is aimed at censoring library books and curriculum having “controversial” content, namely any mention of LGBTQ+ lifestyles, alternative gender designations and any history or social studies that might suggest white complicity in past inequities (critical racial theory, CRT). This controversy is a longstanding conflict with conservatives that, like IBS, has flared up again. This time, however, they have new vocabulary such as “woke” and “CRT”, and rancid mouthpieces like Tucker Carlson to continuously beat the propaganda drum. Joseph Goebbels would have loved Tucker.

One overreach by the GOP is the matter of their public attack on gender affirming care for minors suffering from gender identity issues. Republicans have put their cloven hooves down on this (ok, this was sarcastic). In the Republican view, minors should only receive treatment by way of “curing” gender identity issues by conversion to the heterosexual, birth gender side. The alternative is to just tough it out until they reach adulthood. The associated personal strife and suicidal risk connected to gender identity issues are unpersuasive to conservative WASPs.

Public schools have a mandate to provide a quality education for all students, including those with special needs. Public school teachers and their districts want teach students how to overcome life’s challenges and take advantage of opportunities. Gender identity issues can spiral into learning difficulties or even suicide. Parents are frequently at their wits end dealing with it and look upon the public schools to provide the right environment, specialists and curriculum. Very often, the parent(s) of troubled kids do not have the financial resources to provide treatment for their students nor can they take time from work. The schools have limited resources as well but they try because they are expected to.

The GOP image of gender affirming care is a manufactured bugaboo, much like so-called CRT or wokeness have been. It is another rallying cry for the angry and disenfranchised. Republicans know that they can readily frighten some fraction of low information conservatives into voting Republican by claiming widespread pedophilia, gay-anything, evolution or just general liberal leanings. Legislative knobs are clicking all across the country over this matter. Grand Poohbahs of the soon-to-be Christocratic States of America (Ok, that’s satire) are loudly proclaiming that there is a liberal agenda to turn kids gay. Just as absurd, some believe that seeing or hearing a drag queen could harm their immortal souls.

The LGBTQ+ issue, if you can call it that, is a straw man devised to sideline people into a state of outrage. That said, however, I can’t think of a pedagogical reason for extensive exposure to sexuality in general as a subject matter in classrooms with any more than a passing mention in grades K-9. In my view, however, for grades 10-12, discussion or readings on sexuality as a sociological phenomenon should not be out of bounds. Parents who object to even this could send a note to the teacher excusing their child from this topic. Deeper study can be left to college level. The acknowledgement that alternative pairings between people or gender identity even exists is not an invitation to join in. Kids have always sought out ‘forbidden” information. If they don’t learn from knowledgeable sources, they’ll pick up odd versions of it elsewhere.

We had a similar problem years ago with sex ed in the schools. More than a few imagined that the Kama Sutra was the textbook and spoke out aghast that kids will have exposure to this. In reality, the topic was based on biology and how reproductive systems work. Sexually transmitted disease was gently introduced as something to watch out for. The histrionics at local school board meetings could be intense. No, we’re not teaching little Johnny and little Susie how to do it. They’ll figure that out on their own.

Behind this is longstanding momentum from the large, assertive and well-funded conservative evangelical wing of the GOP. Their strategists and grandees know that if they repeatedly state that public schools are teaching LGBTQ+ lifestyles or CRT, low information voters will reliably panic and vote GOP. They’re right. There are large numbers of low information voters who are easily swayed by GOP hyperbole and outright lies. Schools are just a step stool for GOP power grabbing. Religious indoctrination and basic morality are firmly the responsibility of the family.

The public schools are for learning the massive amount of information that is of a secular nature. You know, like accounting, drivers ed, wood shop, spelling, math, PE, foreign languages, chemistry, physics and biology to name a few. You know, the things that the Bible is silent on. For crying out loud, God gave us brains and expects us to fill in the blank spaces.

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