Troubling Frames of Legislative Strawmen

• In Event: Illusions of Queer Inclusion: On the Promise, Paradox, and Precarity of Pre-K–12 LGBTQ+ Inclusive Educational Policy

Abstract

This presentation examines three recent waves of copycat legislation and policy, particularly at the state level, and focuses on the framing of LGBTQ people and the ulterior motives of such legislation. The three waves: bills that attacked trans people, especially trans youth; bills that restricted curriculum about LGBTQ people; and the parallel wave of bills to restrict teaching about systemic racism and sexism. Looking intersectionally across all three waves reveals some of the ulterior motives of the caricatured targets of attack, namely, a broader appropriation of democratic processes and assault on democracy itself. For example, Right-wing lawmakers and advocates saw early on that their caricatures of curriculum for racial and gender justice could indeed serve as a hot-button “culture war” that would rally both conservatives and moderates, not unlike the characterization of transgender students as a threat to girls that fueled the wave of copycat anti-trans legislation in practically the same set of states earlier this year. Moreover, the attack is not merely legislative and electoral, but litigative as well, given that resulting court challenges to these laws could lead to an ultra-conservative U.S. Supreme Court gutting or appropriating civil rights and religious-freedom laws. Implications for education and advocacy will conclude this presentation, including an analysis of how dissent is silenced.

Author

• Kevin Kumashiro, Kevin Kumashiro Consulting