If you measure the distance between Utah and Florida in miles, the two states seem far apart. However, if you measure the distance by degrees of homophobia in their respective state legislatures, they are made of the same cloth.
The Salt Lake Tribune noted last week that Utah became the 12th state in the U.S. to pass a law barring transgender girls from participating in school sports. Our Legislature even overrode Gov. Spencer Cox’s veto. The vitriol towards the LGBTQ+ community flows mightily through the veins of our legislators.
The message now targeting kids in the LGBTQ+ communities is that they don’t belong. Once kids are isolated from their support systems and stigmatized in their respective communities, mental health issues ensue, and the rate of youth suicide increases dramatically. Youth suicide in Utah has tripled since 2007.
How far is Utah from emulating Florida’s Gov. Ron DeSantis’ hateful law known as “Don’t Say Gay”? The law known officially as Parental Rights in Education offers the scent of decency to mask the stench of forbidding teachers to honor the dignity of all children.
In efforts to repeal the Florida law, The Walt Disney Company joined the nonsectarian voices of all Americans who understand that every child must be respectfully included in school curricula. America’s aggressive right wing, however, seized the opportunity to disgrace Disney, claiming it was pushing a sexual agenda on little children. Never lost for newly minted conspiracies, the extreme right asserts that the Godless left has succeeded in infiltrating Disney’s corporate boardroom, which now threatens to corrupt America’s children.
I never thought of The Walt Disney Company as particularly subversive, nor that supporting their productions would make me a member of the radical left. Yet Fox News has labeled Disney as “animated wokeness” intent on destroying America’s moral fiber.
Utah has joined far-right legislatures around the country that are blindly consumed with fear and hate. They aspire to dismiss all children and family systems that neither look nor act like them as though they don’t exist. Does the Evangelical Right, for example, believe that God loves only certain children? If a child grows up with two dads, will this supposed judgmental God act like an unglued Ron DeSantis?
Disney agrees that all children deserve to feel included in society. Just as same-sex marriage never destroyed the sanctity of marriage, as was once threatened, a young child hearing about different family structures will not fall into a moral abyss. We need to ask, as Disney apparently did, what is moral here: Limiting a child’s learning to the closed minds of an intolerant right-wing base, or giving all children the opportunity to feel welcomed in their own classrooms
The Extreme Right has made the slang term “woke” sound like they are all a bunch of anesthesiologists dreading the patient who might wake up. They want America to sleep through the movements creating justice for everyone. Isn’t that what America stands for?
Legislatures hellbent on isolating gay students in the classroom mimic the three monkeys who strategically place a hand over their eyes, ears and mouth. They signal an old Shinto proverb that to avoid running contrary to propriety, it’s best to see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil. In Western cultures, the monkeys add levity as emojis. They raise the specter of doubt among those who pretend to remain oblivious to reality by simply covering their eyes, ears and mouth.
As Utah and Florida legislators deliberately ignore a growing acceptance of LGBTQ+ communities, they franticly impose laws to restrict inclusivity even in the classroom. The Parental Rights in Education bill might as well have the three monkeys teach our children how to be insular.
Children, before being corrupted by their biased and frightened elders, are naturally inclined to accept their peers unconditionally. Schools offer the perfect setting for cultivating human understanding. We all know, regardless of political proclivities, that only by including everyone will everyone receive a fair shake in life. The corporate board at Disney knows that. Gov. Cox knows that. We must send this urgent message to our legislators: It’s OK to say “gay.”
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Rev. Tom Goldsmith
Rev. Tom Goldsmith is minister emeritus of the First Unitarian Church, Salt Lake City
