One of the hallmarks of a fascist state is controlled mass media. In totalitarian states this becomes comical. Supposedly, Kim Jung Un played an entire round of golf and had a hole in one on every hole. Supposedly, he doesn’t ever go to the bathroom. These were ridiculous claims and most people with a pulse can simply set it aside as ludicrous. Yet, if you don’t have access to the internet or to independent news sources you will probably believe a lot of it. Whether the dictator of North Korea is a great golfer or not really doesn’t matter. However, if we look at what is going on in Russia and Ukraine then it becomes deadly serious. Vladimir Putin is apparently taking on Nazism. For 90 percent of the world this notion is ridiculous. It is the ten percent that aren’t getting access to straight news that don’t understand the truth.

People often focus on mass media and the problems with mass media, but we have a bigger problem with smaller media. Print news is a dying business. There are tons of reasons for that. For one, they just have not managed to find a way to maximize new media sources like the internet to their advantage. Moreover, there were some bad business practices that they couldn’t correct. The Houston Chronicle for years could not consistently get us a paper. I’m not sure why. We moved a few different times and had different distributors, but the problem was the same. We subscribed to the Sunday New York Times and the Washington Post, but they couldn’t get that to us either.

We dealt with customer service and they didn’t seem to care until we threatened to unsubscribe. Finally, we did. In addition to the Chronicle there were tons of smaller newspapers that would cover local events. Sometimes it was local sports. Sometimes they were school board meetings and other smaller organizations. This has been noted before. The world really doesn’t change much on top. People can watch C-SPAN and the mass media outlets will always send people to Washington to cover what’s going on. The same is likely true of Austin and other statehouses. When the Chronicle and other papers shut down it means that no one is going to those school board meetings. When no one is there to watch then suddenly almost anything is possible. After all, who is there to stop them?

This is how things happen. It rarely ever starts off big. It usually starts with the grass roots. Small communities rail against critical race theory. Small communities call for the banning of certain books. Small communities call for curriculum to be changed to meet their worldview. When there is no one there to cover it then there aren’t enough people that will know what they are doing. You get the small minority and the small minority is almost always skewed one way or another. So, maybe it isn’t primarily a mass media problem. Maybe it is a local media problem. Democracy dies in darkness.

Thinking on certain issues evolves over time. “Don’t ask, don’t tell” was ushered in at the very beginning of the Bill Clinton presidency. It was seen as a huge step forward in military circles. It was acknowledgment that gay and lesbian people exist and were likely in the military. Instead of a witch hunt to ferret them out, we would just allow them to exist as long as they weren’t in everyone’s face about it.

It served its usefulness and ceased to be policy in 2011. After awhile, it just becomes painful for people to shut off a portion of themselves for their own self-preservation. In order to prove that the world is regressing, some prominent right wing politicians are aiming to bring that back again.

Of course, no one calls it that. We use fancy names for it like “Parental Rights in Education”. Unfortunately, the scourge is spreading. Now, nearly half of the states in the country are considering the same bill. I’m sure no one is surprised that Texas is one of those states. I’m sure no one is surprised about who is behind that effort.

In order to get the full picture of this we should return to the original name that the bill was given. What exactly do parents want? Well, it’s hard to tell based on the results of the most recent elections. Generally speaking, the numbers aren’t much better in most school board elections. So, it is fair to ask what parents actually want in education.

While LGTBQ+ issues run the gamut, the issue of same sex marriage probably sits near the core of everything. If we were to use that as a barometer of attitudes towards gay and lesbian people in general, it would seem that most parents would actually be okay with it. According to the poll linked above, 61 percent of those polled in 2019 were in favor of same sex marriage while 30 percent were against it.

It certainly is true that being in favor of same sex marriage is not necessarily the same as supporting acknowledging LGTBQ+ issues in the classroom. However, there usually is a huge difference between what has been taught in the classroom and what people seem to think was being taught in the classroom. Most of the time it is a simple acknowledgment of who teachers are. I certainly don’t know anyone that has pushed a gay or lesbian lifestyle on students. They may or may not have acknowledged who they were by simply acknowledging the presence of a same sex partner.

Kids aren’t idiots. In fact, they are probably more in tuned to this than most adults are. By allowing teachers to acknowledge who they are, it encourages kids to be proud of who they are. As you might suspect, teenagers that are members of the LGTBQ+ community are more susceptible to suicide or thinking about suicide than their heterosexual peers.

As we watched a clip on the new laws (particularly the one likely coming in Texas) my wife piped up and asked a perfectly reasonable question. “I’m a parent. What about what I want?” That has been the problem with school boards for time and memorial. A majority of parents aren’t crazy. A majority of parents aren’t bigoted. A majority of parents just want their kids to be happy and healthy. A majority of parents don’t vote in school board elections. That’s usually reserved for zealots and busy bodies. So, now we force Mr. Smith and Ms. Jones back in the closet and with them all of the teens that were hoping to come out.