An Avalanche of Hate
Earlier this month I wrote about how legislatures across the country are pursuing an anti-women’s rights agenda in 2023, despite heavy electoral losses in 2022 for candidates espousing these extremist views. This hateful culture war doesn't stop with attacks on women's rights, it’s also being directed, perhaps most ferociously, against our LGBTQ+ allies. This isn’t a small side effort of the Republican party either, last year there were over 300 bills anti-trans bills introduced across the country, with 29 of them ending up passing into law. This, again, in spite the fact that to this day over 60% of voters are supportive of LGBTQ+ rights. In a functioning democracy, one might expect that losses at the polls would dissuade political parties from pursuing these types of unpopular, hateful, extremist views. Instead, however, the pace and extremity of anti-LGBTQ+ and especially anti-trans vitriol has only grown. As of March 14th, 2023 there have been over 425 pieces of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation introduced across the country. These bills have been put forward in over 40 states and attempt to make being trans untenable through a wide range of strategies including: attacking access to healthcare, bills targeting lgbtq rights in schools and education, to bills targeting freedom of speech and expression bills, to targeting ID laws, public accommodations and use of public facilities, and on and on. Most of these proposed bills will not become the law of the land, due in large part to the diligent work of people at the ACLU and the Human Rights Campaign and other activists and allies who view the world through a lens of empathy and know that an attack on one of us is an attack on us all. But even with this solidarity the damage culturally, psychologically, and materially is immense to the LGBTQ+ community. Singling out individuals or groups who are different, and marginalized to stoke fear through misunderstanding is an age-old culture war agenda, played constantly by leaders and those in power who have no positive proactive prescriptions to meet the material needs of their citizens. Consequently, the ruling class can only distract from that failure to meet material needs with the false status and cold comfort of common hatred for the outsider, even if one's material conditions never improve. This tactic to divide the working class against itself with culture war issues is ultimately a distraction. To be clear, that Does Not mean any of the proposed legislation we’ve discussed is unimportant, nor that the damage wrought is insignificant. But we must also recognize that this type of rhetoric, and these culture war bills are pushed most vociferously in times of deep stress and crises in the political system as an effort by the elite to divide and distract us from organizing for a better system. The assault on LGBTQ+ individuals is the tip of the authoritarian spear coming for the rights of anyone not in line with a corporatist Christian nationalist ideology. We must stop these hate mongers before we further divide into identitarian conflict and culture war vitriol instead of combining to fight the common values and goals we highlight every week at DSOT. The corporate-captured government, be it Democrat or Republican, needs to be shown that it cannot distract and divide us from delivering material improvements with hateful rhetoric of any marginalized group be they LGBTQ, women, children, or any minority. We are stronger together, we will act together, and we will create a political and economic block together to win this culture war with understanding, empathy, and united economic power. So join us each Tuesday in growing solidarity and #DSOT! #UPM
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