solarbird | Today’s Cultural Warfare Update, for February 17, 2023

I guess it’s time to roll this back out; welcome to today’s Cultural Warfare Update, since the Republican Party is determined to make everything an existential cultural war with the direct intent of exterminating me and mine, and I don’t mean that metaphorically.

The GOP are still a Party of Plague as Idaho Republican lawmakers introduce a bill to criminalise COVID-19 vaccination. Yep: if they have their way, vaccination will be a crime.

DeSantis and the Florida GOP are trying to move the state away from the SAT and ACT scores to a new system “focused on ‘Western tradition’” which means “classical and Christian tradition” which means Christian Fundamentalist horseshit. The unfortunately-acronymed “CLT” is fashioned specifically to their needs and desires, and focuses very heavily on Christian sources for literature and philosophy, and DeSantis’s GOP are working to make it the critical test for all Florida schools, including universities.

Meanwhile, actually in Florida, here’s the state of yet another school library as their book-banning programme continues apace.

Law Dork provides a legislative roundup as GOP-controlled states continue to try to legislate LGBT people, particularly trans kids, out of existence. Utah and South Dakota had already passed bills banning health care for trans kids; Utah added a second bill making life even more difficult for trans children. Several states have had single houses pass bans so far, several making gender-affirming care for trans kids a felony.

Other bills are aimed at supporting refusal-of-service to LGBT people in general. As I said, Law Dork has the details.

In other political news, Dominion Voting Systems have the texts, and solid proof that nobody at Fox News believed the lies they were shoving out on television. Here’s CBS’s report; here’s NPR’s. Nothing about it should be surprising but the depth, breadth, and contemptuousness of their lies are worth recording. Hopefully this trial will make that matter.

Back in the day, I was doing these at least weekly. I’m not sure how often I’ll be doing these now, but it is a record year for anti-LGBT bills in state legislatures, so that’s amazing. I suspect they’ll be out fairly often. If you’re seeing this on Dreamwidth, which most of you are (have, a link if you’re not), hit the “culture war” tag to see some history. It goes back pretty far. Not to the beginning, mind you; but pretty far.

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