Q Toon: Throwing Shade

VisitFlorida.com quietly deleted the LGBTQ+ page from its tourism website last month. Visit Florida®, a public-private organization that receives some state funding, has made no comment about axing the LGBTQ+ Travel section, but it's apparently all in keeping with the state's Don't Say Gay mandate.

The state's vociferously antigay governor claims no credit for Visit Florida's cowardly move, but is pleased nevertheless:

When asked about the change on the Visit Florida website, Florida’s Republican Governor Ron DeSantis said he was made aware of it after the fact, but celebrated its push away from identity politics. He noted, “We’re not going to be segregating people by these different characteristics… that’s just now how we’re operating.” 

DeSantis' explanation doesn't bode well for Black and Hispanic travelers, Travel pages for whom have yet to be scrubbed from VisitFlorida.com. But don't expect an announcement ahead of time when that happens.

Outside of Florida, more LGBTQ-friendly politicians have taken the opportunity to welcome tourists to their states. Colorado Governor Jared Polis, the U.S.A.'s first openly gay elected governor, posted to Facebook:

Hello gay tourists! Since Florida doesn’t want you, come on over to explore what Colorado has to offer!

In Colorado, we really don’t care about who you date we just appreciate you supporting our economy and spending money in our great stores and restaurants. And you’ll have a gay old time!”

EnjoyIllinois wooed the LGBTQ+ buck with:

Lack of love in the Sunshine State?

Come to Illinois

Plan your LGBTQIA adventure. Take notes, Florida.”

Anthony Anthony, a Chief Marketing Officer for Connecticut's Office of Tourism so nice they named him twice, echoed Colorado and Illinois in a press release:

"We want to send a strong message to everyone, particularly to those in Florida — and across the country — who may feel their needs and identities are being sidelined, to know that in Connecticut you will always find acceptance.

"Here, diversity is celebrated, and we remain committed to ensuring everyone who visits or lives here feels valued, respected, and free to be yourself."

It is, however, unlikely that Florida withdrawing the welcome mat from LGBTQ+ visitors will dissuade many queer folk from heading to the Sunshine State. I've never been to Key West, but I understand that there is nothing quite like it in Minnesota. Besides, a boycott would only harm the very LGBTQ+ business owners who have staked their fortunes to attracting fellow travelers with disposable income.

The very business owners who might just want to reconsider their support for the public-private management of Visit Florida®.

Q Toon: Beware of the Leopard

The state of Florida reached a settlement with a coalition of concerned families, civil rights agencies, and educators who had taken the state to court over Republicans' "Don't Say Gay" law. 

The law remains in place, but the settlement clarifies that students and educators can discuss LGBTQ+ topics, given those conversations are not part of formal curriculum. The clarifications also state that students can write about such topics in their academic work.

Notably, the settlement includes clarification on library books, stating that library books with LGBTQ+ themes may not be banned under the legislation so long as they are not being used for instruction.

Nor does the law apply to extracurricular activities and groups, such as Gay-Straight Alliances, some of which disbanded after the bill became law.

Governor Ron DeSantis nevertheless claims that the settlement is a victory for his side, because at least LGBTQ+-positive curricula still cannot be required in Florida classrooms. And homophobic parents can still opt their kids out of whatever offends their sensitive sensibilities.

To be sure, not everyone on the educators' side of things is happy with the settlement.

Teaching math at her alma mater in Florida, Katie Wood wants to leave Lennard High School better than how she found it. But under Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration, Wood’s future as an out trans woman at the school hangs in the balance.

“I can’t even call myself Ms. Wood,” the 3rd-year educator said, noting that her gendered title is one of several things she is barred from using solely due to her being a transgender person. “In many ways, I’m being forced to be back in the closet.”

Ms. Wood is not exaggerating. Elsewhere in Florida, a non-binary teacher was fired for titling themself "Mx." rather than Mr., Mrs., or Ms. The high school science teacher, AV Vary, had been using that honorific for 15 years; but when "Don't Say Gay" became law, their school claimed to have no choice but to send them packing.

In a related court case, a three-judge panel has ruled against another of Florida's attempts to enforce right-wing orthodoxy in education. The so-called "Stop WOKE Act" virtually forbade discussion of not only gender issues but also anything having to do with race. (Heaven forfend that Florida students ever hear anything about Rosewood and Ococee.)

The 11th Circuit Court found that the Stop WOKE Act constituted "the greatest First Amendment sin," but the DeSantis administration is considering appealing that ruling.

Because, as all Republican scholars remember from their schooldays, the Constitution begins and ends with the second half of the Second Amendment.

Q Toon: Moatalitarianism

The thinking that went into this week's cartoon involved not just Texas Governor Greg Abbott's razor wire flotilla in the Rio Grande, but also Anne Applebaum's article from The Atlantic about how having complete power of all the branches of government in a state is never enough for today's Republicans.

Her column on Republican totalitarianism discusses the Tennessee legislature's ejection of Justin Jones and Justin Pearson for having the temerity to bring a megaphone to the statehouse — a move made because Republicans routinely shut off Democrats' microphones. Republicans there have divided Nashville among three majority-rural congressional districts, thus depriving the citizens of the state's largest city of any true representation in Congress.

Seeking to prevent passage of a state constitutional amendment by popular vote protecting abortion rights, Ohio Republicans put a measure on the ballot this past Tuesday requiring popular constitutional amendments to pass by a 60% supermajority. The legislature didn't pick that percentage at random: polling shows abortion rights are supported by 58% of the Ohio electorate. If support had polled at 62%, Republicans would have required passage by a 2/3 supermajority.

Republicans had to act fast to get this "Issue 1" onto a special August 8 ballot; the abortion rights amendment comes up for popular vote in November.

Republican supermajority lawmakers couldn't get their 60% voter approval idea onto the state's May primary ballot, so in February they came up with a new plan — an August special election.

There was just one problem: Republicans had voted to eliminate most August special elections in a law they passed in December. [Ohio Secretary of State Frank] LaRose, who testified in support of that law, said it shouldn't be an issue.

And to keep amendment referenda Republicans don't like from getting onto future ballots in the first place, "Issue 1" would have required citizen groups to get voter signatures in each of Ohio's 88 counties, up from 44 required previously.

Happily, Ohio voters rejected Issue 1 — albeit by a majority that would have been insufficient to repeal the 60% threshold if it had already been in effect. 

In Florida, several school districts announced that they would no longer offer Advanced Placement Psychology courses for college-bound high school students, thanks to repressive legislation by Gov. Ron DesAntis and his minions in his state legislature.

These decisions came after the College Board, which administers the Advanced Placement program, announced that the state had “effectively banned” AP Psychology because state legislation, commonly referred to as Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law, doesn’t permit instruction related to sexual orientation and gender identity, which the College Board considers essential for completing the course.

Florida officials have countered that AP Psychology hasn’t been banned, but rather that the College Board is playing politics by telling school districts they can’t offer the course unless it’s taught in full.

Well, if there's anything Republicans love these days, it's censoring educational materials. Especially if they can keep LGBTQ+ people out of sight, and therefore out of impressionable teenage minds. We'll tell you what you can teach, the totalitarian Republicans say to those meddlesome academics. Just teach our Officially Approved curriculum!

In a similar vein, Arkansas Republicans passed a law under which librarians and booksellers could be criminally charged for providing "harmful materials" to minors. A U.S. District Court Judge has temporarily suspended that law, but it's flabbergasting to realize that they find nothing wrong with providing guns to minors, but are scared spitless at the prospect of a kid finding Heather Has Two Mommies on a bookshelf.

In "red" states around the country, legislatures' attacks on transgender citizens have included requiring state-issued ID's to identify everyone by the gender assigned to them at birth. This is sure to hamper transgender voting every time a poll worker is handed an identification card that doesn't appear to match the person handing it to them.

Which will have the added bonus (as Republicans see it) of slowing down those long voter lines in urban areas where many Democrats live. If they only disenfranchise transgender people, that's a win for them. Bogging down those urban polling places is just gravy.

If they make voting enough of a hassle, they might not even need that 60% threshold business anyway.

Q Toon: And They Brought Books!

Let me just say at the outset that I realize how much I was risking drawing a cartoon on Sunday that might be considered in bad taste by Thursday. Unimaginable disaster threatens the state of Florida.

I mean, isn't having to be forever associated with Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump punishment enough?

The corrupt former president is reportedly miffed that Governor DeSantis stole his idea to kidnap fifty Venezuelan refugees in Texas and fly them to Martha's Vineyard — after the summer season is over, no less — luring them with false promises of jobs, housing, and getting to meet the Kennedys. 

Oh, sorry, I'm confusing Ron's stunt with the White Citizens Councils' reverse freedom rides of 1962. DeSantis did not actually promise the Venezuelan refugees that they would meet the Kennedys.

The townies of Martha's Vineyard, and perhaps a few well-to-do stragglers who hadn't yet left for the season, pitched in to welcome their Venezuelan guests, providing food and shelter until enlisting help from the military base at nearby Cape Cod. Right-wing media crowed, See? Them damn Yankees don't like Mexicans any more than we do! Not one Kennedy even showed up!

Well, we Yankees hear that you've got a teacher shortage down there in Dixie Land. We can send you plenty of teachers who far exceed the negligible standards your governor has set for educators these days. 

Competent? Why, they're absolutely fabulous!

Q Toon: Historical Figure of Speech

This week's cartoon comes to you just in the nick of time for African-American Heritage Month, with no apologies to the Aryan snowflakes working to outlaw it from schools across the nation.

Having spent the past half century agitating to impose Christian prayer and creationism pseudoscience on the public educational system, they are now concentrating on telling teachers What Must Not Be Named, Mentioned, or Discussed. Fer Pete's sake, we only discovered the 1921 Tulsa Race Pogrom last year, and already we're all supposed to forget it ever happened.

Again.

Of course, the same culture warriors have always wanted LGBTQ+ people to stay locked in the closet, neither seen nor heard, so Bayard Rustin is something of a two-fer in the educational erasure agenda. His record doesn't include the sort of "judge by the content of their character" quotations that could be twisted to support pretending that racism and homophobia are things of the past.

So here are a few quotations from Bayard's career worth remembering:

"Most of the time the reservoir of racism remains stagnant. But—and this has been true historically for most societies—when major economic, social, or political crises arise, the backwaters are stirred and latent racial hostility comes to the surface. Scapegoats must be found, simple targets substituted for complex problems. The frustration and insecurity generated by these problems find an outlet in notions of racial superiority and inferiority.” ― Bayard Rustin, Down The Line

"[T]he Negro today finds himself stymied by obstacles of far greater magnitude than the legal barriers he was attacking before: automation, urban decay, de facto school segregation. These are problems which, while conditioned by Jim Crow, do not vanish upon its demise. They are more deeply rooted in our socioeconomic order; they are the result of the total society's failure to meet not only the Negro's needs but human needs generally.” ― Bayard Rustin, Down The Line

“It ... was an absolute necessity for me to declare homosexuality, because if I didn't I was a part of the prejudice. I was aiding and abetting the prejudice that was a part of the effort to destroy me.” ― Bayard Rustin

"If we want to do away with the injustice to gays it will not be done because we get rid of the injustice to gays. It will be done because we are forwarding the effort for the elimination of injustice to all. And we will win the rights for gays, or blacks, or Hispanics, or women within the context of whether we are fighting for all." ― Bayard Rustin

“When an individual is protesting society's refusal to acknowledge his dignity as a human being, his very act of protest confers dignity on him.” ― Bayard Rustin

"We are all one ― and if we don't know it, we will learn it the hard way." ―Bayard Rustin