Germany? Yep. When we tell people to “never forget,” this includes the oppression of Germany’s world-famous LGBTQ community in the 1920-30’s, and we are responsible to prevent such persecution from happening here. That means we have to fight to prevent GOP’s Project 2025 from ever taking hold by voting every Republican out of office.
A visual comparison of between the LGBTQIA legislative histories in Germany and the U.S. (pdf here)
ACTION: Call your legislators!
(Senator Barry Goldwater, 1994, Conservative icon) “The big thing is to make this country, along with every other country in the world with a few exceptions, quit discriminating against people just because they’re gay.” You don’t have to agree with it, but they have a constitutional right to be gay. And that’s what brings me into it.“
Minimal email/call script for representatives and senators!: I’m calling from [zip code] and I want Rep./Senator [___] to know that I am alarmed at the GOP’s Project 2025 vision to erase and criminalize LGBTQIA+ children and adults, along with content that reflects their lives and the community members who support them, such as teachers and librarians. We don’t know what the future holds, but we know what has happened in the past.
What we need now is for [him/her] to call out Project 2025 specifically as a lurking danger to democracy and to enact legislative protections to stop the spread of abusive laws targting LGBTQIA people and censorship against books about race, racism or LGBTQ themes before any GOP presidency, in 2024 or beyond, makes the dystopia of Project 2025 a reality. I want to thank (him/her) for supporting H.R.15 – Equality Act and (Brownley) the H.R. 4393 – Customer Non-Discrimination Act. I would like (him/her) to also pass H.R.6592 – Fight Book Bans and H.R.6830 – Books Save Lives Act and (for Carbajal) H.R. 4393 – Customer Non-Discrimination Act.
Minimal email/call script for senators!: I’m calling from [zip code] and I want Senator [___] to know that I am alarmed at the GOP’s Project 2025 vision to erase and criminalize LGBTQIA+ children and adults, along with content that reflects their lives and the community members who support them, such as teachers and librarians. We don’t know what the future holds, but we know what has happened in the past.
What we need now is for [him/her] to call out Project 2025 specifically as a lurking danger to democracy and to enact legislative protections to stop the spread of abusive laws targting LGBTQIA people and censorship against books about race, racism or LGBTQ themes before any GOP presidency, in 2024 or beyond, makes the dystopia of Project 2025 a reality. I also want to [thank Sen. Padilla for sponsoring/ask Sen. Butler to sponsor] S.5 – Equality Act.
Bill Description:
- (Rep.) H.R.15 – Equality Act (https://www.hrc.org/resources/equality)
- (Sen.) S.5 – Equality Act – The Equality Act would provide consistent and explicit anti-discrimination protections for LGBTQ+ people across key areas of life, including employment, housing, credit, education, public spaces and services, federally funded programs, and jury service.
- (Rep.) H.R.6592 – Fight Book Bans – provide grants to to cover the costs of challenges against specific instructional materials, or the availability of specific school library materials, in public elementary and secondary schools.
- (Rep.) H.R.6830 – Books Save Lives Act – Requires certain libraries to maintain a diverse collection of books
- (Rep.) H.R. 4393 – Customer Non-Discrimination Act – Protections against discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, or national origin…and prevents using the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 to provide a claim, defense, or basis for challenging such protections.
Contacts (Pick yours) Keep calling until a live person picks up.
Deeper Dive: TLDR: Project 2025’s plans to criminalize and erase gay and non-binary people and those who support them.
Nothing about this is theoretical or theatrical…People, including children, are being harmed right now.
- Erasure: Delete all non-binary gender concepts such as “the terms sexual orientation and gender identity (“SOGI”), diversity, equity, and inclusion (“DEI”), gender, gender equality, gender equity, gender awareness, gender-sensitive, abortion, reproductive health, reproductive rights, …out of every federal rule, agency regulation, contract, grant, regulation, and piece of legislation that exists.” A national “Don’t Say Gay” bill was proposed in 2022)
- Outlaw “pornography,” i.e. LGBTQ and especially transgender-related content, and imprison anyone who produces it. The next step is to ban people as inherently obscene, as a bill in West Virginia proposes criminalizing being openly transgender in front of a minor or near schools as indecent exposure with associated fines and jail time.
- Register teachers and librarians who provide any such material to children as sex offenders, thus destroying their livelihood. Some states are already prepared to send them to jail. (LGBTQ parents could also be subject to arrest, imprisonment, and being put on sex-offender registries for “exposing children to pornography” simply by being LGBTQ and having children.)
- Close technology firms that “facilitate” it.
- Rule any affirmation of a trans child’s gender to be child abuse.
- Exclude “gender ideology” from all public schools
- Prevent the NIH from doing further gender research. (Biden announced increased funding for research.)
- Remove trans protections from Title IX and define sex to mean only sex recognized at birth.
- Ensure that all trans children are outed to their parents, making schools unsafe.
- Force the NIH to study the negative impacts of gender affirming care. Including letting people use the right pronouns. (Studies show that lack of access to gender-affirming care causes negative impacts.)
- Force the NIH to study “desistence“, or reconversion. State GOP are looking to overturn local bans on conversion therapy.
- Allow faith-based groups to discriminate against same-sex couples. (Religious discrimination is everywhere.)
- Disallow HIV/AIDS service providers from providing gender affirming care (Biden encourages Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program service providers to provide access to gender affirming care and treatment services to transgender and gender diverse individuals with HIV.)
- Reverse ruling that disallows discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, transgender status or sex characteristics (meaning you could fire somebody for being LGBTQIA )
- On the congress.gov site now: proposed nationwide ban on gender-affirming care.
Meanwhile, back at the state level, there have been over 500+ anti-LGBTQ bills nationwide in 2023.
INDIVISIBLE VENTURA 