Okay so, Utah is a very strange place right now.
Last week I was writing a piece for LGBTQ Nation, on how Utah’s Republican-led legislature had approved a bill prohibiting transgender students from living in University dorms that match their gender identity. I was of course very pissed off and I thought to myself “God, these people couldn’t be more evil.”
Clearly I spoke too soon. One day later I was reading this piece by The Salt Lake Tribune, and found out about House Bill 77. Essentially the bill would ban pride flags from being displayed in schools while allowing schools to display Nazi and Confederate flags for “educational purposes.”
There is so much to be said about this, but here is what the bill’s chief sponsor Representative Trevor Lee—who has a history of using anti-trans language—had to say:
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“There are instances where in classrooms, you have curriculum that is needed [sic] to use flags such as World War II, Civil War,”
This makes it clear that only certain kinds of history will be taught in classrooms, and none of it will be specifically queer history. It’s also extraordinarily weird to be this insistent on having a Nazi flag displayed in an American classroom for educational purposes, especially when that’s the example they choose rather than, for example, the flag for the Soviet Union. I do not see the application in this when you already have pictures of such in textbooks.
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Just in case you weren’t terrified before
Owning a Nazi flag is a red flag to begin with—no pun intended. Considering that teachers buy their own school supplies, would they have to go to some hate group’s Etsy page and to buy one of these? And wouldn’t this then create…you know…problems?
For example, if my grandfather passed away and in his attic I found a Klansmen robe, I wouldn’t assume “Oh he must’ve worn this while he was teaching kids about the South.” The first thing that would go through my mind is “Oh shoot, I’m probably going to need to burn down this entire house.”
Basically the ruling is another blatant attempt to normalize fascism and Nazi ideology.
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