DALLAS (AP) — Texas’ lieutenant governor said Friday that the state is prepared to forfeit billions of federal dollars in public school funding in defiance of an Obama administration directive requiring schools to allow transgender students to use bathrooms and locker rooms consistent with their chosen gender identity. The new directive is expected to worsen tensions between Republican-led statehouses and the federal government over divisive social issues. It clarifies expectations for districts receiving federal school funds, which Texas’ powerful Republican lieutenant governor argues the state’s 5.2 million public school students can now do without…. “We will not be blackmailed by the president’s 30 pieces of silver,” Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said. “The people of Texas and the Legislature will find a way to find as much of that money as we can if we are forced to.”…. Patrick said Texas currently receives about $10 billion in federal education funding. He didn’t say how that money would be replaced, and his remarks on Friday came only moments after more than half the state’s 1,200 school districts lost a major lawsuit that claimed Texas unconstitutionally underfunds public schools.
It’s an election year, so it stands to reason that Conservatives would want to stake their claim to ownership of an issue which will resonate among the American Taliban and other Far-right Social Conservatives. It wouldn’t be out of line or unreasonable to think that Conservatives would want to plant their flag on an issue they feel to be of great import, something they believe is crucial to the future of the Republic. It looks as if they’ve taken a big swing at doing just that…and missed by a country mile.
Yep, the issue the American Taliban has settled on is…wait for it…no, really…public restrooms and who gets to use them. It’s every bit as silly, patently offensive, and pointless as one might imagine…and then some. North Carolina is leading the way with HB 2, which requires anyone using a public restroom to use the facilities corresponding to their birth gender. If you’re thinking that it sounds like North Carolina’s good, God-fearing Conservative culture warriors are discriminating against transgender individuals, then…DING!!! You win the prize. They invented a problem- male sexual perverts wearing dresses invading women’s restrooms- and ginned up a “solution,” thus allowing them to claim the mantle of protecting innocent women and children from a nonexistent threat. That they neglected to include an enforcement mechanism or penalties in HB2 seems to have escaped their attention, but damned if they’re not all about ensuring dress-wearing male sexual perverts aren’t prowling the Tar Heel State’s restrooms.
Now Texas Lt. Governor (and renowned political lightweight/culture warrior) has weighed in, declaring that Texas would sooner forego $10 billion in federal education funding than to fall under the tyrannical jackboot of The Black Guy in the White House ©
Texas’ attorney general suggested that the guidelines would result in “yet another legal fight” over transgender bathroom access. Just this week, Texas joined a lawsuit in Virginia over transgender students using the bathrooms of their choice and signaled that the Fort Worth school district, which is Texas’ sixth-largest, illegally adopted policies recently that give the district latitude to not tell parents information shared by their transgender children.
U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch said “there is no room in our schools for discrimination” and was sending the directive Friday to school districts. Some told her not to bother.
“When I get that letter I’ll throw it away,” Rodney Cavness, the superintendent of the small Port Neches-Groves school district in southeastern Texas, told Beaumont television station KFDM.
As silly and stupid as it may sound, some of Texas’s most godly Republicans have decided to draw a line in the sand over…you guessed it…public potties. They could have erred on the side of treating transgendered individuals as human beings worthy of being treated with respect and dignity. That would be entirely too humane and decent, and so they’ve decided that the (nonexistent, wholly invented) risk of male sexual perverts in dresses marauding through the restrooms and changing facilities of Texas’ public schools is more than they can stomach.
Under the guidance, schools have been told that they must treat transgender students according to their chosen gender identity as soon as a parent or guardian notifies the district that that identity “differs from previous representations or records.” There is no obligation for a student to present a specific medical diagnosis or identification documents that reflect his or her gender identity, and equal access must be given to transgender students even in instances when it makes others uncomfortable, according to the directive.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has staunchly rejected issues over gay and transgender rights that the Obama administration has cast in terms of civil rights. Patrick responded to Friday’s directive at the Texas Republican Party Convention, where delegates this week are considering a new state party platform that says “homosexuality must not be accepted as an acceptable alternative lifestyle.”
Not surprisingly, Patrick, Abbott, and Attorney General Ken Paxton have been falling all over themselves to get in front of as many cameras and microphones as possible while proclaiming themselves godly defenders of All That Is Moral, Godly, and Holy ©. Never mind the fallout that would come from walking away from $10 billion. In a state which can’t adequately fund schools…yet somehow manages to spend $60+ million on high school football stadiums while placing 43rd in one national educational ranking, that seems more than a wee bit irresponsible. Then again, Texas has never been big on edumication…which, come to think of it, might just go a long way towards explaining how it is that Abbott, Patrick, and Paxton managed to get elected. You can fool all of the people some of the time, but it’s surprisingly easy to fool Texans pretty much all the time.
It fascinates me that the Three Amigos are focusing on demonizing the LGBT community when it has no direct or even indirectly deleterious impact on the good, God-fearing, right-thinking, red-blooded, missionary-position-loving, heterosexual, patriotic Conservative Christians in the Lone Brain Cell Star State. While Abbott, Patrick, and Paxton are obsessing over how they can parlay hatred, bigotry, and homophobia into advancing their own political careers, they’re in the process of doing some serious and significant damage to Texas’ already significantly below average edumicational system. You can do that when you believe you’re doing the Lord’s work…which in this case appears to be synonymous with self-promotion.
Of course, when your philosophy is “WHO NEEDS EDUMICATION??? WE HAZ JESUS!!!,” who’s going to worry about $10 billion in federal edumication funds? Jesus will undoubtedly provide…right??
