As Daily Kos continues to cover, conservatives aren’t slowing down when it comes to demonizing LGBTQ+ people, and especially LGBTQ+ youth. We’ve seen Republicans at all levels of government advocate for book bans (if not book burning), paint LGBTQ+ adults and allies as predators and groomers, and of course, unnecessarily stress out teachers and librarians who simply want kids to read. Because if there’s one thing Republicans are great at, it’s churning hysteria to keep people riled up and distracted.
Rayla Campbell, a Republican who is running for secretary of state in Massachusetts, for example, is apparently playing the long game with an anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-book movement. Per her Facebook page, Campbell is spending her time going to libraries around Massachusetts and taking pictures of Pride Month displays in order to get people outraged, as highlighted over at Book Riot. Because again, how dare LGBTQ+ people write or be centered in books, right?
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These posts appear on Campbell’s official Facebook page, where she recently wrote, for example: “Right, ban Dr. Seuss but display Gender Queer as you walk into the library 4 the world to see and read? On pg. 62 it tells kids to TASTE your own "vagina slime." But Green eggs and ham is an abomination to "educators." In the comments on that post, she encouraged folks to donate so she is able to keep visiting libraries.
In a video, Campbell held up a copy of Gender Queer in the Braintree Public Library (housed in the teen section, by the way) and described it as “child pornography.” In the accompanying status, she said the book should not be available in “ANY library” and described it as “perverse.”
“Have you ever tasted your vagina slime,” she asks viewers. “Does the media?”
Okay!
Campbell also posted a video where she appears to be appalled by a sex education for teens book called Let’s Talk About It. In a separate video, which she identifies as taking place in the East Bridgewater Library, Campbell again pulls out a copy of Gender Queer and flips through pages saying it’s “disgusting” and “depicts child pornography."
“You can hear the beautiful sounds of the children behind me,” she says. “In here, supposed to be learning. Do you think this is what they’re supposed to be learning?”
In a post dated May 31, Campbell also shared a link from a local Fox News outlet covering LGBTQ+-inclusive flashcards. Campbell wrote in part: “But there's no indoctrination going on. Do you have any idea what type of filth they are teaching your kids in public schools right now? This is here. It's everywhere folks. It's perverse and amoral and is being taught in pre school! Not even 3 years old!”
She also made a post saying that “SMUT PEDDLERS” are “going down” and to mark her words. Huh. Okay!
I’m far from the first person to raise alarm bells when it comes to Campbell’s dangerous anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric. For example, as covered over at CBS News, Campbell used Gender Queer during a speech in late May, where she suggested the book is being “pushed” in public schools and is “child porn and sex trafficking.”
“When parents are requesting to know what's going on with the sex education within the school system, their voices are being suppressed,” Campbell claimed per the outlet. “They're being labeled as domestic terrorists for just enquiring about what their children are being taught."
At the Republican Party convention in Massachusetts, Campbell asserted that 5-year-olds are being taught to perform oral sex on one another. “I don’t think it’s nice when they’re telling your five-year-old that he can go and suck another five-year-old’s d*ck, do you?” Campbell said, adding that that’s what’s happening at schools in the state, according to LGBTQ Nation.
Here’s that clip.
“There are two genders,” Campbell proclaimed, adding that she has a son and two daughters and that her son is a boy and “will always” be a boy and her daughters will always be girls.
You can watch that speech here.
You can watch brief clips with local outlet WBZ discussing Gender Queer.
Obviously, none of this is true. People are allowed to access safe, age-appropriate education on sex and sexual health, as well as about LGBTQ+ identities. But conservatives have rapidly latched onto anti-queer and anti-intellectual rhetoric when it comes to books and school curriculums, and now our public schools and public libraries are under legitimate attacks from the right.
Claims like Campbell’s are, on the surface, outrageously inflammatory and not rooted in fact or evidence. But they’re convincing to people who are already discriminatory, fearful, and hateful. And that’s exactly the kind of language that keeps people mad—and distracted from the real issues.
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