On Sunday the Des Moines Register published a long read on publication, and frantic withdrawal, of a new 4-H policy more explicitly welcoming LGBTQ children into the program. 4-H is a program you'll most commonly recognize as nurturing the next generation of farmers and ranchers; in many of America's small communities you'll find a measurable percentage of schoolchildren raising their own chickens, rabbits, lambs, pigs and cows, learning the basics of animal husbandry and getting at least a temporary taste of what life is like for the small-scale ranches that still struggle to compete with the warehoused animals of the mega-producers.
It's also a program whose fate is tied inextricably to the decline of small farms in general. There is forever less land than there once was, and while old family ranches are each day being sold off to create new neighborhoods of tract housing, there aren't any housing tracts being stripped bare to make new farmland. The number of children who can raise even a single hen in their neighborhoods is not what it once was. As such, 4-H, like similar programs, has tried hard to expand the ranks of children who can be involved. They have launched inclusivity programs, sought to promote a less monolithically white, more multicultural membership, and prodded local clubs to more openly welcome those that might have not felt welcome before.
It was this that led 4-H to publish a policy more welcoming of LGBTQ kids, and it was, of course, the Trump administration and the far right that went into absolute batshit meltdown mode, demanding that this minor act of inclusivity be reversed because everybody even tangentially involved with the Trump administration is a mean-spirited pile of garbage.
Within days of the LGBT guidance's publication, Heidi Green, then-chief of staff for U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue, requested that it be rescinded, Sonny Ramaswamy, then-director of the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, the federal department that administers 4-H, told the Register.
The Register's investigation is thorough, featuring many of the usual far-right theocratic and hate groups. That's right, Sonny Perdue's Department of Agriculture took the side of hate group Liberty Counsel, the alt-right nutcases of WorldNetDaily and the crackpot theocrat Bob Vander Plaats, who has been using Jesus as a punching bag for what seems like the last hundred years or so. It took place as the Trump administration was rolling back LGBTQ protections wherever they could, and was largely premised on the same OH MY GOD WHAT IF SOMEONE USES THE WRONG BATHROOM panic that turned a good chunk of America stupid.
Perhaps you will find it surprising that even the Department of Agriculture took up this particular war, and perhaps you will not. One of the more striking things about the Register report is that almost nobody involved in the episode would agree to even comment on it afterward.
When contacted by the Register, Green — who has since left the USDA — refused to answer questions about the meeting and hung up.
Another, less striking thing is the dominance of the But Jesus argument in demanding that transgender kids be declared to be of whatever sex the local adults insist, demanding that the rights of the malignant evangelical crowd to practice prejudice against whichever Americans they feel like is both God-given and far more important than the rights of those they have been called on to hate.
It is a thorough, if depressing, read, and a reminder of just how much sway a tiny sliver of the far right has and insists upon.