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As the gunman approached her family in the corner of the restaurant, Suzanna Hupp wanted nothing more than a gun in her hand.

But Texas law in 1991 didnt allow that, leaving her defenseless. Her father was fatally shot when he ran at the gunman, unarmed. Her mother died holding him on the floor of that Lubys restaurant in Killeen. Twenty-one other diners and the gunman also died that day.

The Lubys shooting, as it became known, shocked the nation and galvanized Hupp, who escaped through a window. She spent the next 30 years, including 10 in the state Legislature, fighting to give others the option she did not have.

Unlike other mass shooting survivors who advocate for gun restrictions the parents of Sandy Hook Elementary students or the teenagers who watched their classmates die at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Hupps goal has been eliminating gun regulations.

For all the conversation about common sense and compromise, these are the two fundamental choices: The answer to preventing future tragedy is either fewer guns or more.

At their core, these philosophies do not form a Venn diagram. They are ideologically distinct and incompatible worldviews.

While there will be discussions in the coming weeks about incremental steps and public support for tightening gun regulations, the political reality is that three decades of Republican dominance in the state have erased the middle ground. In Texas, the chosen response to mass shootings is a gun and a prayer.

The states elected officials, influenced by an ultra-conservative religious movement and profit-driven gun companies, have chosen the path of least regulation, elevating firearm ownership into a referendum on faith and freedom.

Addressing the state Wednesday after a gunman massacred 19 students and two teachers, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick made it clear how the state should respond to mass shootings.

In these other shootings Sutherland Springs, El Paso, Odessa, Santa Fe its God that brings a community together. Its God that heals a community, Patrick said. If we dont turn back as a nation to understanding what we were founded upon and what we were taught by our parents and what we believe in, then these situations will only get worse.

Texas is on a path that may not reflect public opinion but absolutely reflects the larger political forces sweeping the state. And its not just Texas: Republican state legislatures, data shows, are 115% more likely to pass legislation loosening gun laws in response to mass shootings.

Texas remains among the more heavily armed states in the country more than a third of Texas households have a gun, and while the rate of household gun ownership has declined nationally since the 1980s, it has not declined as quickly or consistently in Texas.

More than 1.7 million Texans have an active state firearm license, and Texas has more federally registered guns than any other state. Nationally, data shows two-thirds of gun owners own more than one gun, and nearly a third own five or more guns.

If the states are laboratories of democracy, where we figure out what policies work, you might think over time wed converge on a set of policies, said Chris Poliquin, who researches gun laws at the University of California, Los Angeles. But you dont actually see that on gun policy.

When the pickup truck crashed through the plate glass window of the Lubys in Killeen, halfway between Austin and Waco, Suzanna Hupp assumed it was an accident.

When the driver pulled out a gun, she assumed it was a robbery.

It wasnt until he started shooting picking off patrons, one by one that she realized what was happening.

It took me a good 45 seconds, which is an eternity during something like that, she said. Now, it would be the first thing your mind goes to, but back then, we hadnt had anything like that before.

It was 1991, long before the era of active shooter drills and school lockdowns. It would be another eight years until the shooting at Columbine High School and three decades before a man walked into an elementary school in Uvalde and massacred 19 students and two teachers.

It was also an era of much tighter gun laws in Texas. Hupps handgun was in the glove compartment of her car. She had not brought it inside for fear of losing her chiropractors license if caught violating the states prohibition on carrying a concealed weapon.

I realized we were just sitting ducks, she said. That is just the most sickening feeling in the world to just wait for it to be your turn.

Hupp emerged from that shooting with a new mission, and the gun rights movement had a new crusader.

I testified in, I dont know, 25 different states, some of them a couple of times, she said. And they all have concealed carry now.

Her argument has been simple but effective: Stricter gun laws would not have stopped the gunman who killed her parents. A gun would have. She believes the key to preventing more gun deaths is more guns mental health treatment and better risk assessment, too, but most importantly, more guns in more places.

Heres the truth of the matter that no one can argue with, she said. If Id had my gun that day, even if I had screwed it up somehow, it would have changed the odds, wouldnt it?

When Hupp first got involved in the gun rights movement, many states banned concealed carry and the United States was on the verge of passing a federal assault weapons ban.

But a change had been building for some time. Since the 1960s, the country had been in the process of shifting from what Wake Forest University researcher David Yamane calls gun culture 1.0 guns for sport or recreation to 2.0 guns for self-defense.

A lot of people in developed, suburbanized parts of the country who maybe previously thought they didnt need a gun anymore, because theyre not on the frontier, start to develop the notion that they might have to defend themselves, Yamane said. That link has become much more prominent these days.

Hupps story capitalized on a previously unimaginable idea that a man might come into the restaurant where youre eating and just start shooting. This free-floating fear has morphed in recent years depending on the moment gun sales spiked during the original COVID lockdowns and amid the 2020 racial justice protests, and they tend to rise after mass shootings like the one in Uvalde.

In the 90s and 2000s, people really do start to see guns increasingly as a viable option to face down crime, uncertainty and unrest, Yamane said. Theres an element of defensive gun ownership that looks at the gun as a tool of last resort for when the worst possible thing is happening.

At the same time, the National Rifle Association began bringing more of its lobbying firepower to state legislatures, fomenting the idea that the world was full of things that needed defending against.

The NRA built this identity around gun ownership and then it portrayed that identity as being threatened, said Matthew Lacombe, the author of Firepower: How the NRA Turned Gun Owners into a Political Force. So the minority of Americans who oppose gun control are historically more politically active than the majority that support.

In Texas, like other red states, the NRA slid sideways into the newfound alliance between evangelical Christians and the Republican Party, aligning gun rights with the religious right.

Gun ownership became a symbolic weapon in fighting the culture wars.

I am not really here to talk about the Second Amendment or the NRA, but the gun issue clearly brings into focus the war thats going on, said then-NRA President Charlton Heston in a 1997 speech. Mainstream America is depending on you to draw your sword and fight for them.

And Texas did fight. In 1994, George W. Bush beat Ann Richards for the governorship after she vetoed a concealed carry law. In the decades since, Texas passed open carry, allowed guns on college campuses and in churches, prohibited cities from passing stricter gun laws and deemed the state a Second Amendment sanctuary.

Hupp left the Legislature in 2007. In the years since, shes watched ideas she said her colleagues once dismissed as nuts pass into law like permitless carry and allowing teachers to carry guns.

As the Texas Legislature has steadily embarked on a conservative crusade, gun rights hasnt just been on the list of priorities. In many ways, its the linchpin of the whole thing.

In 2018, after a gunman killed 17 students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, NRA executive vice president Wayne LaPierre spoke to a conservative convention.

There is no greater personal, individual freedom than the right to keep and bear arms, the right to protect yourself and the right to survive, LaPierre said. It is not bestowed by man, but granted by God to all Americans as our American birthright.

The idea that God has granted Americans a fundamental right to bear arms is not a new one, but its become an article of faith.

True believers derive the inherent right to self-defense by drawing a line from the Declaration of Independence that all men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness to the Second Amendment as the legal representation of Gods will.

This is the cross that some gun owners have chosen to bear that their defense of gun rights is not just about firearms, but about ensuring the continued manifestation of Gods will on Earth.

Andrew Whitehead, author of Taking America Back for God: Christian Nationalism in the United States, said equating gun rights with the will of the sacred essentially erases any hope of finding a middle ground.

If we do anything about gun control, we are turning our backs on Gods desire and plan for this country and the Founding Fathers and all of those things, Whitehead said. Its so strongly ingrained and has become so central to that identity, so to float the idea of gun control is almost to attack, in their view, their Christian identity.

Christian nationalism is an effort to more closely intertwine evangelical Christian morality and American civic identity. Its associated with a slate of other conservative political agenda items, all framed around bringing America and its citizens hearts back to God.

Modern Christian nationalism tightly defines a true American and a true Christian in largely white, evangelical, conservative terms, emphasizing capitalism, traditional gender roles and parents rights.

Not all evangelical Christians subscribe to Christian nationalist ideas. But some of those ideas have taken hold in the Texas Legislature in recent years.

In 2019, after the second mass shooting in Texas in a month, state Rep. Matt Schaefer, R-Tyler, tweeted that he was NOT going to use the evil acts of a handful of people to diminish the God-given rights of my fellow Texans. Period.

Schaefers tweet thread went on to say he opposed gun reform measures, including universal background checks, bans on assault weapons and mandatory gun buybacks. Instead, he said he would support praying for the victims, for protection and for hoping God would transform the hearts of people with evil intent.

He also endorsed the idea of giving every law-abiding single mom the right to carry a handgun to protect her and her kids without permission from the state, and the same for all other law-abiding Texans of age.

Schaefer did not respond to request for comment.

By citing Texans God-given rights, Schaefer and his fellow state legislators transform a gun into a symbol of morality, piety and identity.

The ability to craft and create that narrative gets politicians who might not even be that interested in Christian nationalism in touch with people who are activated by that rhetoric, said Whitehead. And that can be very powerful.

Its not just gun control. Support for Christian nationalist ideas is a predictor for support for a slew of other political agenda items, Whitehead said, including the most high-profile right now: ending abortion.

Gun rights and abortion access occupy the same philosophical space in the Texas Legislature, where the conversation is centered more on morality and theology than facts and science. Government has a responsibility to defend life in the womb, the argument goes, and individuals a right to defend themselves.

There is more of an entrenchment with the gun issue than almost any other issue, said state Rep. Donna Howard, D-Austin. Theres little room for any kind of discussion, any kind of debate, any willingness to look at compromises even with abortion, there was more room to negotiate a few things.

After 10 people were killed in a school shooting in Santa Fe, Texas, in 2018, Gov. Greg Abbott suggested considering a red flag law. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick then nixed it.

After 23 people were killed at a Walmart in El Paso and seven people were killed in Midland-Odessa in 2019, Patrick discussed expanding background checks. Instead, the Legislature passed permitless carry.

But after the mass shooting in Uvalde, neither Patrick nor Abbott indicated any interest in reforming the states gun laws. On Fox News, Attorney General Ken Paxton said its unreasonable to think we can stop bad people from doing bad things.

We can potentially arm and prepare and train teachers and other administrators to respond quickly, he said. That, in my opinion, is the best answer.

While Democrats expressed their outrage some more immediately than others none of this came as any surprise to people who study gun issues.

Poliquins research shows that Republican-dominated states tend to pass legislation in the wake of mass shootings that make guns more readily accessible. Democrat-led states dont see a statistically significant increase in gun laws of any kind after these events, in part, Poliquin hypothesized, because they already have strong gun control laws.

Republicans in Texas are acting on their partys ideology on guns, which emphasizes more guns in more places as a deterrent to acts of violence. And even if that doesnt reflect public opinion, they have no reason to anticipate backlash in the voting booth.

Even conversations about compromise are enough to rile up the faithful, and in a polarized and gerrymandered state like Texas, the political fringes are where a politician's career can be made or lost.

The more the gun control advocates try to put in place what they euphemistically call common-sense gun laws those of us that believe in the Second Amendment and everything it was set in place to protect tend to hold much tighter, Hupp said. We recognize what their ultimate goal is, which is to completely disarm citizens.

Howard, one of a minority of Democrats in the state Legislature, said Texas approach to gun policy reminds her of the bumper stickers she would see in the 1960s: America: Love it or leave it.

It feels like her fellow legislators are telling her and any Texans who want gun control if you don't like it, you can just leave, she said.

Thats not something I have felt until recent years, she said. This is my home, and the fact that what I believe and people like me believe, and the way we would like to have society structured, is just totally discounted, it feels like we don't matter.

See the rest here:
A gun and a prayer: How the far right took control of Texas' response to mass shootings - The Texas Tribune

Worse is the unprecedented scrutiny now directed at teachers by parents, political groups, even legislators. Virtually all the people ostentatiously monitoring teachers are people who have no training in education and no experience in a public-school classroom. The unspoken belief underlying such ideological policing is that teachers cant be trusted, that teachers dont deserve to be regarded as the skilled professionals they are. In many ways, todays culture war treats teachers and, increasingly, school librarians as the enemy.

Consider the veteran educator in East Tennessee, fired for teaching his students about white privilege in a class called Contemporary Issues, a course he had taught for nearly a decade without a word of complaint from parents. Consider the assistant principal in Mississippi, fired for reading I Need a New Butt! a funny childrens book, to second graders. Consider the country music star who testified before the Tennessee General Assembly that educators today are predators, akin to a guy in a white van pulling up at the edge of school when school lets out. Consider the candidate in the Georgia governors race who said in a debate, Were going to get rid of kindergarten teachers men with beards and lipstick and high heels teaching our children. Were going to get back to being moral in Georgia.

These stories from the red states make a recent bit of satire from The Onion Teacher Fired for Breaking States Critical Race Theory Laws After Telling Students Shes Black hard to distinguish from real life.

Maybe youre thinking this is all hyperbole, a few isolated incidents in a country with more than three million teachers in public schools. Its not. PEN America, a nonpartisan advocacy organization that promotes and defends free speech, has documented the introduction of 185 educational gag orders most related to race, gender, racism and American history designed to control what may or may not be discussed in a classroom. Combined with the more than 1,500 book bans issued in the past 10 months alone, these bills represent an orchestrated attempt to silence marginalized voices and restrict students freedom to learn, according to a statement released last week by PEN.

Not all of these gag order bills have been signed into law, but they have had an unsettling effect on the teaching profession nonetheless. They put teachers on notice: Big Brother is watching you.

And all of this comes on top of the burnout exacerbated by the Covid pandemic, the epicenter of yet another culture war. The pandemic has led to mass teacher absences, contentious mask debates and chaotic plans for how to teach remotely. No wonder a poll by the National Education Association found in January that 55 percent of teachers in public schools are ready to leave the profession altogether.

Many wont, of course. They need the paycheck. They need the health insurance. They may hate the cultural context they now find themselves teaching in, but they love their work. The Achilles heel of schoolteachers, one all too easily exploited by politicians, is that they love their students.

Original post:
Opinion | In the Culture Wars, Teachers Are Under Attack - The New York Times

One day last June, Patti Smith opened her laptop, typed a brief message to the thousands of readers of her Substack newsletter, and hit Send. I would be grateful for any suggestions of songs you think I might try, she wrote. Have a good week-end!

Smith began using the rapidly expanding, increasingly influential, and sometimes controversial email publishing platform in March 2021. Coronavirus had put touring on hold, and Smith was working on The Melting, a sort of diary about life in the COVID era, when someone at Substack reached out. Smith was intrigued. Rather than pursuing a printed work that wouldnt see the light of day for another year or two, she decided to publish The Melting on Substack in real time. She signed one of the companys pro dealsthe Substack equivalent of a book advanceand on March 31 sent out her first newsletter, offering readers a journal of my private pandemic, as well as weekly ruminations, shards of poetry, music, and musings on whatever subject finds its way from thought to pen.

Thirty-eight Substack emails later, Smith scrolled through the comments on her request for cover songs. One reader suggested Paupers Dough by the Scottish musician King Creosote, n Kenny Anderson. Smith found the track on YouTube, instantly falling in love with its slow, plaintive melody and lyrics that she described in a subsequent post as a poem to the people, the salt of the earth. She listened to it on repeat, memorizing the words and singing them as if they were her own. As luck would have it, Smith was due to perform in Andersons home country for the opening night of the COP 26 Climate Change Conference in Glasgow. Four months after discovering Anderson through her Substack, Smith stood onstage with him in the darkness of Glasgows Theatre Royal. I just started crying, she told me. We sang the song together and it was very moving. That was a real Substack moment.

Smith shared this story with me to convey her wholehearted embrace of Substack, which turns five this summer, half a decade after debuting with a promise to accelerate the advent of what we are convinced will be a new golden age for publishing. Since its founding, in tandem with an industry-wide pivot toward digital subscriptions, Substack has aggressively pursued that goal, making it both a darling of the media world and a breakout star of Silicon Valley. More recently, the company has found itself on the front lines of the culture wars. Its laissez-faire approach to content moderation, which sometimes gives voice to objectionable figures booted from other platforms, has made Substack a lightning rod in the debate over regulating free speech. But even amid bursts of negative media coverage, Substack has maintained a large and loyal user base, and there are no signs of an exodus.

Were not here to build A SMALL BOUTIQUE BUSINESS and just hope for the best, and hope that Google doesnt crush us one day.

Smith, for her part, sees her eponymous newsletter as a sort of petri dish for what the medium can be. In addition to her serialized memoir and other miscellaneous writings, Smith uses Substack for audio messages, poetry readings, and photography. She opens her laptop at night and records impromptu videos, inviting fans into her white-walled bedroom. In February, for Smiths paying subscribers$6 a month/$50 a year for unlimited accessshe hosted a livestreamed performance from Electric Lady Studios, belting out classics like Ghost Dance and Redondo Beach.

In its early days, Substack primarily catered to a certain set of internet-savvy writers and journalists, lured by the promise of monetizing a direct relationship with their readers. But as it morphs from a niche publishing concern into a heavyweight start-up mentioned in the same breath as Twitter and Facebook, its user base is proliferating accordingly. I really like my Instagram, but it has specific boundaries, and this was something new, said Smith. It makes me feel like, in the movies, where you see the reporter that goes to the phone booth and calls in her article. I feel a bit like that.

A year and a half ago, in a column published in the pages of this magazine, I suggested that Substack feels like a player that might just be on the cusp of the big leagues. Since then, Substack has raised an additional $65 million in venture capital, bringing its total funding to $82.4 millionled by mega-firm Andreessen Horowitzand its valuation to a reported $650 million. Its head count is about 90, up from 10 at the start of the pandemic. In November the company, headquartered in San Franciscos Financial District, offered a tiny glimpse into its otherwise opaque revenues, saying it had surpassed a million paid subscriptions to Substack publications, the top 10 of which, out of hundreds of thousands, collectively bring in more than $20 million a year. (Substack typically skims off 10 percent of a newsletters revenue, but individual deals vary; some writers take a lump sum in exchange for relinquishing 85 percent of their subscription dollars.) In addition to Smith, several other literary lions have joined Substack (Salman Rushdie, George Saunders, Roxanne Gay, Chuck Palahniuk, Joyce Carol Oates), which has also begun to attract celebrities of varying stripes (Padma Lakshmi, Nick Offerman, Dan Rather, Edward Snowden, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar). In February, President Joe Biden bypassed the long queue of print reporters clamoring for a sit-down and offered one instead to Heather Cox Richardson, the breakout history professor who became Substacks most-read writer last year. Substack also appears to have influenced strategy at major legacy news brands, like The Atlantic and The New York Times, which have been building out their own newsletter portfolios and, in some cases, vying for talent with Substack. Theyre not in Mark Zuckerberg territory just yet, but that appears to be the goal: Someone whos friendly with cofounder Hamish McKenzie told me he once said that Substack would be the next Facebook.

When I asked McKenzie about that, he didnt recall making the remark, but neither did he shy away from laying out the companys ambitions. Were not here to build a small boutique business and just hope for the best, and hope that Google doesnt crush us one day, or Amazon doesnt crush us one day, he said. What we are trying to do is build a true alternative to the attention economy.

McKenzie, a 40-year-old New Zealander who lives in San Francisco with his wife and two kids, is Substacks de facto ambassador to the media. Slim and clean-cut, McKenzie grew up in a rural wine and farming region, where his father worked as an atmospheric scientist and his mother a high school language and culture teacher. At the University of Otago in New Zealands southeast, McKenzie got into journalism, which brought him to Canadas University of Western Ontario for graduate school. In 2006, he moved to Hong Kong and freelanced before helping create Hong Kongs edition of Time Out. Two years later, he joined the American woman who would become his wife, Stephanie Wang, in the United States, eventually landing a reporting gig at PandoDaily, the now defunct technology news website. He seemed very, like, I wanna shake things up, remembers Paul Carr, Pandos former editorial director. You could tell he had big ideas.

At Pando, McKenzies coverage of Tesla and SpaceX caught the attention of an editor who approached him about doing an Elon Musk book. Without a direct line to the elusive billionaire, McKenzie went to the personal website of Musks dietitian mother, found an email address for her, and reached out, seeking advice on the best way to approach her son. To my horror, McKenzie recalls, she just forwarded that email straight to Elonbusted!and then Elon had his P.R. person call me right away. Musk, as it happened, was familiar with McKenzies work and agreed to a call, except he wasnt keen on participating in a book. Have you ever thought about going corporate? he asked McKenzie, who met with Musk about a job at Tesla. McKenzie tried to talk Musk into doing a book anyway but got nowhere. He became a writer for Teslas communications team instead, sticking it out for more than a year before heeding the siren call of his Musk project, Insane Mode, which he left the company to write in 2015. Musk still didnt participate, but McKenzie shared the manuscript prior to publication. It wasnt smooth sailing, McKenzie told me.

While working on Insane Mode, McKenzie took a part-time job doing comms for the messaging app Kik, where he became friends with Chris Best, the companys CTO. Best, a 34-year-old computer wonk who grew up outside Vancouver, had cofounded Kik in 2009 as he was finishing the systems design engineering program at the University of Waterloo in Ontario. In early 2017, Best left Kik and decided to take a year off. I started writing, he told me. One of the things that had been swirling in my head was, like, Hey, I think our media ecosystem has gotten insane! And I wrote basically an essay or a blog post or something. Best shared the piece with McKenzie and asked for feedback. He was bemoaning the state of the world and how it led to this growing divide in society, and how the things that were being rewarded were cheap outrage and flame wars, McKenzie recalls. I was like, Yeah, this is right, and everyone who works in media knows that these are the problems. But what no one knows is how to do something about it. Whats a better way? Whats a solution?

Their solution turned out to be Substack. We were both readers of Stratechery, Ben Thompsons influential, largely paid newsletter about the business of tech and media, says McKenzie, and were like, Yes, the model does work really well. Were both happy subscribers, paying subscribers to Stratechery. Why dont more people try it? It was simple enough to be appealing and convincing to me that it was worth a shot.

Visit link:
Substacks Founders Dive Headfirst Into the Culture Wars - Vanity Fair

Michael Woods doesnt tell his high school students that he is gay. He doesnt bring up gay marriage or any other topic that might court controversy, either.

I am very cautious about a lot of things, said Woods, a special education teacher in Palm Beach County, Florida, who teaches science. I enjoy keeping my job.

But when LGBTQ students take note of the Im Here sticker on the back of his school ID, or his We are ALL HUMAN T-shirt, and come to him for advice or guidance, Woods is happy to provide it. He grew up in the county where he now works and remembers what it was like to be bullied.

For many of these young people, teachers are the safe space, said Woods.

Woods said he wont stop having those conversations when Floridas Dont Say Gay law, which limits classroom discussion about sexual orientation and gender identity, takes effect this summer. But he worries that students wont feel comfortable turning to him for help. Already, some students are asking teachers what theyll be allowed to talk about, Woods said.

Supporters of the Dont Say Gay law, officially titled Parental Rights in Education, say theyre seeking to protect parents rights to decide how their children are raised and prevent teachers from indoctrinating students into liberal beliefs. Lawmakers in at least 20 states have introduced similar bills.

Meanwhile, in Texas, the governor has directed schools to report students who are receiving gender-affirming care, such as hormone blockers, as cases of child abuse. In Alabama, the governor signed a law last month requiring schools to notify parents if their child is questioning their gender identity.

In each case, teachers are being deputized as culture war cops, called upon to police their own behavior, and that of their students. Its a role that many are reluctant to take on, and one that has left them feeling confused, scared and uncertain of their relationships with some of their most vulnerable students.

Related: What do classroom conversations around race, identity and history really look like?

Florida, where the new law will prohibit schools from teaching students about sexual orientation or gender identity in kindergarten through third grade and require lessons for older grades to be age appropriate or developmentally appropriate, parents can sue the district to compel compliance. If they win, the district will have to cover their attorney fees and court costs, and may be liable for damages.

But the law doesnt define key terms like classroom instruction or age appropriate, and it gives the state Department of Education until June 30, 2023 to issue guidance on complying with the law a full year after the law takes effect.

Until then, teachers will be flying blind, unsure if theyre opening their district up to legal risk. Is it still OK to talk to first graders about families, if one student has two moms? Can teachers read second graders a picture book with two dads? What about a book featuring heterosexual romance?

In Volusia County, Florida, third grade teacher Michelle Polgar worries she may have to stop reading aloud the book Mouse in Love, a story about a male mouse who falls for his female neighbor. Romantic love in any form feels verboten. She wonders what will happen in share time, too if a kid mentions that his uncles got married over the weekend, and another kid asks what that means, does she need to shut down the discussion?

Am I going to have to police kids expression? she asked. Am I violating their First Amendment rights?

The laws sponsors have said that it will not prevent students or teachers from talking about their LGTBQ families or stifle student-led discussion or questions. But critics say the bills language is so vague that it will lead many schools and teachers to over-correct, avoiding anything that might anger a parent.

With the possibility of lawsuits, or someone getting upset, Im going to be walking on eggshells, said Polgar.

Anita Carson, a middle school science teacher in Lake Alfred, Florida, said shell keep talking to the LGBTQ students who come to her for support, even if it costs her a job. She points to a survey that found that LGBTQ students who can identify several supportive staff members had higher GPAs, better attendance and were less likely to feel unsafe in school than their peers who could name fewer supportive staff. Still, Carson said, the threat of a lawsuit is one more worry on my head.

If a kid comes out to their parents and says, Ms. Carson helped me figure out how to tell you, then Im possibly going to be sued, she said.

In Texas, where the governors order is being challenged in court, Adrian Reyna, an eighth grade history teacher in San Antonio, said he wont be intimidated into reporting his transgender students to state authorities.

They feel like theyve been carrying the weight of the community for two years. To then be used as pawns in a political game speaks to a lack of respect for teachers.

The one thing I can control is the space I create in the classroom, and I will do everything I can to create a safe and inclusive space, he said.

But he understands why many teachers, particularly sole breadwinners, wont want to risk losing their jobs or teaching certificates. The threat is real, he said.

Mandatory reporting laws in Texas and most other states have long required teachers to report suspected cases of child abuse to authorities, or face potential fines or imprisonment. But the governors directive breaks new ground, classifying gender-affirming care a spectrum of services that includes hormone blockers and surgery as child abuse.

Teachers dont want to be Gov. Greg Abbotts transgender police, said Clay Robison, a spokesman for the Texas State Teachers Association.

Related: Social emotional learning is the latest flashpoint in the education wars

The past two years have been grueling for many teachers, as they coped with a pandemic that forced them to toggle between remote and in-person learning and sometimes do both at once and staffing shortages that have added to their workloads. In Florida alone, there are close to 4,500 teacher vacancies.

To some stressed teachers, the barrage of bills questioning their professional judgment feels like piling on, said Alejandra Lopez, the president of the San Antonio Alliance of Teachers and Support Personnel.

They feel like theyve been carrying the weight of the community for two years, Lopez said. To then be used as pawns in a political game speaks to a lack of respect for teachers.

Lawmakers in at least 20 states have introduced bill similar to Floridas Dont Say Gay law.

Indeed, in a survey conducted earlier this year by the nonprofit EdWeek Research Center, fewer than half of teachers said they feel the public respects them as professionals, down from more than three quarters of teachers a decade ago, and barely half said theyre satisfied with their jobs. Another survey, by the National Education Association, found that 55 percent of respondents were considering leaving their jobs early. Neither poll asked specifically about culture war issues.

Carson, the Florida middle school teacher, said it feels like schools are lurching from one manufactured controversy to another, as conservative politicians and activists seek new ways to score points with parents.

These groups are outraged about one thing for a month, and then its another thing, and it seems they all shift at the same time, she said. We gear up to talk about one controversy, and we get to the meeting, and theyre upset about something else.

For gay teachers like Woods, the attacks can feel personal. It seems, he said, like an intent to erase an entire population of people, as if they dont exist.

Jacqueline Rodriguez, vice president of research, policy and advocacy at the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, said she worries the bills will discourage LGBTQ individuals from pursuing teaching careers by sending the message that this is not the profession to pursue if you want to bring your whole self to work every day.

Enrollment in traditional teacher-preparation programs dropped 35 percent in the decade between 2008-09 and 2018-19, and fell further during the pandemic.

Elana Yaron Fishbein, the founder and president of No Left Turn in Education, a conservative parents rights group, said most teachers support efforts like the one in Florida, but are afraid to speak up.

Unfortunately, the harsh cancel culture silences many of the teachers who oppose the radical indoctrination in schools, or leads them to quit their jobs, she wrote in an e-mail.

I guess you have spoken to the same teachers who support sexualizing children in K-12 schools, she said.

Related: CRT debate repeats past battles about state history textbooks

Concerns that schools are sexualizing children go back at least 100 years, to conflicts over the teaching of evolution, according to Adam Laats, a professor of education and history at Binghamton University. That fight took aim at atheism, but its subtext was that teaching students the science of evolution would cause them to act like animals and have animal sex, Laats said. Some preachers even warned it would promote bestiality.

The targeting of gay teachers, in particular, dates to at least the 1950s, when the Florida legislature created the Johns Committee to root out communists and homosexuals from public schools and colleges. The attacks peaked in the 70s, with Anita Bryants Save Our Children campaign, which popularized the notion that LGBTQ teachers were preying on students, Laats said.

Echoes of that 50-year-old campaign can be heard in the Florida bill, which supporters have described as an anti-grooming measure, designed to prevent pedophiles from exploiting children

I am very cautious about a lot of things. I enjoy keeping my job.

Still, a lot has changed since the 1970s. Public opinion polls show that 8 out of 10 Americans support schools hiring gay and lesbian teachers to work in elementary schools, up from a quarter of Americans in 1977, and close to 60 percent would be somewhat or very comfortable with a transgender individual teaching at their own elementary school.

But Americans remain divided over whether elementary school library books should include gay and lesbian characters, with about half of parents saying it would make them somewhat or very uncomfortable. And fully two-thirds of voters and 88 percent of Republicans believe its inappropriate for teachers or staff to discuss gender identity with children in kindergarten through third grade, another survey, by the conservative Republican polling company Public Opinion Strategies, found.

Woods and other Florida teachers say the new state law is a solution in search of a problem, since Florida, like most states, does not include sexual orientation and gender identity in its teaching standards for the early grades. Still, the law, which takes effect in July, is already having an impact, with some districts, including Woods, preemptively pulling books with gay and transgender characters from school libraries.

Thats happening around the country. In the nine months between July 2021 and March 2022, 86 districts and close to 3,000 schools issued book bans, many of them in response to complaints at public meetings, according to an analysis by PEN America, an organization that advocates for free expression. A third of the banned books included LGBTQ themes or characters, the study found.

Even before the bans, LGBTQ characters were underrepresented in curricula and lesson plans, according to a 2019 survey by GLSEN, an LGBTQ advocacy organization. It found that less than half of LGBTQ respondents between the ages of 13 and 21 could find information about LGBTQ issues in their school libraries, and fewer than one in five were taught positive representations of LGBTQ people, history and events.

What gets left behind is a sense of teachers being attacked, and that leads to a narrowing, a stunting of what goes on in schools.

Such representation matters, according to a research brief by the Trevor Project, which focuses on suicide prevention among LGBTQ students. It found that LGBTQ middle and high-schoolers who were taught about LGBTQ people or issues were less likely to report a suicide attempt than those who hadnt been taught.

Laats, the historian, said he expects the latest moral panic over LGTBTQ instruction to fade over time, fizzling as past panics have. But that doesnt mean it wont leave a mark on the nations schools and teachers, who will make a million tiny decisions to drop books or censor classroom discussion just to avoid the issue, he said.

What gets left behind is a sense of teachers being attacked, he said, and that leads to a narrowing, a stunting of what goes on in schools.

This story about the culture wars was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

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Teachers, deputized to fight the culture wars, are often reluctant to serve - The Hechinger Report

Michelle DeutchmanHigher education, and education in general, is caught in the crosshairs of culture wars that appear not to have much to do with education, scholars are noting. The latest battle has emerged over the issue of free speech on campus, specifically the freedom to teach about systemic racism and the vestiges of white privilege. Such teaching has come under attack with calls to ban critical race theory, which is playing out in legislators attempts to review and restrict tenure for any faculty member who is thought to be teaching divisive content.

One of the greatest threats [in the current fight] is academic freedom and state legislators trying to impose viewpoint-based laws around what can be taught at the university, says Dr. Michelle Deutchman, executive director of the National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement at the University of California.

Using legislation to try to impact the autonomy of universities is really dangerous, she continues.

Deutchman points out that there is already a system for reviewing the work of academics and making sure no one is off track. She says peer review, while not perfect, is a much better form of faculty accountability than allowing people who are not experts in these things, trying to make decisions about the things that underpin the academic enterprise.

A trojan horse?

Among the latest major legislative pushes for free speech on campus came after the 2014 killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., which sparked the Black Lives Matter movement. Then, arguments of free speech revolved around allowing speakers, like Milo Yiannopoulos and Charles Murray, to speak on campus to deliver messages many students opposed as incendiary, hate speech. The most recent reactions, involving faculty censorship and K-12 book bans, followed the 2020 killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis that spurred a resurgence in the movement.

As we see movement towards certain issues, we see unfortunately a backlash, Deutchman says. Free speech is a lot about power dynamics. As power dynamics begin to shift, people may be uncomfortable with that. The problem, she says, is that some people have bigger bullhorns than others.

Aubre Conner, an attorney and lecturer on issues of academic freedom, free speech, and other education law issues at the University of California at Davis, says it is important to interrogate who is controlling the narrative around free speech.

Individuals who felt like [the First Amendment] is supposed to be for them are trying to autocorrect the free speech conversation to again center them and center the white supremacist perspective to free speech, as opposed to taking an equity approach to free speech, says Conner. She says an equity approach would mean that, to shift the conversation, there would need to be an action to allow for that conversation to take place. She says freedom of speech is most important for those whose lives have been marginalized, more than those who are used to having power.

If were really going to center the people who need to be empowered to use free speech, these are the kinds of conversations, these are the free speech cases that should be front and center, not those who are trying their hardest to make sure historically excluded communities will continue to not have a voice about decisions that have been made over the last several centuries, says Conner.

Deutchman is an advocate for freedom of all speech including speech that may be deemed hateful because I think the whole idea is we dont want the government to be deciding what is hateful, adds Deutchman.

Theyre holding the mantle of the free speech flag, but ultimately the things theyre doing [are] chilling speech, she says. Tenure provides protection for people to be more free to create knowledge and share new ideas. Theres this opus to say issues of equity, diversity and inclusion are competing at odds [with unrestricted free speech], says Deutchman.

Is there a push-pull between those two? Absolutely, continues Deutchman. Are they mutually exclusive? No. Thats where universities have to really lean in on their institutional values and help students contextualize speech that might be uncomfortable for them.

Conner says individuals, and especially faculty members, must be careful when taking an absolutist approach to free speech and the U.S. Constitution in general. An absolutist approach may perpetuate a perspective that is harmful to those who were excluded in the thinking, she says.

Just looking at the Constitution just from a historical perspective, the First Amendment and the [Bill of Rights as a whole] were put in place without really any kind of recognition or acknowledgement that Black folks, or any folks from excluded communities, would ever be able to experience those rights, says Conner.

We continue to try to figure out what equal protection under the law even means, she says. When it comes to thinking about the speech that we feel like we need to defend, depending on who the party is, theres typically always a choice Theres not necessarily that same run to protect free speech when historically excluded communities are asking to have their speech protected and empowered.

Conner says that even the courts have placed parameters around what types of speech should be protected; speech that is lewd, vulgar, or inciting violence is not protected under the First Amendment, for example. The key, she says, is to critically examine the values that are being communicated, and whether they advance the universitys overall goal of education.

Leaning into university values

Alain-Philippe DuranDr. Alain-Philippe Durand, dean of the college of humanities at the University of Arizona, is hoping to lead the conversation about the role of the humanities in helping institutions do just that.

We have this vision that the humanities should be a bit more of everything, and the skills that we teach in the humanities, things like critical thinking, empathy, adaptability, communication essential skills, soft skills are really important to the free speech debate and helping students process what theyre hearing, says Durand, who laments that humanities are often not a part of the conversation around freedom of expression.

Durand says the humanities helps people receive information and different perspectives with the intent to understand. What if all of these perspectives were presented and people learn that there can be different perspectives, but it can be done in a polite, respectful way, he asks.

The university is really the place where there can be this formative approach with the safety of the educators being there a safe educational setting, where you can have those things being discussed and settled, he says. If you leave it up to social media for people to get educated on these things, thats where I believe there is the problem.

One of the things the humanities teaches, for example, is the ability to discern when language is being used for manipulation. Even nonfiction prose uses tone, perspective, and cherry picking of facts to present a picture that is beneficial to the storyteller, explains Durand.

Its not just about the ideas that you present, but also the people who are in the room who are going to be receiving these ideas, and you have to pay attention to them as well, he says. And he points back to the mission of the university as well What are we trying to do here? Durand asks. Our objective is to educate. And at the end of the day, we want people to feel like they have learned something. If we try to go with the inflammatory approach, people are just going to close off.

This educational approach is largely about learning how to talk to each other, according to Deutchman. Part of those skill sets is were going to learn how to engage with people we dont agree with, he says. Its a skillset, just like anything else, like calculus or learning how to write an essay.

Aligning university priorities

Many colleges and universities have diversity, equity, and inclusion statements, and some have even revised their mission statements to include these as priorities. But faculty, staff, and students of color across higher ed may affirm there is still work to do around making these priorities a reality on many campuses.

College and K-12 campuses may rush to address the speech itself rather than the issues of inclusion and belonging, Conner says. Its one of those things where our campuses tend to feel like we can talk about campus inclusivity with somewhat of a cognitive dissonance of if were allowing everyone to come onto campus, then the environment must be welcoming of them. But Conner says, you cant create an inclusive environment if students are constantly being bombarded with messages that are harmful and impact how they are made to feel about themselves as individuals.

While it is important for faculty members to help students tackle tough conversations on campus within the safety of a university context, Conner points out that it is equally important to recognize that campus doesnt always feel safe for all students.

Its hard especially for students who come from communities where theyre constantly having to see messages about not belonging in multiple facets of this country that when they come to a space to learn, to learn about how they want to maneuver in the world, theyre not even welcome there, she continues. Just because free speech is allowed and can be helpful to the exchange of ideas, [doesnt mean] the impact of those words, signs, messages that youre not human. Youre still going to feel that.

Conner says its important for universities to make sure there are enough student counselors to handle any additional stress students might be facing because of speakers brought onto campus. If there arent designated free speech zones to house messages students may find harmful, there needs to be an intentional effort to make sure there are alternate paths for students to take to get to class, and trauma-informed resources and staff students can access and that they know where and how to access those things.

If your campus police budget is higher than the budget for student counselors and making sure all of your staff have trauma-informed training then what as a campus are you demonstrating to students who come from communities where police dont often represent situations of safety, she asks. She says the question is especially applicable as campus police are often deployed when there are issues that come up on campus around free speech.

Conner says institutions should also understand that these issues can negatively impact enrollment, especially the diversity of the student population. If schools want to really focus on diversity, this is something that needs to be taken into consideration to retain and to keep students who are from historically excluded [communities] on your campus, says Conner.

At the core of everything is still a need for increased education and not just for students, but for everybody about how the First Amendment works, says Deutchman. We have rights, and we have responsibilities, and theres a whole conversation to be had about how you use those rights responsibly.

Read more from the original source:
Culture Wars - Diverse: Issues in Higher Education