Flashcard uproar shows NC Republicans really do want you to stop saying gay
When North Carolina Republicans introduced their “Parents’ Bill of Rights,” they explicitly said it wasn’t “anti-gay,” but an effort to address the concerns of parents about what is being taught at schools.
“Nothing more. Nothing less,” Senate leader Phil Berger said the day the bill was announced. They said the bill wouldn’t allow sexuality or gender identity to be part of the curriculum in kindergarten through third grade, but if such topics came up organically, that wasn’t prohibited. It wasn’t, Republicans stressed, a “don’t say gay bill.”
But Friday, House Speaker Tim Moore and Rep. Erin Paré published a news release saying that a series of flashcards used to teach preschool-aged children colors were not “age-appropriate materials.”
The cards, produced by the company BuyUs Box, depicted different types of families. The color “white” depicts a smiling, happy couple wearing white. One of the people has short hair, is wearing a white button-down over a white shirt, and is visibly pregnant. The partner, however, is visibly more feminine. In the news release and later on Fox News, Paré, who is up for re-election, criticized the “pregnant man” on the flashcard, even though that isn’t described on the card and isn’t discernible from the picture. The card may not even be depicting a trans man and his cis partner — it could also be two cis women.
Either way, that’s apparently not appropriate.
Instead of settling the matter with the preschool teacher, or the principal, or even the school district, a parent called Paré to inform her of the cards. After the ensuing uproar, the bullied teacher quit.
It’s a clear signal that, despite saying otherwise, Republicans aren’t just looking to curtail sex education or history classes from teaching about gender or bodies or the gay rights movement. They want these conversations to stop altogether, even if it’s just in passing reference.
If the flash cards depicted a cisgender, heterosexual couple — a pregnant woman and her husband, or a husband and wife with their kids — then no one would be complaining. Why is being gay or trans somehow PG-13 or inappropriate?
The cards are not pornographic or crass. They all feature smiling families of different sizes, genders, races, and abilities. They all look happy and loved. That is what “age-appropriate” LGBTQ+ teaching is about: love is what makes a family a family.
What’s more disappointing is that Wake County Schools have called the flash cards “inappropriate.” It sends a message to LGBTQ+ parents and children in the school system: their existence, and the way they exist in the world, is inappropriate. Which, it seems, is exactly the message some Republicans want to deliver.
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This story was originally published May 31, 2022 at 5:01 PM with the headline "Flashcard uproar shows NC Republicans really do want you to stop saying gay."