Arizona MAGA Fascists: ‘First They Came For The Trans Youth And Drag Queens’

Above Photo: Phoenix Pride is scheduled for April 1-2, 2023. Maybe the parade rout should end at the state capitol for a rally? Just a suggestion.

The caption above is an analogy to Pastor Martin Niemöller’s poem, First They Came, about creeping fascism in Nazi Germany.

Yes it can happen here, and it is happening right now in the MAGA Fascist controlled Arizona legislature. It is up to you to rise up and to resist these MAGA Fascists before they can come for you.

We are less than a month away from going over the fiscal cliff of public education funding if the legislature fails to act on lifting the aggregate education spending limitation.

There is no agreement between the compact of states that rely on the Colorado River for water. Arizona is still headed for a tier 1 water emergency this year, despite the recent wet weather which barely dented the historic megadrought.

These are the critical issues that the legislature should be working on.

Instead MAGA Fascist Republicans are deep into their White Christian Nationalist culture wars targeting distinct minorities to dehumanize and to criminalize. It is only a matter of time until they want to classify these individuals as subhumans who should be eliminated from society. (The Qanon cult has been in this dark place for some time.)

The “show me your parers to pee” bill from a decade ago is back again targeting trans youth. Arizona considers a doomed GOP bathroom bill, advocates warn of harm from continued anti-trans rhetoric (excerpt):

[A] new proposal, introduced by a GOP lawmaker with a history of anti-trans legislation, seeks to reverse all the progress Harrison has made. Senate Bill 1040 mandates that public schools provide an alternate option to people who are “unwilling or unable” to use the multi-occupancy restroom or locker room that matches their biological sex.

One option given is a single-use employee bathroom. If someone shares a bathroom or locker room with a person of the opposite sex, and the school allowed that to occur, they would be able to sue and recover damages for their “psychological, emotional and physical harm.”

The bill’s sponsor, Sen. John Kavanagh, told the Arizona Mirror it serves as a middle-ground approach for trans people and those who have reservations about sharing public facilities with them.

“This is a reasonable compromise which provides everybody with the space to change, shower and go to the bathroom,” he said. “(People) feel very uneasy when there are people of a different biological (sex) standing next to them naked.”

This isn’t the first time the Fountain Hills Republican has tried to keep trans people out of public restrooms in Arizona. In February 2013, the Phoenix City Council voted to expand its anti-discrimination ordinance, adding sexual orientation and gender identity or expression to the characteristics people can’t be discriminated against for in employment, housing or other public accommodations. Less than a month later, Kavanagh gutted an unrelated bill about massage therapy board members to make it a class 6 felony to simply enter a public restroom, shower or dressing room that is opposite of one’s biological sex.

When that effort failed, Kavanagh authored a new measure protecting businesses that chose to bar trans people from using facilities that best fit their gender identity. It, too, was ultimately defeated. 

Last year, amid a record wave of anti-LGBTQ bills across the country, Kavanagh reworked his bathroom bill into one targeting schools. This year’s legislation is identical to last year’s, which didn’t make it past initial committee discussions. 

The new bill hasn’t yet been voted on in committee, although it was prematurely added to the agenda for the Senate Education Committee on Jan. 18, alongside Kavanagh’s pronoun bill, which prompted transgender Arizonans and allies to fill the room to voice their disagreement. To date, it hasn’t been assigned to any committees, but it has until mid-February to be heard.

Determining the ‘value’ of debate

It’s highly unlikely this year’s iteration will make it into law, either. Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs has previously denounced laws that target the trans community, and her chief of staff, Allie Bones, summarily dismissed Kavanagh’s anti-trans bill restricting preferred pronoun use in schools as dead on arrival. 

Still, Kavanagh hasn’t lost hope and noted that, even if his bills fall victim to Hobbs’ veto pen, there remains value in discussing them.

Kavanagh is a troll who only values the trolling done by right-wing media on their hateful White Christian Nationalist culture wars. It’s about “owning the libs” in the Epistemic closure of the ‘conservative misinformation feedback loop’ media bubble.

“We need to have public debate. We need to inform legislators and people in the public,” he said. “People’s minds can be changed — but, regardless, voters need to know where I stand and where the governor stands, and where every legislator in this building stands on critical issues.”

NOT a critical issue, but a right-wing culture war issue to feed their insatiable hatred. The Cruelty Is the Point.

That’s not an argument Jeanne Woodbury, a lobbyist for LGBTQ advocacy group Equality Arizona, agrees with. Continued discussions about the “morality” of trans identities and their place in the public sphere is just an attempt to encourage hostility towards the LGBTQ community as a whole, Woodbury said.

“There’s no real debate, there’s no real issue that exists between trans people and their communities,” she said. “But, because trans people are such a small segment of the population — and very frequently misunderstood — they’re a very popular target for these fear-mongering campaigns.

By White Christian Nationalist MAGA Fascists.

“That’s why they’re still sponsoring these bills when they know they have no chance to succeed — because whether or not they pass, they perpetuate that rhetorical campaign of fear.”

[T]ransgender people are over four times more likely to experience violence than non-transgender people. And restricting which public facilities they can use invariably raises that likelihood. A Harvard study found that students who attend schools that deny them access to bathrooms and locker rooms matching their gender identity face a significantly increased danger of being sexually assaulted.

The MAGA Fascist Republicans are also equating drag queens with pedophilia (from the QAnon cult) and calling it an “evil” that must be stamped out. (There’s the slippery slope of eliminationist rhetoric which leads to actually classifying these individuals as subhumans who should be eliminated from society).

The Arizona Daily Sun reports, Arizona Republicans approve bill to criminalize ‘evil’ drag shows:

Concerns that a proposal seeking to restrict drag shows could lead to the criminalization of transgender Arizonans were ignored by Republican lawmakers on Thursday, who defended their approval of the bill by equating drag with pedophilia and calling it “evil” that must be stamped out.

“I will do everything I can as a senator in this chamber to protect Arizona children from perversion (and) grooming,” said Sen. Anthony Kern, the Glendale Republican who is sponsoring the bill. “I do not believe all drag performers are pedophiles and I do not believe all drag performers are targeting children, but I do think that there…are some bad apples in each group.”

Anthony Kern is the POS traitor insurrectionist who was at the Capitol on January 6 for Trump’s coup d’état to overthrow American democracy, and he later participated in the Arizona Senate’s sham “fraudit” of the 2020 election. “I do not believe all Republicans are insurrectionists and I do not believe all Republicans are coup plotters, but I do think that there…are some bad apples in this group.” Where was Anthony Kern on Jan. 6?

Drag shows have emerged as the newest front in the GOP culture war, after a family-friendly drag brunch in Texas last year was the subject of protests from white nationalist-aligned far-right activists. Kern said his bill was inspired, in part, by that incident. 

His proposal, Senate Bill 1028, places drag shows that entertain audiences in a “sexually explicit manner” under the definition of adult cabaret performances, which have been historically limited to strip shows.

Under the bill’s provisions, such shows would be banned from being held on public property or anywhere a minor could possibly view them. The first violation of the bill’s rules would result in a class 1 misdemeanor for the performer or business hosting them, which could lead to a $2,500 fine and up to 6 months in jail. A second violation is punished with a class 6 felony, which comes with a fine of up to $150,000 and a prison sentence as long as two years.

Critics said the bill’s definition of drag performers could end up looping in transgender people and everyday actors in satirical plays. That definition says anyone who uses clothing, makeup or “other physical markers” that are traditionally perceived as belonging to the opposite biological sex to exaggerate gender roles and sing, dance or act is a drag performer.

Oh Rudy, you are in so much trouble!

Marilyn Rodriguez, a lobbyist for the Arizona chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, slammed the proposal as an attempt to legislate LGBTQ identities out of the public sphere.

“Let’s call this what it is: an unhinged attempt to remove LGBTQ people from public life,” she said.

Jessica Alice Harper added that she would be unable to live her life as a transgender woman if the bill were to pass, and accused legislators of using incendiary rhetoric to turn the public away from the trans community.

“This bill is so vaguely written, it would effectively make it illegal for me to exist in public,” she said. “You either want to legislate us out of existence, rile up mentally unstable people into mass shootings aimed at our community or make life so hard for us that we kill ourselves.”

Republican lawmakers, however, disagreed.

Kern defended his bill as a protection for children who were unfairly exposed to adult-oriented shows, and said the language was narrow enough not to jeopardize anyone outside of sexually explicit drag performances.

But Lisa Bivens, a member of Arizona Attorneys for Criminal Justice, disputed that assertion. The measure defines sexually explicit behavior as having an intent to satisfy a “prurient interest,” which Bivens said is dangerously unclear for both law enforcement officers charged with making arrests and prosecutors interpreting the law in the courts.

“It’s just too broad to provide any meaningful guidance,” she said.

Supreme Court justices, Bivens noted, have ruled in the past that pornography and obscenity can be identified on an “I know it when I see it” basis. That kind of subjectivity, she said, means that laws regulating such issues need to be as narrowly tailored as possible. When laws aren’t specific enough, the only recourse left to clarify their parameters is through the appellate process — which can quickly rack up costs for taxpayers.

The bill also risks running afoul of the First Amendment right to free speech, Bivens added, which protects the expression of ideas in spite of the discomfort of others.

Amanda Brown, a local drag performer, questioned why drag artists are being targeted by the bill when it’s the parents who choose to take their children to shows.

“If they take them to an adult nightclub, then that’s their issue. They should be punished and fined, not the entertainer,” she said.

Democrats on the panel unanimously opposed the proposal, which passed 4-3 along party lines, citing concern over how it could be used against trans and gender non-conforming individuals.

Sen. Christine Marsh, D-Phoenix, said laws already exist that protect minors from sexually explicit shows and pornography. State law prohibits minors from being able to enter such spaces and restricts where and when they are allowed to be held or sold.

If the language in the bill were to be revised to criminalize only sexually explicit shows instead of drag performers, Marsh said she would support it, even though it would be a redundant effort.

“It singles out a particular community, many of whose members are already incredibly vulnerable,” she said.

Kern, who throughout the hearing repeatedly said the bill’s intent was not to single out the drag community, reversed his position in his final remarks and called drag performances evil.

“The reason we are singling out drag performances is (because) there are drag performances out there that are targeting children, and that needs to stop,” he said. “The problem is that children are being targeted in many areas, and it is evil against good…and we’ve got to push back on evil.”

No sir, what is “evil” is that a traitor to his country, an insurrectionist who participated in Trump’s coup d’état on January 6, is an Arizona legislator. You should have been barred from holding office under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. This is a lesson we must teach our children in civics class. The people who voted for you are equally evil.

Another anti-trans bill proposed this session to restrict pronoun use in schools was summarily dismissed by her chief of staff.

Jeremy Helfgot, a spokesperson for Phoenix Pride — whose events and widely attended Pride Parade would be severely affected by SB1028 — told the Arizona Mirror that it’s reassuring to know Hobbs has the LGBTQ community’s best interests in mind, though he lamented that the GOP majority keeps proposing discriminatory legislation.

The goal, he said, isn’t necessarily for the bills to become law, but rather to signal to the party’s base.

“It is a relief to know that the governor is going to ensure that this form of cultural expression and the individual people who engage in it are going to remain protected,” he said. “It begs the question: why are these lawmakers pursuing this when they know it has absolutely no chance of becoming law? And the answer is, it’s a fundraising tool.”

Helfgot noted that SB1028 and legislation like it has far-reaching consequences, even if they’re ultimately vetoed. Trans and questioning youth who are listening to the harmful rhetoric being advanced by lawmakers stand to suffer the most, he said.

“Transgender kids who are harming themselves are not doing so because of their transgender identity, they’re doing so because policies like this are telling them that the world we live in is a place that doesn’t want them, where they cannot be themselves,” he said.

Suicide rates among trans youth is high. As much as 82% of trans youth have considered suicide and LGBTQ advocacy group the Trevor Project found that anti-trans rhetoric from state leaders only worsens that reality. [The cruelty is the point.]

Helfgot added that efforts to legislate away LGBTQ Arizonans and events imperil the state’s money making power — a concern that should be at the top of legislator’s minds amid a looming recession. Legislative proposals like Kern’s do the opposite, deterring businesses from seeking a home in Arizona or a host for their events. Phoenix Pride alone drew in more than 40,000 to downtown Phoenix last year during its Pride month activities.

Lawmakers should take their cue from equally deleterious past attempts, Helfgot said, like SB1062 in 2014, which sought to protect businesses with a religious conviction against hiring LGBTQ people, that was ultimately vetoed by then-Gov. Jan Brewer after pressure from the business community, and SB1070, which resulted in costly boycotts and losses for the tourism and convention industries.

“Laws like this even being contemplated in this state sends a message to employers who may locate here, it sends a message to organizations that may bring large-scale events here, that we’re not a welcoming state,” Helfgot warned.

It is too late for the NFL to cancel the Super Bowl in Glendale next weekend, but the NFL can use the Super Bowl as an opportunity to condemn the anti-LGBTQ hatred from the MAGA Fascists in the Arizona legislature with a statement of support for trans youth, and to make it clear that this will be the last Super Bowl awarded to Arizona if this hatred continues.