Criminalize and silence. Last Friday, Republican Alabama Governor Kay Ivey signed into law two laws aimed at banning classroom discussions of gender identities and outlawing “transformative” health care for young transgender people in the southern state. United States.
These two ultra-conservative measures add to the list of similar laws introduced or adopted in around 40 states for more than a year that target the civil rights of the LGBTQ+ community and awareness of (or even the expression of) its diversity. . A Republican Party strategy to achieve political gains in an increasingly divided society as the midterm legislative elections approach.
“The current wave of laws or bills seeking to constrain, criminalize and gag diversity is deeply concerning,” summarizes in an interview with the To have to Jeremy C. Young of PEN America, dedicated to defending freedom of expression. “And this censorship trend will only stop once people hopefully come to their senses a bit. »
Since January 2021, no less than 156 censorship bills have been promoted by Republican governments in 39 states across the country, a recent PEN America report shows. Florida, the nation’s third-largest state, gave the movement visibility by passing a law last month — dubbed “ Don’t Say Gay (“Don’t say the word ‘gay'”) by its detractors — which now prohibits conversations about sexuality and gender identities in schools, from kindergarten to the end of elementary school.
” The law project “Don’t Say Gay“Florida is just the tip of the iceberg,” the organization wrote in its report. While race, gender, and American history remain the most common targets of censorship, bills that silence speech about LGBTQ+ identities are increasingly taking center stage. »
Forbidden books
This cultural war has also taken on the appearance of a campaign of erasure orchestrated by the radical right in the libraries of 86 school districts in 26 states where, between July and March, 1,586 requests to remove books from the shelves were filed, says Young. And very often with a positive response.
Among the most targeted titles are All Boys Aren’t Blue (Blue doesn’t suit all boys), by George M. Johnson, Gender Queer: A Memoir (not translated), by Maia Kobabe, on the identity questions of adolescence, Out of Darkness (untranslated), by Ashley Hope Pérez, which relates a love story between a young African-American and a Mexican-American, or even The Bluest Eye (The bluest eye), a novel by Toni Morrison about the intimate explorations of a young African-American in 1940s America.
“This is an unprecedented attack on the freedom to read, and this, on a level not seen for decades in the United States”, summarizes Jeremy C. Young, who calls on the defenders of the freedom of expression in class “to make everyone else aware of the damage caused by these laws” and, above all, to “organize to overthrow them”.
A culture war
For American sociologist Nella Van Dyke, professor at the University of California and specialist in social diversity in the United States, this wave of bills remains very surprising in a country where LGBTQ+ people are nevertheless increasingly accepted. “What we are witnessing is a culture war waged by the Republican Party in states controlled by extremists,” she said in an interview. Donald Trump taught them that garnering attention through controversial bills can help them get re-elected. And that’s what they’re doing to try to mobilize their conservative base. »
She adds: “This is partly a negative reaction to the gains made by progressive movements in recent years. The Republican Party offers an ethnonationalist and anti-inclusive agenda with the sole purpose of mobilizing, largely, rural and white Americans, in defiance of universal political norms and principles. »
In March, Georgia lawmakers began consideration of a controversial bill, backed by 10 senators, that seeks to ban classroom discussions of sexual orientation and gender identity, as well as fight the promotion of “racial identities” which, according to the text, would be “destructive to the fabric of American society”.
A month earlier, Republicans in Kansas introduced a bill in the state House to outlaw the depiction of homosexuality in school materials, while in Indiana, the radical right-wing party wants to force schools to “obtain the prior written informed consent of the parent of a student under the age of 18 […] before he can participate in any discussion of human sexuality”.
“We are facing a white, rural and suburban Christian movement that could be described as increasingly fascist, with its attacks on education programs and its desire to destroy books,” summarizes Laurie Essig, director of Gender, Sexuality and Feminism Studies at Middlebury College, Vermont, when joined by Duty.
“It’s something that started in the 1990s, but has accelerated in recent years, fueling a global far-right movement that relies on notions of ‘traditional family values’ here in the United States. United, and of “traditional sexual values”, as in Russia, to consolidate its electoral bases. »
Opportunistic split
The movement is also supported by the divide in the United States, where more than six out of 10 Americans nevertheless express opposition to any regulation or any law seeking to reduce discussions on gender identities and sexuality in schools, according to an Ipsos poll conducted last March on behalf of the ABC network.
However, these laws are supported by 61% of respondents who call themselves Republicans, compared to 20% of Democrats and 35% of independents. The sounding also highlighted support that increases with the age of respondents: it is 43% among those aged 65 and over, but drops to a third among those under 50.
“Across American society, demographic shifts no longer favor the Republican Party, with a rapidly growing non-white population and a growing proportion who identify as LGBTQ+,” Nella Van Dyke notes in explaining these campaigns. of censorship.
A recent Gallup poll showed last February that a record 7.1% of American adults are now no longer afraid to identify as other than heterosexual, with a spike of… 21% within the generation Z, made up of citizens born roughly between 1990 and 2010.
For the sociologist, these figures suggest “a swing of the pendulum” and, above all, “a counter-mobilization” in the face of the Republicans’ attempt to undermine the rights of a minority with variable demographic geometry. « The uprising of January 6, 2021 [pour tenter d’empêcher la certification du vote présidentiel en faveur des démocrates] demonstrated that Republicans will do anything to retain power. Maybe they will get there in the short term, but hopefully our judiciary and American voters will stop them from establishing an authoritarian government,” she says.
An authoritarian regime which, through the censorship campaigns underway in several states, has for several months been giving a taste of its possible nature.