> "Don't say gay" and other anti LGBQT+ laws are being passed.

The law could be described as “baring presentations about sex (straight or otherwise) to a classroom of 5-10 year olds”

After the age of 10 discussions in the classroom can occur. And at any age (5-10), children can ask about sex, but the teachers cannot say “don’t tell your parents”. Which was happening...

Anyway, it has support from all sides. It’s actually a great point about how far the political window has moved. A large segment of the population believes we shouldn’t be discussing anything related to sex, religion or politics in the classroom at any age.

> The law could be described as “baring presentations about sex (straight or otherwise) to a classroom of 5-8 year olds”

One of the authors of the bill was asked if a math textbook that had a word problem saying "Jimmy and his dads go to the store..." would be in violation of this law. He responded that this was precisely the sort of thing the law was intending to prevent.

The law is very much not just about direct sex education prior to 3rd grade.

Such subversively worded math problems should be avoided, no matter who the named parties are.

"Jimmy, Jack, and John go to the store..." would be just as effective of a setup for a story problem without sneaking in moral displays.

Regardless of your opinion of the "subversive" nature of such a word problem, it becomes exceedingly clear that the bill is about more than "presentations about sex (straight or otherwise) to a classroom of 5-10 year olds", as the parent claims.

>> "Jimmy and his dads go to the store..."

> Such subversively worded math problems should be avoided, no matter who the named parties are.

Thinking that phrase is "subversive" is a hard right stance. Classifying it as "sex" talk seems like a literal mental illness.

Are they also going to avoid tacit mentions of heterosexual relationships?

There are things they could try to avoid. It might be a bit early teaching 8 year old kids about tits alternative and wiener measure.

They should, in a kids' math textbook.

"Don't say gay" used to be the rule not just in elementary schools but in most organizations in the US. Up until 2011, you would be immediately dismissed from the military if you said gay under the "Don't ask, don't tell" policy. The Democratic president at the time claimed to have a Bible-based belief that marriage is between one man and one woman, although a lot of commentators suspect he was lying for political advantage. I wouldn't claim that there's no issues the US as shifted right on, and you're right that abortion is a big one, but I don't think anyone who remembers what the country was like a decade or two ago could deny a general leftwards shift.

The culture has shifted fairly significantly left while a backlash to that, in conjunction with a bunch of weird details about our system of government and just the random timing of elderly people passing away, has shifted political power significantly to the right.

Agreed, the Americans I routinely encounter are not that different from Canadians but US politics is off the charts to the right at the moment.

Canadian politics are extremely different from American politics so even though other aspects of our culture are shared you have to pay much closer attention to understand what's going on over the border. (This goes both ways, it took me years to understand how on earth your current PM could get elected.)

One other issue is that both sides will focus on what's happening in individual states and act like the whole country is behaving that way. What's really happening is that people are taking mutually exclusive extreme positions and it's influencing the state laws. This is by design and allows people who disagree to live in harmony.

> it reverts to the centrist opinion of the 1990s/2000s

I don’t know, sort of feels like we’ve largely moved on from the centrist opinions of the turn of the millennium. You’d get the half-shame branding of “metrosexual” for dressing better than average or liking things marginally off the mainline of masculinity, wasn’t exactly a particularly supportive attitude back then.

> Brigaded in less than a minute. Well done, LGBTQIA+ KGB.

Not exactly doing yourself any favours here. Behaving like this makes your point get lost in the emotional hysteria of your reaction.

>You’d get the half-shame branding of “metrosexual” for dressing better than average

"Better than average" is highly subjective. There have always been expectations in every society about how you're supposed to dress and comport yourself in public. The styles and forms these expectations take are largely arbitrary and in constant flux, but the uniformity they provide is anything but. The reason why that kind of uniformity is naturally desirable is because being the odd one out is more often dangerous than it is advantageous. The world is an incredibly dangerous place, so if you exhibit aberrant and/or disruptive behaviors from the majority population, their default response is going to be to shame you, or shut you up, or make you go away. It doesn't matter what the behavior is, only that it deviates from the norm.

There have always been hippies, flamboyant gays, and other eccentric types who have found themselves the odd one out (hello there). But I would argue that their status in society is really determined by the relationships they have with others. If you build up a decent rapport with someone, they'll usually tolerate more of your aberrant behaviors, and might not mind them at all since said behaviors are coming from you specifically.

To tie this back into some of the previous posts, being gay is a quality but it's not a redeeming one, and it doesn't make up for a person's negative traits. There seems to be this expectation from very sheltered people that being the odd one out should afford them certain privileges, often related to some kind of victim status. In reality, people will just see you as weak and bully you for those perceived weaknesses.

Just my two cents as someone who eschews the LGBTBLAHBLAH+++ label for myself, since I don't want to be associated with a cult of corporate and pseudo-academic pandering that deprives me of my agency makes certain assumptions about my morals and politics.

Define frivolously.