Today’s Really Really Bad Idea comes courtesy of a Moms for Liberty activist who wants to bring segregation back to the public schools — but in a fun new 21st century way, targeting queer students rather than racial minorities.
She spelled out her not-so-modest proposal during an interview on MSNBC’s Field Report with Paola Ramos.
As PinkNews reports,
member Crystal Alonso told Ramos that discussion with pupils about being LGBTQ+ should not be an “open thing in classrooms”, and said she believes queer kids should be confined to “separate classrooms”.
“Like for example children with autism, Down’s syndrome, they have to have special IEP [individualised education plan] meetings with a counsellor,” she said.
“They have to be put into separate classrooms.
“I understand, because it’s a different type of education for children with those disabilities, but I think that for children that identify differently, there should also be like a specialised… something for them.”
Is “ghetto” the word you’re looking for? In any case, this doesn’t sound much like the “liberty” the group claims to support.
It would be nice if we could dismiss Alonso’s crackpot proposal as the ravings of a fanatic. But Moms for Liberty, which portrays itself as a grassroots organization of “concerned mothers” is building itself into a formidable political force with the help of some of the biggest names in right-wing media and politics. Launched last year with only five chapters, the group got early boosts from the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Breitbart and Fox News; Naomi Wolf, the former feminist who’s now gone over to the dark side, gave the group a shoutout on Tucker Carlson’s show. The group has also developed relationships with right-wing pols like Ron DeSantis and Betsy DeVos.
Less than two years from its launch, the group now claims to have more than 200 chapters in 40 states and somewhere in the neighborhood of 100,000 members and financial supporters. One such supporter, Publix heir Julie Fancelli, has donated $50,000 to the group.
If the group succeeds in electing members and ideological compadres to school boards around the country, ideas like Alonso’s segregation special could be taken up as serious policy proposals.
That’s all we fucking need right now.
Follow me on Mastodon.
Send tips to dfutrelle at gmail dot com.
We Hunted the Mammoth relies on support from you, its readers, to survive. So please donate here if you can, or at David-Futrelle-1 on Venmo.
FFS, we’ve been mainstreaming kids with disabilities for at least 50 years. They get an IEP, extra tutoring, and help, but they aren’t ghettoized either.
There was a boy with Down syndrome in my junior high science class, which was (does math) in 1974, and a girl in our class who had some intellectual and physical disabilities in (more math) 1972. In an extremely anti-woke, all White area with its share of Karens, as my mom reported after PTA meetings. (Mom was one of the tutors for the kid with DS. Very nice boy, great sense of humor, studied hard)
So what kind of backwards hellhole is this beeotch living in where kids are still separated?
Ontario?
OT: I’ve just about HAD IT with these fucking allergies, or whatever the hell they are. I’ve been sniffling and sneezing for most of the past four-plus hours. The allegedly-24-hour Allegra I took first thing after I got up lasted perhaps 2 hours; I took a second perhaps an hour after that, and all that one has managed to accomplish is to somewhat take the edge off the symptoms. I’ve spent basically all of that time in a well-ventilated room (windows open, fan on), too. (The history of this thing is that it’s tended to be worse in the winter, pointing to indoor dust as the irritant, not pollen.)
Does anyone know of anything OTC and non-drowsy that’s either more reliable or just plain more potent? I’d ask my doctor, but of course I’ve had none for three years or so — the Ford regime apparently decreed that having your own doctor would henceforth be restricted to the wealthy and those well-off enough to live in the big urban centers where rents are triple what I pay here. Said decree having been enacted right before the onset of the twindemic, of course.
@ gss
The very small village in Kansas I grew up in. I graduated in 2017 and had the kids with non verbal autism and ds were in separated class the entire time they were there from about 4th grade to graduating highschool.
Kids with physical disabilities got to be with general population as long as they didn’t have intellectual disabilities. The only reason I knew about the nonverbal kids was because the tutoring hour I had for my ADHD and the room I took my tests in were in there section of the school.
I find it pathetic that the people who talk the most about liberty want the most restrictive rules.
So, that Kansas town only had the most profoundly disabled (nonverbal, e.g.) getting separate instruction full-time, and others with difficulties (like you with your ADHD) were in gen pop with just a few visits to the “disabled area” for some IEP tutoring and a distraction-reduced test area?
Contrast Ontario circa 1995: anyone “unusual”, whether intellectually disabled, gifted, a mix of both (e.g. much worse than typical-for-age at some thing and much better at another), or just plain odd, got relegated to not only a separate area of the school but to little tin-box outbuildings (with just as poor heating, cooling, insulation, and ventilation as that would seem to suggest) for totally segregated classes. Whether it’s improved since then, I couldn’t venture to guess, but given that Tory Mike “the Knife” Harris, LINO Kathleen “Let’s Pretend We’re Tories And Privatize Hydro One” Wynne, and then Tory Doug “Brother’s a Cokehead” Ford have been running Ontario in the interim, I seriously doubt it.
Allergy update: the 2nd Allegra also wore off about 2 hours after it was taken. Things have been … not good since then. I honestly don’t know what to do. I can’t suddenly start spending 12 times as much on those fucking things without it totally destroying my budget. At the same time I can’t live with symptoms this severe 24 hours a day for the rest of my life. Why the hell is this happening? Indeed, why did I ever start needing that stuff? It’s not natural. I didn’t have this since childhood. I got to my late 30s before this suddenly started, and to 45 before it suddenly got step-function worse today. If it’s not an actual, real, innate allergy, but some acquired condition, is there some way to un-acquire it? I could definitely use not to be having to spend around thirty bucks a month on stuff that, increasingly, doesn’t even work very well anyway …
Someone should tell this woman that IDEA and ADA are things. Separating children with disabilities from their peers without disabilities is a big no-no these days.
The particular concept of liberty / freedom (they usually use the two words interchangeably) which is used by most of the right wing is not one which left-wingers nor centrists would recognize as such: The “right” to impress their values onto their children without the existence of any clear counterexamples which could cause some of them to reject those values. For example, if you’re going to claim that gay people are miserable, depraved sinners, it’s a much harder sell if those people are openly living normal lives. Sometimes it’s not even just for their children; it’s also to protect themselves from being tempted into straying too far from the worldview which their parents impressed upon them, because to believe differently would mean ostracism from their communities, or worse.
While some of them will admit that what they want for other people is technically a violation of those other peoples’ freedoms, they’ll invoke “the right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins” or similar and come up with all sorts of justifications why the existence of certain groups in a non-oppressed, non-suffering state is an attack on “all that is good and decent”. The ones who don’t admit any such thing go with some version of “because God”.
Off-topic, but Gary Busey has apparently been charged with sex crimes following alleged inappropriate conduct at a horror movie fan convention in New Jersey.
…The “obvious” solution is that, if they want to live in an environment mostly or entirely free of outside influences, they can form isolated communities to live in. In practice there are are a ton of obstacles and headaches involved with that, as well as a few ethical issues which they probably won’t care about even though they *really* should. But even if this were an easy option, it wouldn’t make most of them happy; they would very much prefer to live in a world where they’re considered the “normal” ones, not one where they have to frame themselves as a tiny bastion of purity in the midst of a demon-infested nightmare realm.
Jews have a way of expanding one’s own home so as to create a larger area in which the rules of our religion can be applied throughout an entire community as if it was the inside of a Jewish home.
But for jews we have to string a pseudo-fence, and the rule changes achieved do more to liberate jews on the sabbath than constrict others.
Christians, it seems, are forever wanting to create an inverted eruv, where religious freedom means that non-orthodox Christians (small “o” orthodox, please note) are allowed to escape the requirements of their orthodoxies only by retreating into a private home. It is up to the non-Christian to purchase and clearly define a limited non-Christian space. No duty is placed on the Christian to define the limits of their reach. To be in public in the USA is to be accountable to the whims of the Christian orthodox, and the first amendment’s protections are limited to the idea that one cannot be burned at the stake for heresy while one remains on one’s own property.
@ Surplus to Requirements — I hear you about the allergies. Just a seat-of-my-pants hypothesis I just recently came up with, I wonder if the problem you’re having is secondarily related to the COVID pandemic? Not the actual infection, I mean the cumulative results of 2+ years of semi-isolation, mask-wearing, quarantining, etc.
Just the other morning, I woke up with a horrific sore throat. Really painful, but worse, my throat was so swollen I could not speak without gagging, and could barely swallow. It was pretty scary. Anyhow, it was the weekend, so I went to an Urgent Care and they gave me a COVID test and a strep test, both negative. But the doctor was really impressed with how extreme the swelling was, so he gave me a steroid shot and a recommendation to go to the ER if it didn’t get better in a few hours.
Well, lucky me — it did get better in a few hours, and by the next morning I felt almost 100%. The way I used to feel when I was getting over a cold, back in pre-COVID times. But then I realized, I haven’t had a cold in almost 3 years!
I went online and saw that the major effect of the steroid injection I’d gotten was to reduce one’s immune response to an infection, and thereby reduce inflammation. And then it hit me — what I’d caught wasn’t some horrible throat infection, but just a plain old cold. And my immune system, bored out of its mind after 3 years of nothing to do, just went bananas!
Maybe you’re experiencing something similar, with your immune system overreacting to your allergens because it’s finally getting something to DO.
Maybe you can find a healthcare provider who can put you on a low-dosage steroid for a short time? I dunno, as I said, this whole hypothesis comes straight from my ass, but it might be something to think about. Hope you feel better soon!
@Surplus
Please don’t @ me because I have bad news: it is possible to form a non-addictive dependency on nasal decongestants. If you Google “rebound congestion” you will be able to find information on what seems to be happening to you.
I was able to help alleviate this issue in myself with the assistance of a Neti pot, but admittedly there are risks with Neti pot usage and you need to be careful to boil the water and let it cool and add saline, etc, which is a hassle. It is cheap after the initial investment, however.
If you do not consider this to be a good fit for your issue, do not @ me.
@Em Zuli:
I find it pathetic that the people who talk the most about liberty want the most restrictive rules.
What they want is freedom from all those inconvenient people they have to share a world with.
I find the pretty obvious attempt to re-medicalize things in the LGBTQ+ spectrum really telling. That special ‘something’ they fantasize about will be some sort of conversion attempt. Either by direct means or by making life so ungodly hard for their victims, they will flee into the closet or outright off themselves.
@surplis.
Yes when I say village I mean village. We are to small to count as a town. 1,000 people call it home. The school has 300 students in it totally. 42 kids graduated with my class and we were one of the bigger classes.
The school was very small. I would go to those sections for distraction free testing. So did the other students with ADHD and the kid who was dyslexic. I’m sure other students had learning disabilities that they didn’t know about.
My class includee
4 students with ADHD
One with dyslexia
One with a spinal problem who was completely wheelchair bound and paralyzed
One who was a little person.
One student who was very typical and healthy but had a condition where his brain could not feel pain. He had issues through out the school of doing things like setting himself in fire and cutting off his own thumb.
And two students with non verbal difficulties that I’m not actually sure what they had because they weren’t in general pop.
And that was just my grade. There were several others that I’m sure had their own needs. I don’t know what other schools did. But we were small enough to do this
In contrast, I’m keeping my windows firmly closed because everything in California is dray AF and thus there’s dust flying around and the good plants are dead but the weeds are still pollinating so much.
I tried fexofenadine, which is expensive, but it still made me sleepy. Bah. My doc said to get the generic OTC version of Flonase spray (fluticasone propionate), and 2 squirts of that in each nostril every morning seem to be doing the trick. I forgot it for several days in a row and thought I was getting Covid again. Cleared right up when I went back on it. Just have to never take more than prescribed, or more often; doing that with any allergy med will rebound and make you worse.
On really bad days, I take one good old Benadryl at bedtime, but that’s only a couple times a year. I can’t do neti pots, but plain old saline spray is very useful for me and the Mr. Cleans out the gunk, non-toxic.
Still worth it to live in a very area of a blue state where all my gay, trans, and non-right-wing-Christian friends can live openly.
Allergies are obnoxious. It’s also totally normal to develop new ones as you age. Aging is fun :/
I take flonase (I think there’s a generic now) for a different issue, but it helps with allergies as well. My husband actually takes it for allergies.
I usually do an antihistamine and a decongenstant (the real stuff) because when I’m congested it tickles my nose and makes me sneeze.
A cold pack on the eyes helps too. You can also try steaming your face. Easiest way is in the shower, but if you don’t to do that you can heat a kettle full of water and sit over it and try to breath in the steam. That sometimes helps to loosen things up. Then a netty pot or just a saline rinse can help.
On topic, this is… gross. What would the plan be for kids that come out in the middle of the year? Just yank them from class and put them in the special building?
It can make sense for student with learning disabilities to be in their own classrooms. Of course it’s better when they can interact with all the other students in the school, but some students need extra support and a quieter environment. But what reason could LGBTQ students need to be separate? It’s not like gay math is different from straight math…
Surplus … Allergies.
You might be suffering from my own misconceptions about allergies. Long story short, the born-with-it allergies are far, far outnumbered by the acquired-overload-malfunction ones that pop up throughout life.
For you, my first thought would be washing powders or liquids, soaps and shampoos, other cleaning products and processes. (Tho in my family my husband and one child seemed to have a genetic propensity for these sensitivities.) I’ve acquired allergies to penicillin, bananas and a couple of other medications in my 50s and 60s. One daughter-the skin allergy one – suddenly came up allergic to pineapple in her mid-30s.
If I came into your living quarters the first things I’d look for would be fabric softeners, “herbal” soap and shampoo, any similar pleasant or otherwise floor or general cleaning products. Though you’re probably right about dust mould spores and dust mites and all the rest being the main culprits. And you, working on your own in your currently unhealthy state, are hardly up to the wash- the-kitchen-ceiling ( plus every tiny crack and crevice in floors, doors and window frames) level of clean, dust and clean again required.
Maybe start by removing all curtains blinds and the like from a small manageable room that you could turn into your health haven. And don’t forget to wash or clean all the brooms mops and vacuum cleaner parts while you’re at it.
One other, completely unmanageable, irritant I was once ignorant of …. wet weather. Especially now with seasons no longer so predictable, rainy weather plus newly opened blossoms equals pollenpalooza.
Sorry to be so gloomy.
@GSS ex-noob
I went to a middle school in Texas where I was fully segregated for three years with several other kids who had minor learning disabilities. We also ate at a separate lunch table and were not allowed to speak to other kids. They kept the ones with more profound disabilities in a sort of day care setting. This was 1997
@Jess: Well… Texas.
I’m so sorry that happened to you. While kids with major learning disabilities might need a separate class, they still should be taught and not warehoused. Minor learning disabilities just need extra help.
All the “special needs” kids I grew up with ate with everyone else in the cafeteria.
In college, I ate with a table of wheelchair users, Deaf and blind people, people with epilepsy, and so on. And a few normies who were friends of the group. I was also lucky enough to be in a separate group who served as a master’s degree requirement for a guy who had CP. His parents had been told but refused to institutionalize him when he was born (late 50s), then he was steered into accounting, because he could be sat in a cubicle and do numbers and the normies didn’t have to see him walk funny.🙄 Finally he trained as a counselor/advisor for people with disabilities in schools. His true calling. Mostly we met once a week to eat lunch, talked about crip stuff, and told jokes, but sometimes we did direct action against the school admin. I fondly recall the day we all dumped our various pills out on the table. So many different colors.
I thought Naomi Wolf was pro-gay…
this is your brain on cis-het normativity. not even once
re: allergies
mine are so absolutely out of control lately that i’m now having a severe eczema outbreak going on about two weeks. i want to get out of my skin now pls