This is New Jersey governor candidate Jack Ciattarelli (R) and in this 15 second clip, he is indicative of the homophobia and willful ignorance spewed in this country about LGBTQ people.
From LGBTQNation:
“When I’m governor you won’t have to deal with it, but we don’t teach gender ID and sexual orientation to kindergartens,” he said. “In the sixth grade, we don’t teach sodomy. And we’re going to push back on the LGBTQ curriculum. It goes too far.”
No one is teaching gender identity or sexual orientation to children in kindergarten and of course no one is teaching sodomy to sixth graders.
LGBTQNation writer Alex Bolinger said that when it comes to the sodomy claim, Ciattarelli is referring to a state law which requires school to teach about LGBTQ history.
How this idiot equates teaching sodomy to teaching about LGBTQ history is a sad reality when it comes to this nonsensical culture war. To some people, sex is what LGBTQ people are all about. To them, it is our total existence. That's why they are always whining about how LGBTQ visibility isn't proper or how children should be guarded from even an iota of something which shows us existing as normal people. It's not enough for them to define us via sexual behavior. That is how they want the world to define us and that is how they want us to define ourselves. Because of this, they attempt to shut down any discussion or facts which deviate from their warped narrative.
To me, that's dangerous. On Tuesday, I made the wonderful discovery that the first man to refer to himself as a "drag queen" was an African-American former slave by the name of William Dorsey Swann. He fought police over 100 years before Stonewall and sought a pardon from President Grover Cleveland in 1896 after being arrested for supposedly running a brothel. His request was denied but still that made him the first American to push for legal action demanding the LGBTQ community's right to gather.
For a black gay man like myself who has been constantly searching for a link between the black and gay communities predating the 20th century, that's a pretty damn big deal. And it should be taught in schools, along with other facets of LGBTQ history.
It's neither fair nor right to force a one-dimensional definition crafted from homophobia on LGBTQ people and our families. And I hope New Jersey voters agree.
