There is no level to which Republicans will not stoop in their hatred of LGBT folks:
Earlier this year, the Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service updated its nondiscrimination policies to cover sexual orientation and gender identity for the department’s nutritional programs, including the National School Lunch Program. A coalition of 22 Republican-led states sued USDA this week to reverse the update. In the lawsuit, the states sought to assuage the court about their intentions. “To be clear, the states do not deny benefits based on a household member’s sexual orientation or gender identity,” they insisted.
That would be somewhat comforting if the states didn’t have a “but” to add in the next sentence. “But the states do challenge the unlawful and unnecessary new obligations and liabilities that the Memoranda and Final Rule attempt to impose—obligations that apparently stretch as far as ending sex-separated living facilities and athletics and mandating the use of biologically inaccurate preferred pronouns,” the states went on to say. The USDA does not generally have authority over student athletics or pronouns, and the agency told Politico last month that it would only enforce the rule for discrimination that was directly tied to the school lunch program.
The lawsuit itself is only the latest chapter in the GOP’s legal war on LGBTQ rights at the state level. Indeed, in a separate battle, many of those same states are also directly challenging the Biden administration’s interpretation of Title IX for public schools, in the wake of a major Supreme Court ruling on LGBT rights two years ago. Some legal conservatives have suggested that their primary concern is transgender athletes’ participation in girls’ sports. But the USDA case shows how far some Republican-led states will go to resist any legal recognition of LGBTQ rights whatsoever.
You can read the rest of The New Republic article by Matt Ford by clicking on this link.
