Quote:
Originally Posted by Hateandhatred
I'd be very curious to see the flipside of these. Like... What was their motive?
Surely they didn't just think it was a society problem. I mean, I'm sure a lot of uber conservative politicians do think that, but actually acting on it also sounds like PR suicide.
I feel sorry for people who are going to be affected by this.
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You could reasonably infer the origin of this legislation to be severely out-of-touch politicians trying desperately to appeal to their militantly right-wing constituents as a means to remain in office and, therefore, in power, but that sounds convenient and simple.
This is speculation insofar as I haven't bothered to do any research on the topic (and, since this is a casual forum and not a political journal, I'm not going to perform that step right now), but the average constituent awareness of LGBTQIA+ existence and especially drag shows seemed limited until recently. Then you get a gamut of cable/broadcast news networks cherry-picking isolated incidents and spinning the veritable fuck out of otherwise inconsequential realities like drag shows and trans athletes to their viewers and, suddenly, you have a useful contingent of Very Angry People. That stratum of people proceeds to get loud on social media and in the general direction of their local government, and bonkers legislation like this is put on the table.
Motives for this brand of nonsense remain obfuscated, although "white male evangelicals trying to establish a white male evangelical state" doesn't seem terribly outlandish. Advertisement-based news programming has shredded journalism into an embarrassing deluge of reactionary content, and while
all of it is editorialized propaganda, the networks supporting this drivel (FOX, OANN, Newsmax) appear to be especially sensationalist.
Unfortunately, there is a large volume of people that remains vehemently anti-LGBTQIA+, so for any politician who seeks to perfunctorily expand their rapport with their constituents, simply showing minority populations the legislative middle finger is enough to get them cheering. The antonym of PR suicide, if you will.