U.S. Rep. Becca Balint (D-Vt.) spoke with the Washington Blade on Saturday about the LGBTQ and women’s history education bill she and U.S. Rep. Ritchie Torres (DN.Y .) were reintroduced last week.
The legislation, like the actions recently announced by the White House, responds to book bans and curriculum restrictions that have increasingly emerged in conservative states and school districts, which disproportionately target educational materials that include and LGBTQ stories.
Balint and Torres’ LGBTQI+ and Women’s History Education Act of 2023 would to authorize the director of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History to develop and distribute resources for educators to “teach LGBTQI+ education and women’s history in a more inclusive and intersectional way.”
On June 8, for its part, the White House debuted plans to address attacks on the safety and rights of LGBTQ Americans. Among these were instructions to the U.S. Department of Education to appoint a coordinator to “address the growing threat that book bans pose to students’ civil rights,” including providing “new training for schools across the country on how book bans are targeted.” communities and create a hostile school environment may violate federal civil rights laws.”
Balint told the Blade that the education bill and these moves by the White House “complement each other,” but that his efforts with Torres “were not as coordinated” with the Biden-Harris administration as they were product of the shared understanding of legislators. “This moment we’re in, as we’re both queer Americans trying to live our lives and not erase our stories.”
“And I get to that, too,” Balint said, “as a longtime high school social studies teacher” who also taught history at the community college level. “This push by the GOP to erase us not just from society but from history,” he said, is “so dangerous.”
“It is important for us to make sure that our stories and our stories are preserved, not only for the sake of posterity, but also because the students of this country need to be able to see themselves in their history that we teaches,” Balint said.
Battles over Black, LGBTQ, and women’s history inclusion have rocked school districts across the country, leading to legislative restrictions being passed in conservative states and even in traditionally conservative areas. known as liberal strongholds, such as Southern California.
Last week there were protests over the inclusion of syllabi that included the late gay rights activist and politician Harvey Milk in Temecula, Riverside County.
“We can’t write off any area of the country,” Balint said. “There are also right-wing movements coming into more traditionally blue states, and they’re trying to make parents and community members afraid of their neighbors.”
As the right has deliberately sought to anger queer and transgender children, fearmongering to anger the conservative base, the MP said: “It is very important that those of us in a position to support those teachers in these schools who are trying to -ho”. the right one [because] they need help, now they are under siege”.
Balint said his wife is from Wyoming, a solidly conservative state where she also has teaching experience.
“I understand the struggles that teachers have in these schools, when they want to introduce a more inclusive story, a truer story, of the complexity of life in this country,” he said.
“So I think it’s a very important message that we need to send, both from the White House and from Congress, and in this case, also from the Smithsonian Institution, to say that this is true history. It’s important that you expose to your students. And I think that gives these teachers more courage to be able to teach a more inclusive and true curriculum.”
The Women’s History and LGBTQI+ Education Act of 2023, Balint said, can also help educators in a more direct sense. “Whether you’re trying to teach the history of people of color in this country, or women, or queer and trans people,” she said, it’s “a huge undertaking to try to do that research on your own.”
Unfortunately, however, the congressman acknowledged the political obstacles in his way with Republicans controlling the US House of Representatives.
Just before flying home to his district, Balint said he had to sit through a speech on the House floor in which a GOP member criticized “how disgusting it was that any kind of federal building or building of the State Department, you know, a Pride flag,” he told his colleagues “that’s not the kind of thing we in this country want to be known for.”
The congresswoman characterized the language this member used as hurtful and cruel, intended to demonize LGBTQ people.
“There are good people in the Republican conference,” Balint said. “But when it comes to those issues, we haven’t seen any of them. In this session of Congress, they’re all on the line. I welcome any partner across the aisle. To stand up to this kind of scapegoating.”
Therefore, regarding her and Torres’ legislation, she said: “I have no hope in this Congress. But we have to lay the groundwork for what’s to come when we hope to be able to get the majority back and really move on these things.”
Balint told the Blade that some of her Republican colleagues have assured her and other Democrats, “well, you know I don’t believe this stuff that the extremists are pushing.”
GOP members will admit they have to take extreme anti-LGBTQ positions they don’t really believe in for fear of losing a primary race to someone further to the right, he said.
“And one of the things I’ve been talking about with my friends in my caucus is that if you end up voting the same as your extremist colleagues, then frankly, you’re no better off! If you’re not going to use your position to get up when you know [your colleagues in the GOP caucus] are shamelessly and cruelly scapegoating a group of people, so what will it take?”
Balint said he remains optimistic that the tides will eventually turn, but in the meantime, “we have to hold them accountable. And we have to stand with them when they’re brave, so I always try to point out that you have some bright spots, one is the [Republican] Governor of Utah, Gov. [Spencer] Cox, who made a very powerful statement about these anti-trans bills.”
When legislation that would have banned trans students from playing on girls’ sports teams came to his desk in March, Cox vetoed it. “When in doubt,” he wrote, “I always try to err on the side of kindness, mercy, and compassion.”
“I can’t overstate what it’s meant to young queer and trans people in Vermont and across the country, to be able to come talk to me,” said Balint, or any of his colleagues who are openly gay. “We’re also working hard right now to make sure we can elect our first trans-American to Congress,” he said, “we’re so committed to that — we have to have true representation.”
