Every single day, conservatives try new ways to make the queer community less visible by using the language of indoctrination. In many cases, it’s by spreading the belief that cisgender straight people can be influenced into “turning” gay or transgender. On Tuesday, the Central Bucks school board, which oversees the third-largest school district in Pennsylvania, exemplified this idea by banning teachers from displaying rainbow flags as part of a larger effort to stop educators from advocating for “political” issues.
The Central Bucks school board is just the latest group to frame LGBTQ-plus people as polarizing political subjects, rather than actual people just trying to live. In the past year, districts in Wisconsin, Michigan and New York have all cracked down on pride flags in schools, typically citing the belief that they are political in nature.
At first glance, the logic behind banning political symbols at school might seem reasonable enough. The problem is that the pride flag doesn’t represent a single institution, nor is it a dangerous tool to push a political agenda; it is a community-driven symbol of humanity and inclusion that can indicate to students of all gender and sexual identities that they are in a welcoming and open-minded space.
What’s more, it can show queer students that they are in a space that won’t be actively hostile toward them. In a 2019 survey, the education group GLSEN found that 86% of LGBTQ students experienced harassment or assault at school. The organization has also said that LGBTQ students who have supportive educators skip fewer classes and get better grades.
You can’t indoctrinate someone into the LGBTQ community, and queer visibility is a human rights issue, not an ideological one. Unlike a political organization, there is no central LGBTQ organ, headquarters or single representative whom LGBTQ people take orders from (except maybe Cher). For these reasons and many others, the designation of pride flags as political symbols doesn’t make much sense. The argument is yet another pretense to pathologize and exclude queer and trans people and to galvanize voters against a common enemy.
It’s hard not to see parallels between what conservatives are doing and what some violently oppressive countries do to justify silencing the queer community. For example, at last year’s FIFA World Cup in Qatar, fans said they were prohibited from taking rainbow flags into soccer stadiums. Seeing the U.S. mirror aspects of totalitarian nations shouldn’t just be concerning for queer people; it should freak everyone out.