Month: February 2023

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s office just sent out a memo to Texas colleges, universities and state agencies reminding them that they must follow civil rights laws and ensure that all hiring decisions are based solely on merit.

Abbott’s Chief of Staff, Gardner Pate, explains in the memo that “…the innocuous sounding notion of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) has been manipulated to push policies that expressly favor some demographic groups to the detriment of others.”

Last month, the National Association of Scholars released an extensive report on DEI at the University of Texas revealing how employment of faculty and staff there is now linked to left-wing political goals. Shortly after that, a freedom of information report obtained by Do No Harm revealed that Texas A&M Medical School had, among other things, removed photographs of white male graduates to further its DEI goals. And this week the Wall Street Journal published an op-ed detailing the way DEI is used at Texas Tech to screen out job applicants who do not accept DEI dogma.

Immediately, the Texas media launched a disinformation campaign.

The Texas Tribune screamed:  Governor Greg Abbott tells state agencies to stop considering diversity in hiring

Most of the state’s electronic media regurgitated the Texas Tribune report as if it were fact, reporting that DEI is about eliminating discrimination and ensuring fair treatment.

The Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express news reported that Abbott was going after diversity hiring programs while the Dallas Morning News digital headline proclaimed: Abbott declares it illegal to consider diversity in employment. Their editorial board fired off an odd piece the next day—Governor Abbott’s Big DEI Mistake insisting that, although Abbott is right about ideological litmus tests, what is going on at Texas institutions of higher education is surely “well-intentioned” because hiring diverse employees is a good thing.

They are wrong. DEI is not “well-intentioned,” and it is not about diversity hiring or fair treatment.  DEI is about dictating how people think. The job candidate evaluations at Texas Tech revealed that applicants were downgraded for using the wrong pronoun or saying they respected and treated all students the same—which is not allowed. Another applicant was chastised for not knowing the difference between equity and equality.

Clearly, the Texas media is also confused about the difference between equality and Equity. Equality is the belief that everyone must have access to life, liberty, education, jobs and the tools to reach for the American dream. The civil rights laws of the 1960s referred to in the memo from Gov. Abbott’s office are built on the principle of equality. Title IX laws, which give women equal access to higher education, are also about equality.

Equity calls for equal outcomes—we must all end up at the same place. According to the principles of DEI, the fact that I played basketball in high school but never really had a shot at the NBA means there’s equality in sports, but not equity. DEI disdains equality. It is all about equity.

Diversity is a word that DEI also distorts. Diversity has always been used to define a community whose members have a broad range of backgrounds, like Texas, where 29 million people speak 160 languages, English, Spanish, Vietnamese, Chinese and Tagalog being the most common. Our state was founded and continues to be built by a very diverse population of Hispanics, Anglos, African Americans, Native Americans, Germans, Central Americans and others who flock daily to our state. Texas reflects all those voices.

But diversity, as it is taught in Texas colleges and universities, means dividing everyone into groups of either oppressors or victims as defined by critical race theory. Oppressors are people who have benefited from the racism and white supremacy that DEI proponents believe is the foundation for America. Victims are those who are suffering from the white supremacy that in their view, still drives every aspect of our cultural, political and economic lives.

In addition to critical race theory, DEI advocates also espouse “gender theory,” insisting that gender is not binary and the fact that children are “assigned a gender at birth” is an arbitrary action perpetuated by the white patriarchy. Every child, they insist, should be allowed to choose their own gender.

Wrap this all up with disinformation about “inclusion” and you can see why Governor Abbott’s memo was necessary. Texas colleges and universities are giving preferential hiring treatment (inclusion) to those who believe our country is driven by racism, white supremacy and a binary gender patriarchy. Everyone else, especially those who espouse principles like merit, initiative, color-blindness and equality fall into the “white supremacist” category. They are excluded.

DEI also suppresses dissent and free speech, something the media usually cares about, but in this case, clearly not. Fifty-seven percent of Texas college students report that they censor themselves when talking to other students, professors or administrators because they are fearful of reprisal. Ironically, at the same time, over 70% of Texas college students oppose allowing a critic of Black Lives Matter to speak on their campus because DEI teaches intolerance of views that don’t comply with the dogma.

This week Senate Finance Committee Chair, Joan Huffman, R-Houston warned university officials that DEI will not be tolerated at Texas colleges and universities.  She warned the taxpayer-funded institutions that the state’s budget appropriators are watching.

Texans oppose both DEI and CRT and will support Gov. Abbott and the Texas Legislature continuing to move forward to get rid of it in Texas. They have learned to ignore the disinformation coming from the Texas media.

The Texas Tribune began its coverage of the 88^th Session this year with a news report screaming that “LGBTQ Texans Ready for Legislative Session as GOP lawmakers target them in dozens of bills.”

The Tribune warns that many LGBTQ people say they are leaving Texas because of the GOP “assault” on their rights.

If LGBTQ people are leaving Texas, they are the only ones. Every data source from the Census Bureau to U-Haul repeatedly shows that Texas is the state most people around the country are moving to, not from.

Newsweek reports that Texas has the second highest LGBTQ population in America, although other sources have radically different numbers. But no source shows an exodus of gay people from the state.

There’s also not much evidence of LGBTQ targeting in bills filed so far in the legislature session—at least no L, G and B. Several legislators have written bills that would prohibit the parents of children suffering from gender dysphoria from allowing their children to have irreversible surgeries including castrations and mastectomies or giving them puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones. Those children might grow up to be “T” people, although the data indicates the most of them won’t.

The division between the LG&B and the so-called “trans” agenda (T) has long been debated in the gay rights movement—and is starting to gain traction. Many believe that the two groups have conflicting missions. Gay people want to be accepted for the men and women that they are. Trans advocates don’t believe that sex is binary and are demanding acknowledgement for being someone other than who they are.

This poses a huge problem for a group like Equality Texas, the source of the alarm in the Texas Tribune’s “LGBTQ attack” story. Equality Texas says it is the largest advocacy group for LGBTQ in Texas and it must rally its troops, but if you look at its bill tracker, their agenda is all about the “T.”

Looking at the bills they are fighting, here’s what we must assume that they support:

• No restrictions on sex change surgery for children, which they call “lifesaving” and a “best [medical] practice.” No restrictions on cross-sex hormones and puberty blocking drugs.
• All health care providers should be forced to provide sex change surgery to children whether they believe in them or not.
• Insurance companies should be required to pay for sex change operations for children.
• There should be no restrictions on classroom instruction about sexual orientation and gender identity.
• There should be no restrictions on classroom instruction using nudity and descriptions of sex.
• Men should be allowed to play in women’s sports in Texas colleges and universities.

Equality Texas describes commonsense policies on these issues as a “threat” to the LGBTQ community.

The use of the term “lifesaving” to describe sex change operations and puberty blockers is deceptive. Researchers have known for some time that gender dysphoria does not put teens at greater risk of suicide than teens suffering from many other mental health risk factors including depression and anorexia. We also know that cross-sex hormones and puberty blockers don’t save lives but actually adversely affects mental health, which can increase suicide risk. So does sex change therapy, which has been repeatedly shown to not be as effective as psychotherapy in treating gender dysphoria in children and adolescents.

The bottom line is that the Equality Texas’ bill tracker makes it clear that it opposes all efforts to affirm the right of parents to raise their children. Several Texas legislators have put forward a constitutional amendment to “enshrine the right to direct the upbringing of their child, including the right to direct the care, custody, control, education, moral and religious training and the medical care of the child.”

Equality Texas opposes the constitutional amendment proposal as another “threat” to the LGBTQ community. Their bill tracker also shows their opposition to legislation that:

• Allows doctors to refuse to do sex change surgeries.
• Requires parents to be informed about all activities and materials used in their child’s classroom.
• Requires teachers to notify parents of changes in a student’s physical, mental or emotional health.
• Requires book publishers that provide books to schools to label them with a content rating, like movies do.
• Requires parents to provide consent for all non-textbook instruction involving violence, nudity, profanity, illegal substance use or sexual content.
• Requires “drag shows,” where men dress up like women and dance provocatively, to be defined as “sexually oriented” businesses.

Their opposition to school materials and library books is telling. Anyone who doubts whether parents should be monitoring them more closely in our public schools should take a look at the bestselling “Gender Queer,” which has been found in dozens of Texas school libraries. It’s clearly inappropriate for kids.

As for men playing women’s sports, broad majorities of Texans and Americans continue to oppose it. Women sports advocates won that battle in Texas in the last legislative session for high schools and legislation to protect women’s sports in colleges and universities has been proposed this session.

Finally, defining “drag shows” as “sexually oriented” businesses would hopefully make it clear that they do not belong in public schools or public libraries, regardless of what a couple of City Council members in Dallas think.

Large majorities of Americans believe that parents should be able to direct their children’s lives—particularly when it comes to sensitive topics like sexuality—without being overridden by public schools. Equality Texas disagrees and it is trying to convince Texans that to think otherwise is somehow a “threat” to the LGBTQ community.

Some Texans have religious convictions regarding gay people, which was reflected in the recent Republican State Convention platform plank, but in this heavily libertarian state most Texans are “live and let live.” The majority support gay marriage. But no thinking Texan supports allowing a child to determine whether they get a sex change operation or take puberty blockers, whether pornography and drag shows should be allowed in public schools and whether men and boys should be allowed to play in women and girls sports.

To overcome that broad consensus of common sense, Equality Texas and other LGBTQ advocates must convince the LG&B community that they are under attack even though they are not. That’s why we can expect more screaming headlines this session.