I have a few friends in Texas, so I hope they don't take offense to my saying that I wouldn't live there for all the tea in China Grove. And it's not the people, not the climate, not the Cowboys, it's the people that run the place that make it such a hellhole.
You may recall, Texas is the state whose officials force the publishers of school textbooks to re-write history to suit their narrative, so students are taught that enslaved people were "guest employees" and First Americans were "voluntarily relocated" and Moses was a founding father of the United States. The United States is the country to which Texas belongs, although they often talk about declaring their freedom and setting up their own nation. Until a hurricane or a tornado damages their state, and then they're the first ones to show up in Washington looking for assistance from the federal government they so despise.
The current governor of Texas is owlfaced Greg Abbott. He is a proponent of freedom, unless you own a business in Texas and wish to require your employees get vaccinated. Then he's all Big Government. The duplicity never ends down there.
The latest is, Abbott has an election coming up, and an opponent named Don Huffines is trying to out-Abbott Abbott. Huffines was recently howling that the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, the child welfare agency, was “promoting transgender sexual policies to Texas youth.”
He said they were doing this by having a web page featuring information about a suicide prevention hotline for LGBTQ+ youth.
“These are not Texas values, these are not Republican Party values, but these are obviously Greg Abbott’s values,” Huffines said.
Within hours of this nonsensical rant, the Houston Chronicle reported that the website was taken down.
Also removed: a website for the Texas Youth Connection, another part of Family and Protective Services. The site offered guidance to young people in foster care with the resources from the LGBTQ+ page, as well as housing and education assistance.
Seemingly proud of denying information to at-risk children, Huffines now bleats, “I told Texans I would get this DFPS website taken down and stop Greg Abbott from using our tax dollars to promote transgender ideology. I kept my promise.”
“We’re just getting started,” he added.
The Chronicle dug into public records of what goes on in the Abbott administration. They found that his minions took action right after Huffines started yammering.
One Patrick Crimmins, a spokesperson for Family and Protective Services, contacted Darrell Azar, who ran the web page:
“Darrell — please note we may need to take that page down, or somehow revise content,” wrote Crimmins.
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| Huffines, (l), and Abbott. |
Equality Texas is an advocacy group looking out for the rights of all Texans. Their chief executive is Ricardo Martinez, who says, "The state is responsible for these kids’ lives, yet it intentionally removed a way for them to find help when they need it the most. This action is unconscionable, and it reminds us that political aspirations are part of every attack on LGBTQ+ kids in Texas.”
There is a suicide prevention and crisis intervention organization for LGBTQ+ youth called The Trevor Project in Texas. They report that as of September, they have received more than 4,000 crisis contacts from trans and nonbinary youth in Texas. That's up 150% over last year.
Abbott, Huffines, and whoever else is in office, or wants to be, down there ought to remember that just because they don't happen to practice someone else's lifestyle does not mean that lifestyle is invalid. To say "these are not Texas values" when they are in fact values held strongly by some Texans is to deny reality.
Which is what they do a lot of, deep in the heart of Texas.
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