Providing for Congressional Disapproval Under Chapter 8 of Title United States Code, of the Rule Submitted By the Food and Nutrition Service Relating to ``Application of Bostock V. Clayton County to Program Discrimination Complaint Processing-Policy Update''

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, on the merits, this resolution is just absurd. The Department of Agriculture is not, as Senator Cruz alleges, punishing schools based upon how they label bathrooms or what they teach in health classes. The offenses that Senator Marshall and Senator Cruz are alleging here are just made up.

What the Department is saying is simple: If you are feeding poor kids, it shouldn't matter whether that kid is straight or gay or transgender, whether they are Black or White, whether they are Catholic or Protestant. You can't choose not to feed a kid because of their ethnicity, their race, or their sexual orientation. That is just common sense. I will guarantee you, 90 percent of the Americans agree with that sentiment.

The reason we are debating this resolution, though, isn't because there is a problem that needs to be solved. We are debating this resolution because the rightwing in this Nation has launched a relentless and unceasing campaign to marginalize, demonize, and bully kids who are gay, transgender, or nonbinary.

All across the country, the Republican State legislatures are introducing bills designed to demonize gay children, to make people believe that these kids are a threat to others, hundreds and hundreds of bills all centered on the same lie as this resolution: That it is not OK to be gay, that it is abnormal to be transgender, and that society should rally around efforts to bully and shame these children and their families.

A few weeks ago, I finished up my annual walk across the State of Connecticut. I do it each year. I spend a week walking about 20 miles a day, talking to hundreds of people--most of them totally nonpolitical-- about what they care about and what they want their leaders to be working on. Do you know what nobody talked to me about on that walk? Children's sexual orientation, drag shows in schools, bathroom labeling. Do you know what they did talk to me about? Wages not keeping up with costs, the safety of their neighborhoods, Israel, opioids, drug costs.

This obsession that Senator Marshall and Senator Cruz and their rightwing allies have with the sexual orientation of our kids is so divorced from what people are actually talking about in this country.

It is no wonder the candidacy of Ron DeSantis--really founded on his relentless similar campaign of attacks against gay kids and adults in Florida--is floundering because even primary voting Republicans think that this obsession that Republicans have with children's sexual orientation or gender identity is just super creepy and super weird, and it has nothing to do with the actual set of problems this Nation is facing.

But there is one problem attached to this resolution: There are consequences to what Senator Marshall and Senator Cruz are proposing. When leaders choose to make bullying and marginalizing gay kids a top priority, kids listen. Fuel gets given to their bullies. People like the Senators who are sponsoring this resolution legitimatize attacks on gay kids and make those kids feel inferior and alone.

The students at Seth Walsh's school were systematic in the way they targeted him because he was gay. They pushed him down the stairs. They kicked him until he was badly bruised. They screamed at him. They called him names. No doubt these bullies took direction and inspiration from adults who paved the way, who endorsed this kind of behavior.

Then one day after one of these incidents, a frightened Seth called his mom, and he said, ``Mom, you have to come get me right now.'' His mother could feel the fear in his voice, so she grabbed Seth's little brother, and they rushed out the door, they went to the school, and they brought him home. His mom was so supportive. That afternoon, they just sat and they talked.

Seth went upstairs and took a shower to calm himself down. Afterwards, he came downstairs and asked his mom for a pen, told her he was going outside to play with the dogs. Ten minutes later, his mom went outside to continue this conversation with her son, but it was too late. Seth had hung himself from a tree, and the pen he had asked for was for his suicide note.

Seth Walsh was 13 years old.

A recent survey of transgender youth showed that half of them--52 percent of them--have contemplated suicide over the last year. Just think about that for a second. Half of the kids who are transgender come to the conclusion at some point in their young lives that they would be better off dead--dead--than to live in a world that believes they are threats to be marginalized or expunged.

How small, how tiny do you have to be to reach a position of political leadership and choose to use that position to bully or shame kids like Seth.

This campaign of targeting and marginalizing gay and transgender kids, trying to convince the country that they are threats to this country, it is just wrong on the facts, it is wrong morally, it has lethal consequences, and it should stop.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source