Missouri GOPer Wants To Put Teachers On Sex Offenders List For Using Students' Preferred Pronouns

This at a time when the state is short 3,500 teachers.

Rep. Jamie Gragg, who should be on the sex offenders’ registry for that facial hair situation.

The state of Missouri, like so many others, is in the midst of a teacher shortage right now — as of last August, they had 3,500 fewer teachers than they actually needed. However, rather than looking for a way to address that problem, state Rep. Jamie Gragg (R-Ozark) decided that he is going to make it even less appealing to be a teacher in the state.

Last week, Rep. Gragg introduced a bill (HB2885) that would make it a Class E felony for teachers to call students by their preferred pronouns or names and require them to register as sex offenders.

Specifically, they would be required to register as “Tier 1” sex offenders, a group which includes first degree sexual abuse of someone over the age of 18, first offense sexual misconduct involving a child, second degree kidnapping with sexual motivation, bestiality, having child porn, etc. etc. You know, things that are somewhat different from calling a child the name they wish to be called.

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This is not only terrible for the teachers (and who the hell would even want to teach in Missouri if that were the law), but for students as well.

Via Riverfront Times:

A 2018 study (one of the most recent in this field of research) found that trans youth who were able to use their correct names (those that align with their gender identity) in multiple contexts had a lower risk of depression and suicide, according to the Suicide Prevention Resource Center.

“We showed that the more contexts or settings where they were able to use their preferred name, the stronger their mental health was,” the author of the study, Stephen T. Russell, University of Texas at Austin professor and chair of human development and family science, said. 

Transgender youth already face a heightened risk of suicidal ideation. Another recent study, this one by the Trevor Project, showed that in 2022 nearly half (45 percent) of LGBTQ youth surveyed seriously contemplated suicide. One in five attempted it. 

So just to be clear, this Cliff Clavin-looking motherfucker is looking to punish children. That is who he is looking to hurt. The teachers, yes, but also the children. He wants to force children into gender conformity, even if that means risking their lives, for his own personal comfort.

There are numerous issues with the sex offenders registry to begin with, but this veers into the ridiculous. It’s actually more absurd than the people who have ended up on those registries for urinating in public, having sex on the beach, or solicitation, because it has literally nothing to do with the act of sex or anyone’s genitals at all.

If these teachers were put on the registry, they would not only no longer be allowed to teach or even be anywhere near a school, they would be unlikely to obtain employment anywhere else either. They also wouldn’t be able to live near a school or child care facility, which would obviously severely limit the number of places where they could actually live. That’s how we end up with situations like the Julia Tuttle Causeway sex offender colony, in which more than 140 people in Miami-Dade County lived under a bridge.

That’s a huge deal. This would effectively ruin their lives — not because they hurt children, but because they did the literal opposite of that. Because they were kind to children rather than cruel. Because they respected what those children wanted and who they were.

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So far, the bill has just one co-sponsor, fellow Republican Brian Seitz, so it’s unlikely for this bill to pass — this time. However, what usually happens is that a bill like this gets introduced in one state, everyone is horrified by it, and then not too long afterwards it gets introduced in another state and then another state after that, more and more people on the Right push for it, and eventually it becomes the law somewhere. That’s how they do this shit. It’s boiling the frog, the Overton window, whatever you want to call it. It’s not guaranteed, of course, but I have learned to never say never when it comes to Republicans passing horrific laws.

Even if that doesn’t happen, the fact that they’re getting so creative in this way is frightening, as is the fact that anyone is trying to create a narrative in which teachers who respect their students’ choices and pronouns are child predators in the first place.