When you're anti-history and anti-transgender athletes

You might as well start a club

The people at something called PASS CT (Parents Against Stupid Stuff CT) recently sent my husband, who resides to the political left of me, a text. If you clicked on the video — and of course he did — you were led to www.passct.org, where you can read and witness all kinds of misinformation and general crap, paid for by rich conservative Sean Fieler, of Stamford, Conn.

The CT Mirror said Fieler:

long has been a behind-the-scenes player in America’s culture wars, as well as an advocate of limiting the influence of the Federal Reserve by reinstating the gold standard as a foundation of monetary policy.

So if you’re starting to get sick of the broadsides coming out of the mouths of Republicans in Connecticut you can, at least in part, thank the likes of Fieler. In short, PASS CT is against teaching all of history (they’d call it being “anti-CRT,” but I’m going to hazard a guess they wouldn’t know a working definition of critical race theory if it chewed on their hindquarters, so nah), and against having transgender athletes compete against…oh-who-cares. It’s really not about transgender athletes competing, is it? It’s transgender people in general, so again: Nah.

The organization is as conservative as it gets and if the goal was — as stated in the Mirror story and this Courant one — to make these two issues the focus of the state’s ongoing gubernatorial race, they’ve failed. You do notice an emphasis in some Connecticut Republican campaigns discussions about parent rights. Maybe this is an offshoot that didn’t quite take? Besides, we’re all busy sussing out the Republican gubernatorial candidate’s business relationship with Mohammed bin Salman, the man who approved the murder and dismemberment of the journalist, Jamal Khashoggi.

I’m sorry. Where was I? Oh yes: At least one of the listed PASS CT board members has also been a part of the conservative Heritage Foundation, though she is only identified at passct.org as a “CT-Mom.” This makes this whole endeavor feel a little bit astro-turfy, to me. Here’s an editorial written by one of the board members. I leave it to you to decide if the parent’s concerns are something that would move you to reach for the pitchfork.

My husband responded to the text with something rude, which is only part of why I love him. It is concerning that someone who would not be interested in hearing from this kind of group would nevertheless hear from them. Was his phone number perhaps sold by another organization which he supports? Or do they just shoot out these texts to random numbers?

But let us allow my colleague Susan Bigelow have the last word about this stupid stuff, at CT News Junkie:

I hate even giving this kind of garbage space here, but since this guy is set to spend over a million bucks of his own money running cringey scare ads trying to convince voters that milquetoast millionaire Ned Lamont is a godless sex communist, it’s important to try and inoculate ourselves against it now.