It’s kind of sad, really. Progressive talking heads on cable television aren’t talking about Gov. Jerry Brown (D-CA) signing AB 1266, the School Success and Opportunity Act. (The act will become law on January 1, 2014 — the tenth anniversary of California’s first transgender rights bill, AB 196, the Gender Nondiscrimination Act, becoming law.)
From the Transgender Law Center’s description of the bill that Gov. Jerry Brown of California signed on August 12, 1213:
California law already prohibits discrimination in education, but transgender students are still unfairly excluded from physical education, athletic teams, and other school activities and facilities. This exclusion negatively impacts students’ ability to succeed in school and graduate with their class. For example, physical education classes help students develop healthy fitness habits and teach values like teamwork and fair competition – and count toward graduation as much as any other course.
You can find television talking heads on the right and center-right talking about this bill soon becoming law in very transphobic terms, (here, here, here, here, and here, for example), but progressive talking and left-leaning heads — such as the big four of Chris Matthews, Chris Hayes, Rachel Maddow, and Laurence O’Donnell on MSNBC — didn’t comment on the bill, let alone comment on it as a progressive civil rights bill.
And, it’s not like any of the “gang of four” were discussing LGBT issues on August 12th through the 14th. For example, Laurence McDonnell interviewed Greg Louganis about the 2014 Olympics in Russia, and Louganis mentioned LGBTQ youth:
The text except of Louganis talking about LGBTQ youth from the interview:
It is unfortunate that we have had the Olympics where, you know, we were in Beijing. The don’t have the greatest human rights history, you know? So — and there, I mean, it is so blatantly staring us in the face as to what is happening to the LGBTQ kids in Russia.
Chris Hayes discussing the Russian Olympics and gays on August 13th:
But nothing on the School Success and Opportunity Act from progressive and left-leaning talking heads.
It’s sad that even though LGBT civil rights are human rights, progressive talking heads on cable television apparently don’t believe that that issues specific to the T portion of LGBT community are human rights worth talking about. Instead, they leave trans people — trans youth — to be maligned by right-leaning talking heads on television without progressive cable talking head rebuttal.