A couple of people have asked me to write something about “the Laurel Libby thing.” The thing is, I don’t think I could get a full column out of it. It’s just not that interesting. If you have to attack high schoolers on your Facebook page to get a few minutes of airtime on Fox News, it doesn’t suggest to me that you’re a generational political talent.

Rep. Libby’s stunt is yet another flash in the pan and in an election cycle or two she will be out of the state Senate. The only thing of note is that she’s a registered nurse, which should scare members of the general public. Can you imagine her coming toward an LGBTQ patient with a needle? Yikes.

No, what I find more interesting is the position of the rest of the elected Maine Republicans. They so badly want to be able to discriminate against transgender Mainers (who make up about 1% of the population, by the way) that they are willing to screw over every school in their districts to do so. They are literally asking the federal government to come in and sue Maine school districts and cut off educational funding — even encouraging their constituents to report their schools to the U.S. Department of Education.

Assistant Minority Leader Katrina Smith said that “Maine schools should rightfully expect to lose their funding” and that she “hopes to avoid any disruption to our kids and teachers.”

I’m on my town’s school board. We are in the middle of the budget process and, due to cuts in the state subsidy, we have a huge gap to fill. Hundreds of thousands of dollars. And that’s before the federal government started threatening local schools with loss of funding if we don’t join in their crusade of bullying kids whose gender presentation they don’t like.

I can tell you for damn sure that if you cut federal funds, students and teachers will be enormously disrupted, most particularly students with disabilities and who are on individualized education programs (IEPs). Attacking two disadvantaged minority groups at once must be a great bargain for the GOP.

The thing is: they’re losing. Conservatives have to appeal to King President Daddy Trump to come down from on high and punish Maine because they don’t have the votes to do it themselves. The Maine Human Rights Act protects LGBTQ people from discrimination (as well as discrimination based on race, disability and a whole host of other things).

The Maine Human Rights Act is a law, not an executive order. It was duly voted on and passed into law by members of the Maine Legislature, who were elected by Maine citizens. If Republicans want to overturn it, and legalize discrimination on basis of gender, they can certainly try, but I doubt they’ll be successful.

For one thing, Maine is a pretty live-and-let-live state, and Mainers, on the whole, want fair treatment for everyone (and elect officials who legally ensure that). For another, can you imagine campaigning on the tagline “repeal the Human Rights Act”? Come on.

People who are obsessing over trans people playing sports are the same kind of people who in the ’80s and ’90s would have been convinced that Metallica was playing backward messages in their music to turn kids into Satanists. They’ve swallowed a moral panic fed to them by conservative media, hook, line and sinker. I’d feel bad for them if they weren’t trying to ruin everyone’s local school system.

I was so, so grateful to Gov. Janet Mills for standing up to Trump’s bullying tactics at the White House. I want to point out that how she did it is important. She wasn’t coming out with a full-throated defense of trans people; she didn’t say, for example, “Stop obsessing over other people’s gender, you weirdo” (which is what I would have said). No, she said Maine is following all federal and state laws (which we are) and that she would “see you in court” if sued.

She wasn’t coming at this from a trans-rights angle. Gov. Mills was taking a states-rights angle: Maine has laws that we voted on and passed about this issue, and the federal government should not be able to overrule our local decisions. States’ rights arguments have traditionally been a tactic used by conservatives, not liberals.

I suspect if a Democratic president was trying to strongarm Maine to disregard a law Republicans liked, their response would be very different. But this is politics, and nobody cares about principles or hypocrisy. Politics is about power and using whatever means necessary to accomplish your goals.

Every action generates a reaction; progress always comes with backlash. We’re in backlash mode right now because queer people have made a lot of progress in recent years and that upsets a lot of people. Cool. I recommend they learn to cope with their feelings because we aren’t going back in the closet. We’re here. We’re queer. Some of us play sports. Deal with it.

And now, because I am a big musical theater queer, I’d like to close out with a quote from my one of my favorite musicals, “Hairspray.”

“You can’t stop today, as it comes speeding down the track. Yesterday is history and it’s never coming back! … You can’t stop the beat.”