The more actions taken against women’s bodies, minorities, the LGBTQ+ community, and gun control, the more it seems like anti-democracy lawmakers are running from shame.

Unable to face the reality that a female child is pregnant, they try to legislate away any shame associated with the behaviors of males, including rape and incest. The old-fashioned ones and the ones closely bound to religious dogma that bears no resemblance to the teachings in their holy books seem to carry a sense of shame about sex in general, as if their own upbringing constrains them to keep their own sexuality inside a tiny little box.

A United Nations study showed that 90% of people, male and female, are biased against women (The Guardian, 3.5.2020). Male-dominated legislatures, including those with anti-democracy women who accept a male dominant culture, are never going to question the role of males in sexual activity, never going to assign consequences to male behaviors. They will legislate consequences for females ‘til the cows come home, making laws that create overt cruelty towards women, laws that dig deeper and deeper into male domination of women, rather than facing their shameful self-protection.

The more visible minorities and the LGBTQ+ community are, the more anti-democracy lawmakers work to excise those people from public life. “Out of sight, out of mind” is their go-to philosophy. They are banning books and events and discussions of any marginalized population instead of facing their own shame of White supremacy and not being able to live in a diverse society. While more and more people are at ease in today’s world of multiculturalism and sexual diversity, anti-democracy elected leaders try to legislate it back to the rigid, inappropriate box they live in.

Whenever a school shooting occurs, instead of facing the shame of allowing so many children to die from guns, or the shame of seeing so many parents burying the bullet-riddled bodies of their school-aged children, anti-democracy lawmakers focus on greater armed presence in schools, guns for teachers, and raising children to be part of the gun culture. They have been pushed into ever more extreme measures on behalf of gun owners rather than understanding or admitting the folly and the cruelty of perpetuating that point of view.

The statistical evidence is clear: the gun culture is having a terrible effect on everything from the safety of our school children to our collective mental health to our life expectancy rates. Rather than face the shame of knowing how much they are contributing to making the world less safe than they found it, and of knowing that they should be making it safer, members of the gun culture make proposals to increase the number of guns in society.

Shame hurts. It can cause a person such distress they try to get rid of it any way they can. Few who espouse anti-democracy measures have learned to process their shame internally, working to understand the pain and learn from it. Instead, they deflect their shame pain by shaming others and causing pain to others. The more they enact laws and make speeches that cause others pain, the more we are all hurting.