History at a glance
- Florida’s Parental Rights in Education Act — known to its critics as the “Don’t Say Gay” law — will officially go into effect today.
- The measure has already had a chilling effect on public school teachers, who in some cases have been instructed to remove LGBTQ+ Pride flags and pictures of same-sex partners from their classrooms to avoid running afoul of the law.
- Republican lawmakers have argued from the start that the measure’s sole intent was to empower parents. Democrats and LGBTQ+ advocacy groups say the current law is intentionally vague and represents a huge step back for equality.
In early January, an eleventh-hour proposal filed in the Florida House of Representatives caught the attention of Congressman Carlos Guillermo Smith, a Democrat representing Orange County. The account did not seem particularly insidious; it aimed to encourage parental involvement in their children’s schooling, something education advocates had championed for years.
But then Smith read something that took his breath away. The measure, officially titled the Parental Rights in Education Act, would ban “classroom discussions of sexual orientation or gender identity” in certain grade levels.
Smith, who in 2016 became the state’s first openly gay Latino lawmaker, said he wasn’t surprised the bill was introduced. It was just one of a number of bills that were pre-introduced before the legislature met on January 11th that in some way targeted the LGBTQ+ community.
But he was worried.
In April, a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that Florida’s suicide rate rose faster than much of the nation between 2019 and mid-2021. In its own report, Florida health officials recognize that LGBTQ+ youth in the state face elevated rates of mental health challenges and suicidal thoughts.
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Smith says those facts have been largely ignored by Florida’s conservative lawmakers, who make up the majority in both the House and Senate. They also control the governor’s office.
“There has been no acknowledgment from the Republicans in Tallahassee or Governor DeSantis that LGBTQ students are vulnerable and at risk,” Smith told Changing America in an interview.
Since the bill’s introduction, its potential impact on the mental health and well-being of Florida’s LGBTQ+ youth has been a major concern of the measure’s opponents. Concerns about whether the bill — called “Don’t Say Gay” by its critics — violate the First Amendment rights of public school teachers and students are also widespread.
Under the measure, which was signed into law in March by Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, elementary school teachers are prohibited from engaging in classroom instruction related to sexual orientation or gender identity.
The law officially goes into effect on Friday.
Public school teachers through high school are by law unable to address any subject in a manner that is not “age or developmentally appropriate” for their students.
During House and Senate hearings through early March, Republican lawmakers supporting the measure avoided questions that would clarify what is meant by “classroom learning,” leaving that up to school districts to interpret.
The Florida Department of Education will have until next summer to develop new rules that define this and other parts of the law, such as “age and developmentally appropriate” instruction.
The department did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Smith said he believes the measure is intentionally broad to chill the speech of public school teachers who fear they might inadvertently run afoul of the law.
If that happens, parents can choose to take legal action against school districts, which is their right under the measure.
“When we talk about the culture of fear that this bill has created and the chilling effect, we’re talking about the fact that educators and school districts are afraid to approach anything related to LGBTQ people or issues for fear of lawsuits and professional ruin.” , Smith said.
“The real enforcement mechanism for this law is not oversight by the state Department of Education,” he said. “It’s a lawsuit.”
Reports have already emerged detailing attempts by Florida school districts to pre-empt potential lawsuits — through which parents could receive compensation — by enacting new policies that limit the ways in which LGBTQ+ issues and identities can be talked about in class.
Andrew Spar, president of the Florida Education Association (FEA), told Changing America that this isn’t a sign of increased anti-LGBTQ+ hate in schools — it’s a signal that teachers and other school staff are afraid of losing their jobs.
“That’s why we may see some districts overreact by being extremely cautious and just prohibiting any conversation” about LGBTQ+ topics, he said.
Spar said a number of teachers have already reached out to FEA about a series of trainings that have taken place in some school districts. During those trainings, teachers said they were instructed to remove LGBTQ+ Pride flags, safe space stickers and pictures of same-sex partners from their classrooms before Friday.
From the beginning, Spar said, the vast majority of Florida teachers opposed the new law, largely because they believed it would prevent them from protecting their students from anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric and help perpetuate harmful LGBTQ stereotypes + the people.
Teachers also say the legislation solves a problem that doesn’t exist in Florida.
Topics related to sexuality education (which some state lawmakers equate with sexual orientation and gender identity) are not taught in grades K-3, according to the Sunshine State Standards.
Currently, sex education in Florida doesn’t begin until fifth grade, Spar said, when health instructors are required to give a one-time lesson about the bodily changes students may experience due to puberty.
Lessons on sexual orientation or gender identity are not part of the curriculum, he said.
But conservative lawmakers argue otherwise, saying both topics are being pushed inappropriately on children in classrooms across the state.
In emailed comments to Changing America, the bill’s sponsor, Congressman Joe Harding (R), said the measure successfully prevented “far-left school districts from trying to sexualize our children.”
“Florida is no longer just the freest state in the country, it’s now the most pro-parent state,” he said.
In March, Harding said during a televised interview with WPLG, the ABC affiliate in Miami, that he introduced the bill because he was made aware of numerous cases in which teachers of students as young as kindergarten were teaching lessons about “sex and gender theory identity’.
“The reason the bill exists is because we have specific examples where this type of training has occurred in Florida schools,” he said at the time.
Harding added that the main purpose of the legislation is – and always has been – to empower parents and give them a greater say in their children’s education. He said Democrats calling the measure the “Don’t Say Gay” bill are lying to children and using them as “political pawns” to push an agenda.
LGBTQ+ advocacy groups, meanwhile, have accused Harding and other Florida Republicans of doing the same.
“The country is tired of watching you use the lives of our children for personal political power,” Johnny Madison, interim president of the Human Rights Campaign, said Thursday in a statement aimed at conservative politicians in Florida and other states where there are similar measures has been introduced.
“We’ve always understood what we’re up against in the state of Florida,” Brandon Wolf, press secretary for Equality Florida, told Changing America. “We know these legislators, we know the shift to the right that happened under Gov. Ron DeSantis.”
Equality Florida is one of several groups suing the DeSantis administration over the new law, which it called “blatantly unconstitutional” in a complaint filed in March.
The law is also personal for Wolfe, a strange man who survived the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando in 2016. His two best friends, Drew and Juan, were among the 49 people killed that night.
Wolff worries that measures like this will be divisive and exacerbate anti-LGBTQ+ violence, which has increased across the country in the past year.
“We feel very eerie that in a country that has seen the deadliest attack on LGBTQ people in the history of this nation … we would be having conversations about erasing our history, our lives, our lived experiences from classrooms,” he said.
Wolfe said he has recently felt a renewed vigilance when it comes to his personal safety — a vigilance he hasn’t felt since the days immediately following the Pulse attack.
Posted on July 01, 2022
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