As you’ve probably heard by now, Ron DeSantis is currently on a quest to inflict his antigay, antitrans, antidrag, antiabortion, antidiversity, antifacts, anti-free-speech, anti-anything-that-Ron-disagrees-with agenda on the people of Florida, which he seemingly believes will win him the presidency. To that end, it apparently wasn’t enough to sign the bigoted “Don’t Say Gay” bill into law last year, which banned classroom instruction in kindergarten through third grade. No, Ron had to do one worse.
On Wednesday, the Florida Board of Education expanded that ban through grade 12, at the request of the Florida governor. According to The Washington Post, the new rule states that Florida teachers in grades four through 12 “shall not intentionally provide classroom instruction…on sexual orientation or gender identity” unless the instruction is required by state standards—which it’s obviously not—or “part of a reproductive health course” that a student’s parent can choose for them to opt out of. (No worry there, since Paul Burns, Florida’s chancellor for K-12 public schools, said Wednesday that “abstinence is the required expectation of what we teach in our schools” in health classes.) The rule will go into effect approximately one month from now, a Florida Education Department spokeswoman told the Post, which noted that teachers who violate it could have their licenses suspended or revoked.
Florida education commissioner Manny Diaz Jr. claimed Wednesday that the move is simply about helping teachers better do their jobs—a ridiculous bit of gaslighting that’s hard to imagine Diaz actually believes—i.e. totally not about muzzling educators or pretending that LGBTQ+ people don’t exist. “We’re not removing anything here,” Diaz said, per the Associated Press. “All we are doing is we are setting the expectations so our teachers are clear: that they are to teach to the standards.” In a statement, Education Department spokesman Alex Lanfranconi was more blunt about the (bigoted) reasoning behind the ban, saying, “the topics of gender identity and sexual orientation have no place in the classroom” and that “today’s state board action reaffirms Florida’s commitment to uphold parental rights and keep indoctrination out of our schools.”
Of course, as reasonable people know, merely teaching about people who are not straight or don’t identify with their sex at birth is not “indoctrination” or part of the alleged woke agenda that DeSantis insists children must be protected from. “Let’s put it plainly: This is part of the governor’s assault on freedom,” Joe Saunders, senior political director of Equality Florida, said in a statement. The new rule, he added, will “further stigmatize and isolate a population of young people who need our support now more than ever.”
According to the Post, prior to the board vote, Saunders had asked members if the new rule would prohibit teaching an 11th-grade course about Obergefell v. Hodges, the landmark Supreme Court case that gave same-sex couples the right to marry. “Under the vague new rules, a teacher who taught this would be fired and their career would end,” Saunders said. “This rule is by design a tool for curating fear, anxiety, and the erasure of our LGBTQ community.”
It’s worth remembering that DeSantis is also currently in a feud with Disney, one of Florida’s largest employers, for having the audacity to criticize “Don’t Say Gay” last year. On Monday, he suggested that the state might build a prison complex next to the theme park as part of his campaign of retribution.
TFW when your decision to just make sh-t up doesn’t go as well as you’d hoped
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Bess Levin
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