On Monday, the Florida State Senate will debate and vote on HB 1557, otherwise known as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill. A noxious piece of legislation, it would ban schools from discussing “sexual orientation or gender identity” with students between kindergarten and third grade and allow aggrieved bigots to sue a school system should they deem that blank ban violated.
Kids with same-sex parents would not be able to discuss their families, LGBTQ teachers would be forbidden from talking about their partners, and stories with queer protagonists would presumably be off-limits.
If only it were being represented that way.
The bill, which passed the State House on Friday, has been presented instead by Republicans as a moratorium of sex education for K-3 students, a transparent lie that they’ve repeated over and over again. But that façade has fallen over the past few days, as GOP leaders have been unable to contain their true intentions, Gov. Ron DeSantis included.
“How many parents want their kids to have transgenderism or something injected into classroom instruction?" DeSantis told reporters on Friday. “I think clearly right now, we see a focus on transgenderism, telling kids they may be able to pick genders and all of that.”
On Sunday, DeSantis's own press secretary lifted the veil entirely with a series of vile tweets that equated LGBTQ people with pedophiles.
This is nothing but unvarnished homophobia, as lawmakers and critics were quick to point out on Sunday. (Also, grooming accusations coming from the party of Matt Gaetz is really rich.)
“Accusations of pedophilia are the most dangerous anti-gay tropes that exist. DeSantis' own spokesperson unapologetically using [Don’t Say Gay] to smear LGBTQ Floridians is disgusting and reckless,” state Rep. Carlos Guillermo Smith told me. “If DeSantis doesn't fire her, he’s embraced these attacks.”
As I reported last week, Republicans have over the past half-decade shifted the crosshairs of their homophobia to focus on transgender people. The bathroom bills failed, but through a mix of disinformation and the fight for “parental rights,” they’ve been increasingly able to inject fringe theocratic beliefs about the nature of gender and evolution itself into public education. In short, they’re laundering right-wing bigotry into policy governing tens of millions of people.
“There have long been anti-LGBTQ bills in some form in state legislatures,” says Rodrigo Heng-Lehtinen, the executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality. “Now it’s an exponential increase in bills that squarely go after transgender youth. It is certainly not organically rising up because there really is some problem with trans youth in schools. It is a conscious play by ideologically anti-LGBTQ organizations.”
The bill passed the House on Friday after Republicans rejected amendment after amendment to mitigate the damage it would cause to children and families. They also rejected an amendment that would turn the bill into what they’re actually selling the public, a ban on sex-ed before the fourth grade. Students have risen up against the bill (and DeSantis’s bullying more generally), tomorrow, the Capitol will play host to an intense, pivotal, and likely distressing battle.
At the same time that they target LGBTQ Floridians and their families, Republicans are also trying to sneak through an unprecedented attack on organized labor and working families.
Every year, some Chamber of Commerce of tool introduces a bill to disable and gut public sector unions, only to see it go ignored or voted down. This year, however, Republicans, slathered in more corporate donations than ever, have developed the hubris to move the bill forward, with a realistic chance of it passing this week before the legislative session ends.
HB 1197 would devastate public unions, which provide the only real effective outside advocacy for workers and working families in Florida, a right-to-work state like Florida that has long been exceedingly unfriendly to organized labor.
Among other things, the bill would force unions to obtain re-authorization from members every single year, include anti-union language in annual membership forms that encourages members to quit, and obliterate bargaining committees if 50% of workers decide to opt out of paying dues.
The bill carves out exceptions for police, firefighters, and corrections officers, all of which are Republican pet constituencies. This is an absurdly limited exception; the AFSCME, one of the major public sector unions, represents all kinds of workers who work alongside police, fire and correction officers who wouldn’t have their collective bargaining and representations rights be dangled above an open flame each year.
AFSCME alone represents 911 dispatchers, community service officers, nurses, forensic officers, firefighter technicians, Juvenile Detention Officers and workers in state hospitals, all of whom are at risk of state-enforced servitude.
The bill would also impact the essential workers that lawmakers rushed to praise (but not reward) during the worst of the pandemic. Nurses, bus drivers, janitorial staff, food workers, and other hard-working, selfless professionals would be subjected to losing their only advocates, all to enrich corporate vendors and break the will of the people that push back on the state’s unprecedented corporate giveaways.
The bill will be debated in the State Senate this week, likely on Wednesday. Expect labor unions to go all out to raise awareness and kill what is to them an existential threat.
P.S. This is adapted from a piece in my newsletter, Progressives Everywhere. The newsletter focuses in depth on progressive politics and policy, including lots of coverage of state governments you won’t get elsewhere, and holds bad Republicans accountable.
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