Republican lawmakers in Florida are pressing on with a bill that would restrict teachers and schools from discussing sexual orientation and gender identity in the classroom despite widespread condemnation from Democrats.
Dubbed by critics as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, the legislation would prohibit any discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity in school classrooms up through third grade and further places restrictions on classroom discussions for all other grade levels. Proponents of the legislation say it is necessary to protect young students from age-inappropriate instruction, while critics have derided the bill as dangerous to gay and transgender students.
The bill passed the Republican-controlled state House on Thursday and is slated to be taken up by the Senate next week, where it is also expected to pass, despite opposition from Democrats.
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The bill has been championed as a necessary measure to improve parental rights in education by establishing boundaries for what teachers and schools can include in classroom instruction. If signed into law, parents would be empowered to sue educators for violating the bill’s provisions, which, outside of K-3 classes where such discussions would be entirely banned, requires school conversations on gay and transgender topics to be “age appropriate.”
The bill has generated substantial national attention and controversy over its provisions, which critics have said will lead to an increase in suicides by gay and transgender students in Florida schools.
If teachers are prohibited from discussing sexual and gender identity with gay and transgender students, critics say, those students will be more likely to commit suicide due to a lack of an “affirming” space. Often cited is a study from the Trevor Project, a gay and transgender nonprofit organization, that found “LGBTQ youth who reported having at least one LGBTQ-affirming space had 35% reduced odds of reporting a suicide attempt.”
The Biden administration, through the official White House Twitter account, said the legislation was “designed to attack LGBTQI+ kids” and said President Joe Biden was “focused on keeping schools open and supporting students’ mental health.”
Today, conservative politicians in Florida advanced legislation designed to attack LGBTQI+ kids. Instead of making growing up harder for young people, @POTUS is focused on keeping schools open and supporting students’ mental health.
https://t.co/nn6nx8lLDD— The White House (@WhiteHouse) February 8, 2022
Chasten Buttigieg, the husband of Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, said the legislation “will kill kids” and accused Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, of “purposefully making your state a harder place for LGBTQ kids to survive in.”
This will kill kids, @RonDeSantisFL. You are purposefully making your state a harder place for LGBTQ kids to survive in. In a national survey (@TrevorProject), 42% of LGBTQ youth seriously considered attempting suicide last year. Now they can’t talk to their teachers? https://t.co/VtfFLPlsn3
— Chasten Buttigieg (@Chasten) January 20, 2022
Earlier this month, DeSantis expressed his support for the legislation, saying it was “entirely inappropriate” for teachers to discuss gender identity with students, while adding, “The larger issue with all of this is parents must have a seat at the table when it comes to what’s going on in their schools.”
Florida has been the site of two recent lawsuits by parents who have sued their children’s schools after teachers and administrators secretly facilitated gender transitions for their daughters.
In the most recent filing, the parents of a female sixth grade student at Paterson Elementary School in Fleming Island, near Jacksonville, claimed that the school did not notify them of their daughter’s attempted transition to a male identity until she had attempted suicide twice.
The discussion of gay and transgender identity in classrooms has gained significant attention online because of videos posted by two Twitter accounts popular with conservatives, Libs of TikTok and Teachers Exposed.
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Both accounts regularly post videos garnering thousands of views of gay and transgender teachers bragging about how they discuss their sexual and gender identities with their students.
