Friday, July 8, 2022

As Florida's "Don't Say Gay" takes effect

If you support the Muckrake podcast on Patreon, you can hear this full episode 75: "Big State Governors Moving In On The Presidency", July 8, 2022, in which Jared Yates Sexton says:

"DeSantis is picking up every Never Trump donor — every major Never Trump donor — and most of the Trump donors at the same time. He's consolidating power and, as we predicted, ding ding ding, the Republican Party's already saying: He's not Trump! We're done with Trump! Look at that criminal buffoon! We're ready to go to someone serious." (30:10–30:32)

"Meanwhile, what is he doing as governor? [The] university system of Florida just pushed this thing where you're going to have to start registering — as students and faculty — your political opinions. He has a police force that's going to basically take over elections. You name it: Up and down the line, this guy has more authoritarian principles and ideology than Donald Trump and everybody's moving over to that side of it." (30:43–31:05)

(There's an abbreviated version of the episode on Apple podcasts.)

The law was approved in March. During the following month, "references to pedophiles and 'grooming' rose by more than 400 percent... Researchers said they reported 100 of the most hateful tweets they saw to Twitter. Only one was removed."

Update: In March 2023, DeSantis is expanding Don't Say Gay. It'll be through Grade 12 now.

The Tikvah Fund organized a New York City appearance by Ron DeSantis on June 12, 2022. The event was held at an event venue called Pier Sixty, which put out a statement two days in advance saying that "we could not disagree more strongly with many of Ron DeSantis' actions in office," and that, while they've "never controlled the content, program or speakers" at the hundreds of events they've hosted, in this particular case they would send all funds from Tikvah to LGBTQ+ causes.

Florida would also like to impose gender on kids:

Japanese death demon called a shinigami

By the way, an August 2022 update: A July opinion poll of a hypothetical 2024 presidential matchup found Trump beating DeSantis by 30 points (53%–23%), and then, in August, the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago gave Trump a sympathy boost, so the gap widened to 40 points (57%–17%). But a lot of the Republican establishment wants DeSantis. And Trump might be indicted. So DeSantis might become president.

An October 2022 update:

January 2023: It's happening in the UK.

February 2023:

"...Gov. Ron DeSantis requested all public universities comply in delivering data from student health services on transgender students who sought gender-affirming care at the institutions.

DeSantis asked to see a breakdown of the medical data of students who received gender-affirming care from public entities. This includes anyone in the general public who sought gender-affirming care at the hospitals located at these public universities. In addition, he wants their ages and the dates they received gender-affirming care. The deadline to submit those records was February 10.

Insider has confirmed that University of Florida, Florida State University, University of Central Florida, Florida A&M University, Florida International University, and the University of North Florida have complied with the request, but has yet to hear back from the rest."

— "Ron DeSantis requested the information of trans students who sought care at Florida's public universities. Now students are planning a statewide walkout." Annalise Mabe, Insider, Feb 16, 2023

"President Joe Biden called efforts to restrict transgender rights in Florida 'close to sinful' in an interview released Monday [March 13, 2023], suggesting federal laws should be passed to protect those rights in all states." — CNN

Yes, it happened (HuffPost, May 18, 2023):

"An LGTBQ+ pride event usually held along the riverwalk in Tampa, Florida, has been canceled after hard-right Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bevy of anti-LGBTQ+ bills into law this week.

Tampa Pride President Carrie West confirmed to several local news outlets that the event, called Tampa Pride on the River, would not go ahead in September because it features drag performances at a public venue."

Alejandar Caraballo on Twitter, May 25, 2023: Republicans think 12 years old is too young to learn about LGBTQ people but old enough to work in bars and slaughterhouses, get married, and be forced to give birth to their rapists baby. The party of 'protecting children.'

Florida State Representative Randy Fine (R-Palm Bay) has no problem funding burlesque shows for charity — shows that children can attend too — as long as they feature cis women and not gay men or trans people. FL GOP Rep Who Wants to Outlaw Drag Queens Funds Straight Burlesque James Finn, April 17, 2023. If you're paywalled out, please become a member.

In May 2023, someone rewired an Orlando traffic sign to say KILL ALL GAYS.

A parent who had indeed signed permission for their kid to watch PG movies in school complained because the teacher showed a Disney movie.

"Florida just banned everything I teach at the university level." — Dr. William Horne. See the unrolled thread.

"Gay Floridians Are Leaving in Droves, Says Pride Organizer." Daily Beast. May 29, 2023.

Transformers Conference in Orlando says on June 7 that no crossdressing will be permitted at the conference per Florida state law. Erin Reed tweets: How about rather than banning crossdressing at cons, you stop holding your cons in Florida.
details about the TFCon from its Twitter handle
June 8 tweet: now the conference is offering a refund to LGBTQ people who don't feel safe attending

July 20, 2023: A Los Angeles Times profile of a trans woman preparing to leave Florida.

July 23, 2023: The DeSantis campaign shared a video with a sonnenrad (sunwheel), which is Nazi imagery.

The @desantiscams account just deleted this video after at least one campaign staffer RT'd it. I wonder if this was also made in-house. — Luke Thompson, July 23, 2023, Twitter

DeSantis's comments on surgery

Following DeSantis's May 2023 signing of a law on gender-affirming care that banned it for children and restricted it for adults, he appeared in the December 6, 2023 Republican presidential candidate debate and said: "I did a bill in Florida to stop the gender mutilation of minors. It’s child abuse and it’s wrong." CNN gave context:

"Gender affirming care...is not 'abuse' or 'mutilation' according to the medical community. It is a recommended practice by most major medical associations. The American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry – agree that gender-affirming care is clinically appropriate for children and adults."

Additionally, minors were rarely getting surgery to begin with. "Some adolescents may choose what’s commonly called top surgery...that removes breast or chest tissue, but the surgical choice would be rare. Generally, experts say, these are not procedures adolescents would need. The Endocrine Society and the World Professional Association for Transgender Health guidelines say that genital reassignment surgery should be reserved for adults only." — Fact checking the December GOP debate, Jen Christensen, CNN, December 7, 2023

Donate

Donate: Southern Trans Youth Emergency Project

The Trans Youth Emergency Project was

"created by the Campaign for Southern Equality after Mississippi passed the first ban on youth gender-affirming care in January 2023. Our goal was to connect families of trans youth in Mississippi to out-of-state gender-affirming care providers, and offset the financial burden of traveling to access care. At the time, my coworkers and I believed that youth gender-affirming care bans would pass in a handful of conservative Southern states. Since then, 27 U.S. states have passed a ban on gender-affirming care for youth, including nearly every state in the South.
          As gender-affirming care bans have spread, our program has grown. Just a few months ago, we expanded our project from only states in the South to any state with a ban."
— Trans Southerners Can’t Wait for Healthcare. Here’s How to Help Them Get It Out-of-State: The Trans Youth Emergency Project provides grants to help families of trans youth travel for care. Emma Chinn, Them, October 9, 2024

"Florida’s situation is the result of multiple different strands of the far-right, some of which are tacitly at odds with one another. ... [Florida is] one of the few places having a resurgence of organized and blatant neo-Nazism, this time in the form of the Goyim Defense League, Order of the Black Sun and others who are doing explicitly antisemitic flash mobs, banner drops, and other in-real life actions. These include signs that say things like “Have You Thanked Hitler Today?” and are really Jewish focused, demanding the hanging of Jews, openly saying that Jews are the center of all that is wrong in modern society. There have been a lot of large actions (large for them), coming from the Nazi crowd and we should think of this as qualitatively different than the world of Trump or DeSantis, who each have their own crews. The Nazis are explicitly revolutionary and therefore see both candidates as anathema, and the various neo-Nazi crews have made explicit in their messaging just how much they hate DeSantis. That said, the rhetoric of both Trump and DeSantis normalizes racism and therefore primes potential recruits to be more vulnerable to neo-Nazi messaging."
— Shane Burley, interviewed by Kelly Hayes, "Fascism in Florida, The State of Antifascism and Thinking About Electoral Defense." Organizing My Thoughts (Substack), Sep 19, 2023.

Florida county bans the dictionary

"The Escambia County School District, located in the Florida panhandle, has removed several dictionaries from its library shelves...

HB 1069 gives residents the right to demand the removal of any library book that "depicts or describes sexual conduct," as defined under Florida law, whether or not the book is pornographic. Rather than considering complaints, the Escambia County School Board adopted an emergency rule last June that required the district's librarians to conduct a review of all library books and remove titles that may violate HB 1069 [the May 2023 law]."

— Florida school district removes dictionaries from libraries, citing law championed by DeSantis, Judd Legum, Popular Information, January 10, 2024

In fact, Escambia County removed "more than 1,600 titles for mentions of 'sexual conduct' that could violate a 2023 state law."
Florida law led school district to pull 1,600 books — including dictionaries, Justine McDaniel and Hannah Natanson, Washington Post, January 11, 2024

In California

"Lake Arrowhead shop owner shot to death over Pride Flag" Detectives learned the suspect made several disparaging remarks about a rainbow flag hanging outside the store before shooting the owner, Brody Levesque, Los Angeles Blade, August 19, 2023

Outcome

"With the explicit and tacit encouragement of the Florida Department of Education, the law was broadly interpreted to mandate the banning of library books with LGBTQ characters, the cancellation of Pride Month, and the removal of rainbow flags. It also created confusion about whether it was permissible to discuss LGBTQ people in any context in Florida classrooms." — Judd Legum, Popular Information, March 13, 2024

However, as Legum goes on to explain, in March 2024, "the State of Florida agreed to settle a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality" of the law. Now, "the only aspect of the law that remains is a prohibition on classroom instruction about 'sexual orientation' and 'gender identity.' Per the terms of the settlement, an example of this would be 'teaching an overview of modern gender theory.' This is not something that happens very often, if at all, in K-12 education."

Update

"In Tallahassee, Florida, a federal judge has ruled [here's that ruling] that a transgender woman teacher no longer has to be referred to as “Mr.” or “teacher” in the classroom, citing first amendment protections. Instead, she can use “Ms.” and female pronouns. This decision follows the passage of HB1069 in Florida, which mandated that teachers could not use pronouns that “do not correspond to his or her sex.” Judge Mark Walker enjoined the state from enforcing the law against her...
* * *
This case is not the only recent legal action addressing this topic. Two weeks prior, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that repeated and intentional misgendering could constitute a hostile work environment. Similarly, the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals determined that teachers do not have the religious right to misgender transgender students."
— Erin Reed, "Florida Has A 1st Amendment Problem" - Judge Rules Trans Teacher Can Use "Ms.", April 9, 2024

For Florida's LGBTQ teens and teachers, the law is a moving target: NBC News followed LGBTQ teens and teachers for one year under the state’s expanded parental rights law, which critics have dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” law. Jo Yurcaba and K.C. Wassman, nbcnews, June 27, 2024

By
-
Labels: ,

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

In case you missed it

Have you seen inside the book 'To Climates Unknown'?

The alternate history novel To Climates Unknown by Arturo Serrano was released on November 25, the 400th anniversary of the mythical First ...