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What 'Don't Say Gay' Really Means  [message #78259] Sun, 13 March 2022 16:56 Go to previous message
Bensiamin is currently offline  Bensiamin

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For those who haven't been following the nitty-gritty (or should I say, gruesome!) details of the so-called Don't Say Gay Bill that has passed both houses of Florida's legislature and is about to be signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, this isn't just another exercise in the culture wars. Which is to say, that yes, in some superfical ways it may appear to be, but there's much more to this than removing a word from the lexicon of school teachers.

As James Finn pointed out today in a Medium article (read here) about how Disney's CEO tried to hypocritically stay neutral while actually supporting the premises of the bill, the three major impacts are:
  • It prohibits public school teachers at the pre-kindergarten through third-grade level (students of about 4 to 8 years old) from teaching that gay or transgender people exist.
  • It prohibits teachers at all grade levels from teaching about LGBTQ issues or people in ways that are not "age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate," without defining "appropriate."
  • It empowers individual parents to sue school districts if they believe teachers have broken the law.


So, if you were wondering--yes, it it a blatant step backwards in that it aims through so-called legal means, to remove rights from LGBTQ youth. Which is to say, to remove rights from all LGBTQ people! To say nothing of the labels applied, such as pedophile!

https://forum.iomfats.org/?t=getfile&id=5306&private=0

Still, it's easy to settle into a mindset of "this isn't so bad compared to all the other horrible things that are happening in the world,' and in a way that comparison may be valid. But when you consider that the horror of the war in Ukraine only started hitting home AFTER the war began and casualties started to accumulate and the physical damage began to happen, we should all be asking 'what's the damage that will result from this bill and others like it?'

A poignant insight to that questioni appeared in an Op-Ed in the New York Times today, written by a Florida teenager named Will Larkin. It translates the impacts in ways all visitors to this forum will understand, and through which all of us who are older experieinced ourselves, and until recently thrilled that today's youth could pretty well avoid.

He describes the feelings of "being broken" as he tried to understand himself and how/why he was different than other kids, and how only when a fellow student finally talked to him about being LGBTQ "The realization that I wasn't the only one saved my life." And more recently how after being harassed at a school function for being gay, it was a teacher who understood and helped him through. Read Will Larkin's piece here. If you have difficulty getting past the NY Times paywall, email me and I'll send you the piece in PDF.

So, this isn't just an exercise in culture war politics. This has real world consequences to the most vulnerable in the LGBTQ community.

[Updated on: Sun, 13 March 2022 17:02]



Bensiamin
 
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