On Feb. 8, the Florida Senate Education Committee passed the Parental Rights in Education bill. Since the bill was made public, opponents have dubbed it the “Don’t Say Gay” bill.
The controversial bill seeks to eliminate two very important topics from being discussed in Florida’s grade school classrooms: sexual orientation and gender identity. According to the bill’s text, discussions of the topics may not take place “in primary grade levels or in a manner that is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students.” What the bill’s proposer, Republican State Senator Dennis Baxley, considers age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate goes undefined.
More concerning, however, are the implications the bill has to out young queer students to their families. The bill states that school personnel must inform parents of changes in a student’s “mental, emotional, or physical health or well-being” unless it’s believed “that such disclosure would result in abuse, abandonment, or neglect.” With this included in the bill, the Florida State Senate would require school staff to inform parents if they expect that a student isn’t cisgender or heterosexual, abandoning any previous confidentiality in the counselor’s office.
According to Lesley University, 50% of queer teens receive a negative reaction from their family when they come out, and 25% of out LGBTQ+ youth are forced to leave their homes. How will school personnel know if a student is queer, and how could they know if outing the student would result in abandonment by their parents? This bill sets queer children up for abandonment and neglect despite claiming otherwise.
The bill still needs to pass two more Florida Senate Committees before the full Senate can vote on it, and those committees may make changes to the bill’s text before the final vote. Nonetheless, the fact that Baxley felt comfortable proposing the legislation — and that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is expected to approve it — sets an unsettling precedent for the American education system. Though not directly stated in the bill’s text, the subtext is clear: LGBTQ+ students will be prohibited from safely expressing themselves at school.
Oregon may be on the opposite diagonal from Florida, but decisions such as this one will affect LGBTQ+ people throughout the country.
Second-year graduate student Laura King came out as bisexual and omnisexual when she was 21 years old. Due to limited access to LGBTQ+ education in her Texas high school, she did not come to understand her identity until she’d already graduated. King explained why the Floridian bill perplexed her.
“I think what cisgender and heterosexual people don’t understand is that sexuality and gender frame almost everything we encounter in our daily lives and that our classrooms are not neutral spaces,” King said. “Discussion in classrooms gives kids tools to understand the world around them and to navigate their own identities wherever they land.”
Classrooms are spaces where we are supposed to learn about diverse histories, cultures and identities, and learning about these things is integral to understanding ourselves and others at a young age. To deprive students of a safe space to learn about themselves and others is inhumane, and I’m appalled that this bill is being passed under the guise of concerned parents.
Axel, who chose to be identified only by his first name because he believed it would be unsafe for him to be identified as a trans man to his family, attended multiple Oregon public schools prior to enrolling at UO. Despite Oregon not having a law like Florida’s newest bill, Axel detailed his experience, or lack thereof, discussing gender diversity in the classroom.
“Gender identity was not discussed in any capacity, and I really didn’t know anything about gender identity until I was well into adulthood,” Axel said. “I had to come upon the information on my own.”
Even without legislation preventing gender identity from being discussed in the classroom, Oregon students received minimal education on the subject. Overall, Florida Senators are making a blatantly homophobic attempt to fix a non-problem rather than acknowledging the true issue: These subjects aren’t discussed enough.
“I am an example of a person who was sheltered from learning about LGBTQ+; it did not stop me from being queer, it only led to decades of frustration at not understanding myself and not understanding why I felt different,” Axel said. “Lack of information on LGBTQ+ people will not prevent your children from being queer, it will only prevent them from feeling accepted.”
If senators really don’t want us to discuss gender identity and sexual orientation in the classroom, then they would need to cut terms like “boy,” “girl” and any discussion of heterosexuality from the curriculum. If they don’t want children to “pick” their gender — as Gov. DeSantis put it — then schools should refer to all students with they/them pronouns until the students come out as cisgender.
Do you understand how absurd that sounds? If it seems absurd in a cishet context, why would it be any more acceptable to do this to LGBTQ+ students? Why should queer students be unequal in the eyes of the law?
We shouldn’t enforce heteronormativity in the American education system in an attempt to erase queer youth. Discussion of gender identity and sexual orientation help students understand themselves and their classmates. What the Florida State Senate proposes will harm all students by diminishing their understanding and appreciation of the world. Get off your homophobic high horse and let us say gay.