#florida's don't say gay law

[nerdygaymormon]

Anti-woke laws are about protecting comfort of the dominant group

18 states have passed laws banning concepts, authors and books from schools and libraries, and 26 more have proposed such laws. 

I live in Florida and the Stop Woke Act bans teaching concepts that suggest “a person, by virtue of his or her race, color, sex, or national origin, bears personal responsibility for and must feel guilt, anguish or other forms of psychological distress because of actions, in which the person played no part, committed in the past by other members of the same race, color, national origin, or sex.” 

Florida also passed the “Parental Rights in Education" bill, which is more commonly known as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill because it bans public school personnel from conducting classroom instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity in “kindergarten through grade 3″ and in later grades it’s banned if it is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards." But there are no state standards!

These laws may sound vague, and that’s purposeful. In practice it means the discomfort of the dominant group (white people and non-queer people) is guarded against.

We won’t learn about actions and policies that discriminated against people of other races. Not because this didn’t happen, but it may make white children uncomfortable to know they benefit from the legacy that benefited their white parents or grandparents. 

This is true for learning about the experience of people of other races, immigrants, or gender. 

In Florida schools we now refuse to acknowledge that there are some boys who love boys, or that some children have 2 moms. Teachers are told to remove a picture with their same-gender spouse. Queer people are considered unsafe for children to know about.  

This is problematic for several reasons. 

For one thing, if minority groups don’t learn about past practices that discriminated against their relatives & ancestors, what they are left to conclude is because their parents and grandparents didn’t work harder is why they are worse off in comparison to their white peers. I guess the “psychological distress” of minority children doesn’t matter.

Another point is if we don’t understand how we got to our present situation, it feels like it’s how things naturally are and we don’t know how to address the issues that caused our current problems and disparities. 

Finally, it’s a form of erasure. Queer people aren’t real, or queer people are dangerous, they shouldn’t be seen and known. 

On top of these general laws are those which specifically target trans people for discrimination and to deny them health care which is approved by every major medical organization. These laws are forcing families to become refugees in their own country as they find ways to flee to states where their trans children will be safe. 

The history of this time period will point out the unjustness of these laws and the harm they did...but only if you live where somewhere it’s allowed for such history and its implications to be taught

[commiepinkofag]

Protect Jenny! Section 28 should be seen as one of a number of measures that Thatcher’s government took to curb the influence of local authorities. Backed by right-wing groups and the press, it sought to discredit local authorities which it perceived as focusing too much on minority issues by labeling them as the ‘loony left’ and holding up examples of political correctness as evidence of how out of touch they were with the common man. The use of the Danish children’s book Jenny lives with Eric and Martin by the Labour-controlled Inner London Education Authority was the touchpaper that ignited the debate leading to Section 28. The book dealt with some of the day-to-day issues that a child with same-sex parents might encounter.

Local Government Act 1988 – Excerpt from Section 28:

(1) A local authority shall not: (a) intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality; (b) promote the teaching in any maintained school [as defined in the Act] of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretend family relationship

Sounds familiar…

[archivlibrarianist]

And how did it infringe on this Karen-- sorry, Katie Lyons's "parental rights"?

From the article:

"'Around this time, I realized I was gay,' the page in question, one out of 40 total, reads. 'Being gay means that if you're a girl, you love and have romantic feelings for other girls — and if you're a boy, you love and have romantic feelings for other boys.'

"Lyons said this is counter to state law, largely citing the Parental Rights in Education Act, dubbed "Don't Say Gay" by critics, which prohibits instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity in schools."

Apparently, her second-grade child was irreparably harmed by knowing that...girls sometimes fall in love with girls and boys sometimes fall in love with boys.

This isn't about "parental rights." This is about bigots not allowing queer people to exist.

[intelligentchristianlady]

So little Martha won't be allowed to mention her two daddies until she graduates from high school? How does the teacher enforce that? And how does enforcing it affect Martha?

[profeminist]

"The Don't Say Gay Law has been cut down to size in more ways than this.

- LGBTQ+ students and staff may now be protected by anti-bullying and anti-discrimination measures

- Libraries are free to restock LGBTQ+ books

- LGBTQ+ topics may be discussed freely

GO CRY IN A CORNER RON

Florida teachers can discuss sexual orientation and gender ID under ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill settlement

[19-bellwether]

Disney vs. DeSantis is so funny because it's like. Neither side even wanted to get into this. Here's how it's supposed to go: Politician does something stupid. Corporation disavows politician after public pressure. Politician disavows the disavowing. Nothing changes for either party.

But then the Florida governor got stars in his eyes. He saw an opportunity to bolster his standing before the presidential primary. He wanted to be the one who took on The Mouse and won. So in retaliation he decides he's going to tear down the decades-old agreement Disney uses to govern Disney World's district.

And just like that, Disney's batshit insane legal department turns towards Florida like the Eye of Sauron spotting the ring at Mount Doom. They smell lost profit. They smell blood.

Disney will use any and every strategy they've accumulated over the last century of lobbying congress and DeSantis can't back down lest he admit Mickey Mouse beat his ass. He's lost control of Disney World's district even more than he already did. Now he's getting sued.

This all started because Disney was pressured into backtracking their political contributions to Florida and disavowing the Don't Say Gay law. Now they're fighting for something they actually care about: their profit margin. Disney is not an ally to queer people and they're an enemy to progressives, but damn am I rooting for them to keep humiliating the greater evil for the time being. This is high comedy.

[fullhalalalchemist]

URGENT: 🚨🚨EARN IT ACT IS BACK IN THE SENATE 🚨🚨 TUMBLR’S NSFW BAN HITTING THE ENTIRE INTERNET THIS SUMMER 2023

April 28, 2023

I’m so sorry for the long post but please please please pay attention and spread this

What is the EARN IT Act?

The EARN IT Act (s. 1207) has been roundly condemned by nearly every major LGBTQ+ advocacy and human rights organization in the country.

This is the third time the Senate has been trying to force this through, and I talked about it last year. It is a bill that claims "protects children and victims against CSAM" by creating an unelected and politically appointed national commission of law enforcement specialists to dictate "best practices" that websites all across the nation will be forced to follow. (Keep in mind, most websites in the world are created in the US, so this has global ramifications). These "best practices" would include killing encryption so that any law enforcement can scan and see every single message, dm, photo, cloud storage, data, and any website you have every so much as glanced at. Contrary to popular belief, no they actually can't already do that. These "best practices" also create new laws for "removing CSAM" online, leading to mass censorship of non-CSAM content like what happened to tumblr. Keep in mind that groups like NCOSE, an anti-LGBT hate group, will be allowed on this commission. If websites don't follow these best practices, they lose their Section 230 protections, leading to mass censorship either way.

Section 230 is foundational to modern online communications. It's the entire reason social media exists. It grants legal protection to users and websites, and says that websites aren't responsible for what users upload online unless it's criminal. Without Section 230, websites are at the mercy of whatever bullshit regulatory laws any and every US state passes. Imagine if Texas and Florida were allowed to say what you can and can't publish and access online. That is what will happen if EARN IT passes. (For context, Trump wanted to get rid of Section 230 because he knew it would lead to mass govt surveillance and censorship of minorities online.)

This is really not a drill. Anyone who makes or consume anything “adult” and LGBT online has to be prepared to fight Sen. Blumenthal’s EARN IT Act, brought back from the grave by a bipartisan consensus to destroy Section 230. If this bill passes, we’re going to see most, if not all, adult content and accounts removed from mainstream platforms. This will include anything related to LGBT content, including SFW fanfiction, for example. Youtube, Twitter, Reddit, Tiktok, Tumblr, all of them will be completely gutted of anything related to LGBT content, abortion healthcare, resources for victims of any type of abuse, etc. It is a right-wing fascists wet dream, which is why NCOSE is behind this bill and why another name for this bill is named in reference to NCOSE.

NCOSE used to be named Morality in Media, and has rebranded into an "anti-trafficking" organization. They are a hate group that has made millions off of being "against trafficking" while helping almost no victims and pushing for homophobic laws globally. They have successfully pushing the idea that any form of sexual expression, including talking about HEALTH, leads to sex trafficking. That's how SESTA passed. Their goal is to eliminate all sex, anything gay, and everything that goes against their idea of ‘God’ from the internet and hyper disney-fy and sanitize it. This is a highly coordinated attack on multiple fronts.

The EARN IT Act will lead to mass online censorship and surveillance. Platforms will be forced to scan their users’ communications and censor all sex-related content, including sex education, literally anything lgbt, transgender or non-binary education and support systems, aything related to abortion, and sex worker communication according to the ACLU. All this in the name of “protecting kids” and “fighting CSAM”, both of which the bill does nothing of the sort. In fact it makes fighting CSEM even harder.

EARN IT will open the way for politicians to define the category of “pornography" as they — or the lobbies that fund them — please. The same way that right-wing groups have successfully banned books about race and LGBT, are banning trans people from existing, all under the guise of protecting children from "grooming and exploitation", is how they will successfully censor the internet.

As long as state legislatures can tie in "fighting CSAM" to their bullshit laws, they can use EARN IT to censor and surveill whatever they want.

This is already a nightmare enough. But the bill also DESTROYS ENCRYPTION, you know, the thing protecting literally anyone or any govt entity from going into your private messages and emails and anything on your devices and spying on you.

This bill is going to finish what FOSTA/SESTA started. And that should terrify you.

Senator Blumenthal (Same guy who said ‘Facebook should ban finsta’) pushed this bill all of 2020, literally every activist (There were more than half a million signatures on this site opposing this act!) pushed hard to stop this bill. Now he brings it back, doesn’t show the text of the bill until hours later, and it’s WORSE. Instead of fixing literally anything in the bill that might actually protect kids online, Bluemnthal is hoping to fast track this and shove it through, hoping to get little media attention other than propaganda of “protecting kids” to support this shitty legislation that will harm kids. Blumental doesn't care about protecting anyone, and only wants his name in headlines.

It will make CSAM much much worse.

One of the many reasons this bill is so dangerous: It totally misunderstands how Section 230 works, and in doing so (as with FOSTA) it is likely to make the very real problem of CSAM worse, not better. Section 230 gives companies the flexibility to try different approaches to dealing with various content moderation challenges. It allows for greater and greater experimentation and adjustments as they learn what works – without fear of liability for any “failure.” Removing Section 230 protections does the opposite. It says if you do anything, you may face crippling legal liability. This actually makes companies less willing to do anything that involves trying to seek out, take down, and report CSAM because of the greatly increased liability that comes with admitting that there is CSAM on your platform to search for and deal with. This liability would allow anyone for any reason to sue any platform they want, suing smaller ones out of existence. Look at what is happening right now with book bans across the nation with far right groups. This is going to happen to the internet if this bill passes.

(Remember, the state department released a report in December 2021 recommending that the government crack down on “obscenity” as hard the Reagan Administration did. If this bill passes, it could easily go way beyond shit red states are currently trying. It is a goldmine for the fascist right that is currently in the middle of banning every book that talks about race and sexuality across the US.)

The reason these bills keep showing up is because there is this false lie spread by organizations like NCOSE that platforms do nothing about CSEM online. However, platforms are already liable for child sexual exploitation under federal law. Tech companies sent more than 45 million+ instances of CSAM to the DOJ in 2019 alone, most of which they declined to investigate. This shows that platforms are actually doing everything in their power already to stop CSEM by following already existing laws. The Earn It Act includes zero resources for proven investigation or prevention programs. If Senator Bluementhal actually cared about protecting youth, why wouldn’t he include anything to actually protect them in his shitty horrible bill? EARN IT is actually likely to make prosecuting child molesters more difficult since evidence collected this way likely violates the Fourth Amendment and would be inadmissible in court.

I don’t know why so many Senators are eager to cosponsor the “make child pornography worse” bill, but here we are.

HOW TO FIGHT BACK

EARN IT Act was introduced just two weeks ago and is already being fast-tracked. It will be marked up the week of May 1st and head to the Senate floor immediately after. If there is no loud and consistent opposition, it will be law by JUNE! Most bills never go to markup, so this means they are putting pressure to move this through. There are already 20 co-sponsors, a fifth of the entire Senate. This is an uphill battle and it is very much all hands on deck.

CALL YOUR REPRESENTATIVES.

This website takes you to your Senator / House members contact info. EMAIL, MESSAGE, SEND LETTERS, CALL CALL CALL CALL CALL. Calling is the BEST way to get a message through. Get your family and friends to send calls too. This is literally the end of free speech online.

(202) 224-3121 connects you to the congressional hotline. Here is a call script if you don't know what to say. Call them every day. Even on the weekends, leaving voicemails are fine.

2. Sign these petitions!

Link to Petition 1

Link to Petition 2

3. SPREAD THE WORD ONLINE

If you have any social media, spread this online. One of the best ways we fought back against this last year was MASSIVE spread online. Tiktok, reddit, twitter, discord, whatever means you have at least mention it. We could see most social media die out by this fall if we don't fight back.

Here is a linktree with more information on this bill including a masterpost of articles, the links to petitions, and the call script.

DISCORD LINK IF YOU WANT TO HELP FIGHT IT

TLDR: The EARN IT Act will lead to online censorship of any and all adult & lgbt content across the entire internet, open the floodgates to mass surveillance the likes which we haven’t seen before, lead to much more CSEM being distributed online, and destroy encryption. Call 202-224-3121 to connect to your house and senate representative and tell them to VOTE NO on this bill that does not protect anyone and harms everyone.

[grayheartart]

Biden Administration Spreads Disinformation

The Florida Law KJP is talking about has neutral language. It applies across the board from Cis to Trans, Gay to Straight and all other identities in between.

Calling the law "Don't say gay" is literal left wing misinformation and propaganda.

[nerdygaymormon]

[so-i-did-this-thing]

How it's going as a trans person in Florida: Planned Parenthood, 26Health, and Spektrum Health have announced they have paused all gender affirming care.

To recap, DeSantis signed several anti-trans bills into law this week. Care is banned for minors, care is all but banned for adults, Don't Say Gay has been extended, children can be kidnapped from affirming parents by non-affirming family, and there is a bathroom bill that subjects trans folks to arrest for using government owned facilities, such as those in courthouses, airports, many stadiums and parks.

The adult effective ban was felt immediately. The main elements are:

signing at every visit an in-person informed consent form created by the state

all care come from physicians instead of nurse practitioners

no telemed for gender-affirming care

Currently, it is unknown if existing HRT prescriptions written by NPs will be honored by pharmacies. I personally know one person who was able to pick up testosterone yesterday, but I have also read many reports of folks being denied. I myself don't have a refill ready for another 10 days and will report back after I try my own pickup.

What's additionally dangerous is those of us, myself included, who get non-HRT prescriptions from our gender clinics now face the uncertainty of continuing of *all* of our medical care. Our health clinics are at risk of shuttering permanently as they lose major income, and many of us will lose STD meds, depression meds, heart meds, etc, etc.

When we say "this will kill us," it goes beyond suicide risk from forced detransition.

"But you can still get HRT from a physician."

So many suck or are outright hostile and the demand outstrips the supply. Before I found my NP-run clinic, one physician just decided to not call in my Rx, another was so shit at reading lab results, he thought I had hepatitis, and the third I had to threaten to kick in the teeth for trying to force too large a speculum in me.

Also, the state-required consent form has not been finalized and distributed yet, so at this point, everything has pretty much ground to a halt.

It was estimated that 80% of trans adults would lose their healthcare because of how many use providers like Planned Parenthood, but the impact seems even greater now.

"You can get your non-gender care elsewhere still."

DeSantis recently signed a bill that allows healthcare professionals to discriminate against trans people.

Sure, we can try to find care elsewhere, but it will be a slow and expensive process, with no guarantees. It took me over 20 years to get my heart condition treated because of transphobic doctors.

What can I do as a trans Floridian?

Stay in communication with your clinic - many are working on getting physicians added to the roster to prescribe HRT. Lawsuits are being filed and it's possible the changes to adult care can be rolled back.

Continue to try to pick up your meds, but begin looking for care elsewhere, though. Inside and outside the state.

Remember that while telemed for gender affirming care has been banned, you can still cross state lines for care. See Erin's map of informed consent clinics.

Many people will turn to DIY, but be sure you are aware of the risks here, especially if on testosterone, which is a controlled substance.

What should I be worried about next as a trans Floridian?

I worry about the following next steps towards genocide:

Banning getting care out of state. This is from the anti-abortion playbook. They will likely start with kids again, but we've seen how quickly adult care gets axed.

Being declared mentally incompetent or a risk in some way. This could be anything from being barred from gun ownership to not being allowed to work for the government.

Being declared a de facto predator. This has already happened with the latest bathroom law (cis people can eject trans people from government owned single-gender facilities, with arrest as a penalty), so watch out for it being applied to privately-owned facilities. Watch for discussions of official lists of trans people.

Gender presentation enforcement laws, essentially banning "cross dressing". Laws that block or rollback documentation changes.

These all have historic precedence and are huge "I'm in danger" red flags.

What can I do as a cis person?

Amplify all this news. Talk frankly about how this is genocide. And donate what you can to trans mutual aid campaigns so people can travel to get healthcare or even leave the state.

Here's some articles to get started on building awareness:

Take care, everyone, of yourself and each other.

[lauferisms]

Ron DeSantis: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

[ralfmaximus]

Under the terms of the settlement, the Florida Board of Education will send instructions to every school district saying the Florida law doesn’t prohibit discussing LGBTQ+ people, nor prevent anti-bullying rules on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity or disallow Gay-Straight Alliance groups. The settlement also spells out that the law is neutral — meaning what applies to LGBTQ+ people also applies to heterosexual people — and that it doesn’t apply to library books not being used in the classroom.

Florida's "Don't Say Gay" law has been defanged for the most part. Or at least, teachers & students cannot be officially prosecuted for the crime of being gay or talking about gender identity.

So, a small victory for Floridians. It's to be seen how well these new instructions will be followed in hardcore red districts, but that's always been the case.

MAGA assholes will, of course, be enraged.

[sjerzgirl]

Yet another crooked Republican pleads guilty to wire fraud and money laundering. Gee ... don't you just love the "law and order" party?

[white-chalk-sapphomet]

For those who didn't hear, in Florida, Senate Bill 254 which banned gender affirming care for minors, imposed stringent requirements of adults, mandating in-person consultations/prohibition of telehealth, banned puberty blockers for minors, rigorous informed consent, etc had more of its stipulations struck down.

June last year ('23), fed judge Robert L Hinkle was able to block the ban on beta blockers and hrt for minors as unconstitutional, concluding it was an exercise in politics and not medicine. This month, his rulings have been able to overturn the ban on medicaid coverage of gender affirming treatments. The ruling comes six months after a three-day trial for Doe v. Ladapo in which the court heard testimony from experts in psychiatry, endocrinology, medical ethics and pediatric medicine.

the remaining measures of the bill have to do with the prohibition of telehealth and the requirements to see a physician and undergo the psychological assessments. House Bill 1557, the don't say gay bill which was extended last year to include 4th - 12th grade is still in effect. Restroom restrictions in public gov facilities are still in effect, and gov officials/businesses are still able to discriminate against trans individuals, among other bills still targeting trans people.

There's still work to be done, but theres some good news and progress we're taking back. Stay safe, keep each other safe. More than ever, try to seek out your community, participate in organized activism, and build solidarity with other communities. mask up, be vocal about Palestine, and reject the prison-industrial complex.