Florida Republicans Triple Down On ‘Don't Say Gay’ With Three Expansion Bills

The bigoted Republicans driving Florida into the ground have introduced a flurry of new bills that would expand the scope of last year's infamous "Don't Say Gay" legislation. The three bills would do everything from rewriting sex ed course to banning preferred pronouns for transgender teachers and students. This will not stop until these people are removed from office, as Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins explains.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

Republicans in the state of Florida have decided to triple down on their highly offensive and oppressive, don't say gay legislation in the state by proposing three separate expansion bills that would greatly harm teachers and students here in the United States. These three bills are currently making their way through the Republican controlled legislature here in the state of Florida. And here is what they do. You have House Bill 1123 would expand the law to charter schools and would extend the restrictions to pre-kindergarten and beyond third grade prohibiting conversations around gender and sexuality through eighth grade. For students in grades nine through 12, conversations around such topics must be age appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards. The bill would also define sex as an immutable biological trait, rather than leaving room for individual self-identification. In all public K through 12 schools, educators, other school employees and students would not be required to use the student's pronouns if they differ from the students assigned at bi uh, sex at birth.

Uh, similarly, house bill 10, uh, 69 moves to define sex as determined by biology and reproductive function at birth. Adding that reproductive roles are binary, stable, and unchangeable. The bill would also limit teaching about acquired immune deficiency syndrome aids, sexually transmitted diseases or health education when such instruction and course material contains instructions in human sexuality to only students in six, uh, in grade six through 12. So you can't talk about AIDS or STDs or things like that because you know, hey, you gotta talk about sex and you can't do that. Even though that is a part of comprehensive sex education, letting young people know that, hey, there's a lot of really horrible diseases out there, some that we still can't cure. So wrap it up. Guess, guess we're not gonna be able to do that here in the state of Florida anymore. The third bill, senate Bill 1320, contains similar pro provisions as the previous two bills, including placing restrictions on school employees, sharing their pronouns and asking students about theirs.

It would also prohibit teaching about sexuality or gender identity from pre-kindergarten through grade eight. Now listen, one of the biggest problems with these three expansion bills is that a lot of the things that they have in there are things that don't actually exist. Okay? You're not talking in a Florida public school to kindergartners about their pronouns. That's not a thing that happens. And I know because I have four kids in Florida public schools, it never happened. It never happened. Grades K through 12, cuz I've had 'em all, my wife is also a teacher. That's not a thing they do. That's not a thing any of her colleagues do. I have other family members that are also public school

Teachers here in the state of Florida. They don't do those things and never have. So a lot of people may be saying, well then why are you worried if they're passing legislation to ban something that wasn't happening in the first place? Because they're using it to hood, wink morons that would use an argument like that. That's why it me off because now they're gonna go out there and celebrate and be like, look what we've banned from the schools. They're not doing this anymore. They were never doing it, but by saying they're not gonna do it anymore.