There’s the immeasurable but seemingly inevitable economic damage as companies remove Florida from their lists for potential expansion or relocation. So much has been said about the wreckage that this new law will create. But because it was politically advantageous for Florida lawmakers and the governor to wield vicious lies, spinning false visions of child predators and erasing the identities of students who don’t conform to heterosexual norms. How many of them will remember this event? How many will come to realize that, as they fidgeted and stared at the dark-haired man with the Sharpie pens, he was enacting a law meant to intimidate teachers who might offer support to LGBTQ+ students and convince those students their voices should be silenced? Not because the students, or their teachers, were doing anything wrong. He laughed and handed the blue markers he was using to the children clustered around him.īut you have to wonder about those children. The bill signing Monday was staged at a charter school founded by the wife of his top education official, Richard Corcoran. Ron DeSantis signed HB 1557 - the so-called “Don’t Say Gay” legislation that is nationally castigated as divisive and damaging to the mental and physical well-being of Florida students.
Surrounded by students in blue uniform shirts and plaid ties, some holding “Protect Children” signs, Gov.
