There is a disturbing trend in Florida's legislation that is aimed at censoring speech, legalizing discrimination, and limiting educational freedom of minorities in the state. The most recent example of this is the so called 'Parental Rights in Education' bill or what is also being called the 'Don't Say Gay' bill HB1557. This bill has the potential of effectively blocking classroom conversation about gender identity and sexuality at a time when these conversations are more important than ever. It can also have a chilling effect on teachers as the bill would allow parents to sue the school if they believe that a conversation or discussion was held that was not age appropriate.
Supporters of the bill claim that this is about parent's rights over what is taught to their students, a representative in favor of this bill argued that there is already efforts to inject classroom discussions about sexuality in lower grades and that this bill would prevent sex education type discussions when not appropriate. Yet this is just a smoke screen for a badly worded vague bill that prohibits discussion about sexual and gender identity in the 'primary school level' a term that is legally undefined in Florida law. For many LGBTQ+ kids, schools are an important source of information, and eliminating mention of these topics deprive students from learning from their peers. (For more discussion see “Gay is not a Permanent Thing: Legislature sends Controversial Bill to Governor" Florida Politics 2022).
Another example is a House Bill (HB7) that goes after constitutionally protected speech in both the classroom and the workplace. It will seek to ban dialogue about systemic racism, gender and race discrimination. It would allow Florida's employment discrimination statutes to give employees the ability to file discrimination claims against an employer engaging in training or discussion about black history, gender, race discrimination or any other training that would make them 'feel guilt' based on the past actions of members of the same race.
The bill would prohibit subjecting any individual to training or instruction that would cause an individual to "feel discomfort, guilt, anguish or any other form of psychological distress because of actions committed in the past by other members of the same race, color, sex or national origin." This is stunning because history does and should make people feel guilt, discomfort, anguish, and remorse. How will this law impact the teaching of the holocaust, the Native American genocide, African American slavery and oppression, among others?
In Florida, the governor is attempting to turn the argument about racism on its head, arguing that anti-racism is instead racism. It attempts to sugarcoat and re-write history in order to restrict any discussions that offend members of other races. It also assumes that people are not morally responsible for the mistakes of past generations. However, Number 14:18 clearly indicate that God 'by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquities of the parent's upon the children to the third and fourth generation.' It is important to teach and understand the past even though it is unpleasant, disturbing and traumatic.
Our United States history has been one of enslavement, oppression, sharecropping, lynching, and discrimination against African-American's and many other minority groups. To forget our history of violence and discrimination is to dishonor the memory of victims, it is to forget how hate and oppression became normalized and codified in law and permitted for such a long time, and how people became dehumanized which allowed others to enslave and oppress.
It is also significant that while some voices in our society continue to insist that the United States doesn't have a problem with systematic racism and discrimination against LGBTQ+ community, examples of legalized and codified racism like these bills only underscore the very problem it denies. These bills are designed to hurt minority populations in Florida including people of color, women, and the LGBTQ+ community. There is no question that when society and especially the church remains silent and when discrimination is legalized, more drastic forms of exclusion, violence, and discrimination will follow.
