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Florida's Republican governor and presumed 2024 presidential candidate Ron DeSantis is moving to expand his state's prohibition on classroom discussions of sexual orientation and gender identity to all grades.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on Wednesday denounced DeSantis' effort to broaden what critics call the "Don't Say Gay" law, describing it as "completely, utterly wrong."
Passed last year by Florida's GOP-controlled Legislature, the law forbids classroom instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in grades K-3. The DeSantis administration's proposed rule change, first reported Tuesday by The Orlando Sentinel, would extend the ban on such lessons to grades 4-12, except when they are required by state standards or as part of a reproductive health course from which parents can choose to exclude their children.
The proposal, introduced by DeSantis' Department of Education, goes even further than right-wing Florida lawmakers' current push to expand the law through grade 8 and does not require legislative approval. The state Board of Education—controlled by appointees of DeSantis and his predecessor, U.S. Sen Rick Scott (R-Fla.)—is set to vote on the measure at its April 19 meeting.
"Everything he does is about what can further his own career ambitions," Brandon Wolf of Equality Florida toldThe Associated Press on Wednesday, referring to DeSantis. "And it's clear he sees the anti-LGBTQ movement as his vehicle to get him where he wants to go."
Florida's "Don't Say Gay" law has been widely condemned since it was first introduced last year. Opponents—including President Joe Biden, who called the measure "hateful"—contend that it marginalizes LGBTQ+ people.
"Everything he does is about what can further his own career ambitions. And it's clear he sees the anti-LGBTQ movement as his vehicle to get him where he wants to go."
DeSantis' proposed expansion has confirmed critics' warnings that the law was never intended to "protect kids," as proponents claimed, but rather to undermine support for LGBTQ+ rights and sow mistrust in public education to facilitate privatization.
"It was never about 'protecting children,'" Alejandra Caraballo, a clinical instructor at the Harvard Law School Cyberlaw Clinic, wrote Wednesday on social media. "It was always about eliminating LGBTQ people from public life and making it illegal to even discuss our existence."
That message was echoed by former Florida Rep. Carlos Guillermo Smith (D-49), who tweeted: "It was never, ever, ever, ever about kindergarten through third grade. It was always about demonizing us and censoring LGBTQ people out of existence in our schools."
During her Wednesday press briefing, Jean-Pierre alluded to growing attacks on LGBTQ+ people and said that DeSantis' proposal reflects "a disturbing and dangerous trend that we're seeing across the country."
Last month, PEN America revealed that GOP officials across the United States unveiled 84 educational gag orders during the first six weeks of 2023.
As the free speech organization previously documented, Republican lawmakers introduced 190 bills designed to restrict the ability of educators and students to discuss the production of and resistance to myriad inequalities throughout U.S. history—including several proposals to create so-called "tip lines" that would enable parents to punish school districts or individual teachers—in dozens of states in 2021 and 2022. Over the past two years, 19 laws limiting the teaching of gender, sexuality, and racism were enacted in more than a dozen GOP-controlled states, plus eight measures imposed without legislation.
This year alone, Florida's "Don't Say Gay" law has spawned at least 27 copycat bills in more than a dozen states, including several measures that would, as DeSantis is now proposing, censor instruction related to sexual orientation or gender identity at all grade levels.
Opponents of Florida's law argue that "its language—'classroom instruction,' 'age appropriate,' and 'developmentally appropriate'—is overly broad and subject to interpretation," AP reported. "Consequently, teachers might opt to avoid the subjects entirely for fear of being sued, they say."
In an opinion piece published last year, Washington Post columnist Greg Sargent argued that the nationwide surge in restrictive education legislation has "an obvious purpose: to make teachers feel perpetually on thin ice, so they shy away from difficult discussions about our national past rather than risk breaking laws in ways they cannot themselves anticipate."
"But there's another, more pernicious goal driving these bills that might well succeed politically precisely because it remains largely unstated," Sargent continued. "The darker underlying premise here is that these bills are needed in the first place, because subversive elements lurk around every corner in schools, looking to pervert, indoctrinate, or psychologically torture your kids."
The "combination of... vagueness and punitive mechanisms such as rights of action and tip lines" is intentionally designed to promote self-censorship, wrote Sargent. "Precisely because teachers might fear that they can't anticipate how they might run afoul of the law—while also fearing punishment for such transgressions—they might skirt difficult subjects altogether."
He added that "calls for maximal parental choice and control in schools have been used by the right for decades as a smoke screen to sow fears and doubts about public education at its ideological foundations."
National Education Association president Becky Pringle similarly argued last month that DeSantis' attack on a new high school Advanced Placement African-American studies course is part of the far-right's wider anti-democratic assault on public schools and other institutions aimed at improving the common good.
"For DeSantis, blocking AP African-American studies is part of a cheap, cynical, and dangerous political ploy to drive division and chaos into public education debates," Pringle wrote.
"He seeks to distract communities from his real agenda, which is to first whitewash and then dumb down public education as an excuse to privatize it," she added. "His ultimate goal? The destruction of public education, the very foundation of our democracy."
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Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) unleashed a tirade during a congressional hearing on gun safety measures.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms, Tobacco and Explosives (ATF) implemented a new rule that would treat any firearm with a pistol stabilizing brace as a short-barreled rifle, which requires a federal license to own, and Jordan ranted against the measure that would force gun owners to register those weapons or face up to 10 years in jail or up to $10,000 in fines.
"So while they were doing their study they didn't count the number of braces being sold?" Jordan asked GOP witness Alex Bosco, founder and inventor of the stabilizing brace. "That's probably because [Everytown for Gun Safety] told them not to count it, right?"
Bosco declined to speculate, but Jordan said the gun safety organization helped craft the measure, which is aimed at reducing the capacity for would-be mass shooters to conceal and use deadly short-barreled weapons.
"They were talking to them all the time, putting this all together, going after people who support the Second Amendment," Jordan said. "How many Americans do you think it is total? I've heard estimates as many as 40 million Americans could be impacted by this."
Bosco, who got the idea for his product after going shooting with a wounded veteran, said the Congressional Research Service estimated 10 million to 40 million Americans own stabilizing braces like those he sells.
"Unless you remove the brace, lengthen the barrel, turn in or destroy your firearm or register your gun with this government that you know you can trust because Mr. Wilcox has been working with them," Jordan said, referring to Everytown's federal legal director Rob Wilcox. "Unless you do those four things, what happens? What are you? A felon. A felon for something 10 years ago they said was just fine, that you built a business on, a business that you started because you wanted to help a man who put the uniform of his country on his back and served our country and was injured, and now they're going to put you out of business and make people felons. But don't worry, Everytown USA and Mr. Wilcox has been working with our government to implement this to target Americans who support the Second Amendment -- such a deal, such a deal."
"That's why we need legislation to say this rule doesn't -- we need to pass that legislation," he added. "That's what we do need to pass this law now, based on what has happened with this organization."
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'Never seen anything like this': US librarians report book bans hit record high in 2022
March 23, 2023
Librarians from across the United States released a report showing that pro-censorship groups' efforts to ban books with LGBTQ+ themes and stories about people of color have driven an unprecedented rise in the number of book challenges, with right-wing organizers pushing library workers to remove works ranging from the dystopian novel The Handmaid's Tale to children's books about foods enjoyed in different cultures.
According to the American Library Association (ALA), a record-breaking 2,571 unique titles were challenged in 2022, a 38% increase from the previous year.
The organization recorded 1,269 demands to censor books from various groups and individuals, compared to 729 challenges counted in 2021.
"Each attempt to ban a book by one of these groups represents a direct attack on every person's constitutionally protected right to freely choose what books to read and what ideas to explore," said Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of the ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom. "The choice of what to read must be left to the reader or, in the case of children, to parents. That choice does not belong to self-appointed book police."
The Office for Intellectual Freedom said that starting in 2021, a rising number of challenges began targeting large numbers of titles, suggesting they were coordinated efforts from national groups like Moms for Liberty. Previously, the vast majority of book challenges were focused on a single book to which a parent or group of parents objected.
In 2022, 90% of the books challenged were part of attempts to censor multiple titles, the ALA reported.
"A book challenge is a demand to remove a book from a library's collection so that no one else can read it. Overwhelmingly, we're seeing these challenges come from organized censorship groups that target local library board meetings to demand removal of a long list of books they share on social media," said Caldwell-Stone. "Their aim is to suppress the voices of those traditionally excluded from our nation's conversations, such as people in the LGBTQIA+ community or people of color."
In Florida, where Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis has led a nationwide effort by conservatives to keep public school students from learning accurate American history and discussing issues regarding the LGBTQ+ community, one county removed from school library shelves 176 books which have been held in storage since January 2022. The books include the children's books Hush! A Thai Lullaby, featuring a Thai mother and child, and Dim Sum for Everyone!, about a family eating in a Chinese restaurant.
"I've never seen anything like this," Caldwell-Stone told the Associated Press. "The last two years have been exhausting, frightening, outrage-inducing."
People for the American Way called the association's data, collected from media reports and library professionals across the country, "shocking but not surprising."
"The far right wants to turn back the clock on the freedom to read, teach, and learn," said the group. "We won't stand for it."
The ALA report comes four months after voters in at least two U.S. towns voted to cut or eliminate funding for their public libraries in the wake of campaigns to ban books with LGBTQ+ themes.
People in Jamestown Township, Michigan voted for a second time against a millage to fund 84% of their library's budget, dooming the facility to a likely closure in 2024. The vote followed a push by a local conservative group to remove the book Gender Queer: A Memoir.
Craighead County Jonesboro Library in Arkansas lost 50% of its funding after "librarians and library workers were labeled pornographers and pedophiles because of the books on their shelves" that dealt with LGBTQ+ themes, as EveryLibrary Institute executive director John Chrastka toldPublishers Weekly in November.
A poll commissioned by the EveryLibrary Institute last year found that 75% of respondents were opposed to efforts to ban books, and across 16 states last fall, a majority of initiatives to pull funding from libraries failed.
"While a vocal minority stokes the flames of controversy around books, the vast majority of people across the nation are using life-changing services that public and school libraries offer," said ALA President Lessa Kanani'opua Pelayo-Lozada on Thursday. "Our nation cannot afford to lose the library workers who lift up their communities and safeguard our First Amendment freedom to read."
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