Miami, Apr 19 (EFE)
“They are trying to hide a real society,” María García, who has two children in sixth grade in a Miami-Dade County public school, told EFE, while the organization Equality Florida defined the law as an “intentional effort to erase people transgender and non-binary from the curriculum.
For others, it is simply a “political stunt” by Governor Ron DeSantis in the face of his foreseeable candidacy for the Republican nomination.
The law, officially called “Parental Rights in Education”, punishes teachers who address gender identity and sexual orientation in the classroom and has been in force since 2022 between kindergarten and third grade.
As had already been anticipated, the Florida Department of Education approved this Wednesday to extend the validity of the law to all K-12, that is, from the beginning to the end of high school.
Under the law, parents may file lawsuits against the school district and receive damages if this provision is violated.
“Expanding it further, to a stage in which boys and girls are fully developing their identity seems to me a mistake,” María García told EFE.
This Miami-Dade mother pointed out that for the defenders of the law “the only society that exists is the heterosexual one”, but today’s society is much more open and much more developed.
“The realities cannot be denied and one proof is that the teachers in the History class put the news to the children to talk about current affairs,” García emphasized.
Ileana Peña, a biology teacher at a public high school in the same county, told EFE that she defended, instead of this law, the promotion of “tolerance at all levels.”
In a video released today, Karla Hernández, of the United Teachers of Dade, a Miami teachers union, stated that “this legislation limits freedom of expression” and could affect the curriculum in Literature, History and other subjects.
“A LAW THAT SILENCES EDUCATORS”
For Equality Florida, it is a law that “silences educators by prohibiting any instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity.”
This rule will revoke “the ability of local school districts to develop comprehensive sex education, handing over control of the curriculum to the State Department of Education and further politicizing our classrooms.”
Additionally, Equality Florida rates this measure as “unpopular” based on a poll conducted by the Public Opinion Research Laboratory (PORL) at the University of North Florida showing that 49% of Floridians oppose the legislation. “Don’t say gay” and 40% support it.
“There is nothing wrong with talking about LGBTQ+ people, history and culture in our classrooms. There is nothing wrong with children receiving life-saving, gender-affirming care,” Kelley Robinson, president of the Human Rights Campaign, the largest human rights civil rights organization in the United States, said in the same statement.
“Our community does not represent any threat. The real threat to Floridians is Governor Ron DeSantis and extremist lawmakers who are some of the most anti-LGBTQ+ politicians in America,” Robinson added.
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said for her part that the expansion of the law is “a targeted attack on the most vulnerable students in the state, who are already experiencing higher rates of bullying and self-harm.”
“Shame on the Florida Board of Education for carrying out the bidding of a governor and his political ambitions instead of protecting the state’s children,” added Weingarten, leader of a national union with 1.7 million affiliated professionals.
Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried noted that “instead of working to improve our public schools and ensure all students have full-time educators, DeSantis is pulling another political stunt.”
The DeSantis administration presented the proposed expansion of the law last month as part of the conservative agenda it wants to implement in Florida before announcing that it will compete to be the Republican candidate for the 2024 presidential elections, Florida media reported today.
The proposal will take effect after a procedural notice period that lasts about a month, the Department of Education noted.
