Ron DeSantis Spox Seems Pretty Sure LGBTQ People Are Pedophiles

That's where they're going with the 'Don't Say Gay' bill now.

The Florida state Senate is expected to vote today on the state's now-infamous "Don't Say Gay" bill. It will probably pass. It will then definitely then be signed into law by GOP Governor Ron DeSantis, who is quite thrilled by the law and believes it has gotten a bad rap by being called a "Don't Say Gay" bill. He claims the law bans all "sexual instruction" to children in primary schools, as if the issue they are looking to address is an epidemic of teachers passing out worksheets featuring Cosmo's hottest sex tips. It's not. Because, as DeSantis explicitly said when defending the bill, he considers mentioning the existence of gay or trans people to be "sexual instruction."

"When you actually look at the bill and it says 'no sexual instruction to kids pre-K through three,' how many parents want their kids to have transgenderism or something injected into classroom instruction?" DeSantis said. "It's basically saying for our younger students, do you really want them being taught about sex? And this is any sexual stuff. But I think clearly right now, we see a focus on transgenderism, telling kids they may be able to pick genders and all of that."

People being trans is, of course, not remotely sexual. It's no more sexual than a child identifying as the gender they were assigned at birth. And acknowledging that gay people exist isn't any more inherently "sexual" than acknowledging that straight people exist. Surely, children have watched Cinderella many times over many decades without knowing how she and the prince spent their wedding night.

The goals of the law are obvious. They think if kids never hear that gay or trans people exist, A) they will be cisgender and straight and, B) They will think gay people and trans people are weird and therefore keep fanning the flames of bigotry well after their bigot parents are dead and gone and also never make said bigot parents uncomfortable at Thanksgiving dinner.

Also defending the bill is DeSantis's spokesperson Christina Pushaw, who has been trying to spin the bill another way, grotesquely claiming it's about defending children from being "groomed," suggesting she believes LGBTQ+ people are pedophiles.

If you’re against the Anti-Grooming Bill, you are probably a groomer or at least you don’t denounce the grooming of 4-8 year old children. Silence is complicity. This is how it works, Democrats, and I didn’t make the rules.

— Christina Pushaw 🇺🇸 (@Christina Pushaw 🇺🇸) 1646436788 

Classy!

This is actually what I have been concerned about as "grooming" has emerged as a buzzword over the last few years. There is an unfortunate tendency in our culture to take terms that have specific meanings — particularly in the context of abuse — and overuse them to the point that they are either rendered practically meaningless or used (incorrectly) by people seeking to harm others themselves.

READ MORE:  DeSantis Press Secretary Christina Pushaw Is Just Really Good At Her Job 

What Pushaw and DeSantis are trying to put forth here is the idea that gay and trans identities are a sexual fetish, and being open about the existence of LGBTQ people is the same thing as telling kids about S&M — which yes, would probably be too complicated for children to understand. They won't say it explicitly for some reason, but they keep dancing around it like we don't know that's what they think.

The thing about this bill, however, is the way those who defend it keep telling on themselves with every "actually" they utter. Right-wing fringe site The Post Millennial attempted to adopt Pushaw's "anti-grooming" spin, only to end up making it clear they were afraid teachers were going to turn kids into ... liberal activists . The type who go around not being terrible to people about their sexual orientation or gender identity!

What activists term the "Don't Say Gay" bill is, as Pushaw says, an anti-groomer bill to protect children from activists teachers [sic] who seek to initiate children into their activism. Florida's Parental Rights in Education is one that seeks to protect and encourage parent child relationships, and demand that teachers teach, and not use the classroom or school to advocate for their own activist gender ideologies.

"Initiate children into their activism?" Does this involve hooded cloaks in some capacity?

 www.youtube.com 

It would be funny how absolutely bananas these people are if it weren't so deeply harmful. The article in The Post Millennial even has the gall to not only suggest that outing children to their parents is necessary to prevent "grooming," but then also argue that this is definitely not going to lead to abuse or other negative outcomes.

The law also prevents schools "from discouraging or prohibiting parental notification and involvement in critical decisions affecting a student's mental, emotional, or physical well-being." That's pretty clearly not a bill that requires teachers to not "say gay," but instead is one that includes parents in assessments about their children. It prevents teachers from locking parents out of their children's lives, and from telling students to keep secrets from their parents.

Many, many states across the US have guidance in place that instruct schools to affirm a student's gender identity, and to not tell parents about that affirmation or the gender identity if students don't want them to.

This automatically assumes that children with divergent gender identities who don't want to tell their parents about it are at risk of abuse by their parents. There is no reason to believe this unless there has been a history of abuse. Non-abusive parents don't just start victimizing their children.

Yes they absolutely do, especially in cases like this. There is a reason why, despite the fact that LGBTQ+ young people only make up about seven percent of the population at large, they make up 40 percent of the homeless youth population . And why would these people feel so strongly about wanting to out kids to their bigoted parents unless they believed these parents had the right to try to force their kid to be straight or cisgender?

READ MORE: Florida Legislators Find A Way To Make 'Don't Say Gay' Bill Even Crueler 

Alas, as ridiculous as every argument in favor of this nonsense is, it's still going to be signed into law and the best we can hope for is that it will be nullified by the courts.

[ Twitter / The Post Millennial ]

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