The Don't Say Gay bill

People like Disney have to learn you will never get any credit for ducking the issues from the right. They have gotten decades of don't say gay from the Disney corporation. As soon as they make some half assed late resistance to a bill that was made to threaten GLBT people in schools and their supporters, the right acts like Disney raped every one of their childhoods.

The one thing I am laughing at is little prude Ben Shapiro is saying he will make right wing indoctrination materials for children to compete with disney. I am pretty sure buying off brand disney knockoffs from Shapiro corp. is a legal reason for kids to kill their parents. Look kiddo we got you benny carlson mouse with his dorky ass bowtie instead of mickey. (Sound of AR-15 being racked and clip emptied). Seriously, you do not fuck with the disney merch when you buy assault rifles for the kids.

Are companies like Apple and Disney going to keep contributing to politicians who threaten them that way?

Did they explain context to them?

Like, for example the bill isn't actually about sex education - which was already barred by Florida state law for those grades?

Like the idea of parents bringing suit against the school producing a chilling effect intended but not stated in the bill? or that the provision for the higher grades are intentionally vague to produce exactly that outcome?

Like that the Democrats actually offered amendments to do what the Republicans dishonestly claimed they wanted the bill to do and Republicans defeated those amendments?

Also - sure as shit they didn't show voters the whole bill, just the line about grades 1-3, out of context and incomplete.

in other words - what it SAYS is not at all how they intend to apply it. Please don't expect us to be credulous rubes who can trust the Republican reactionary radicals to b acting in good faith and without bigotry. You could more easily sell me Bigfoot repellent and Unicorn eggs.

I think that ended up still in their.

Desantis and his radicals really should ring up 25 years ago and ask AFA and the SBC how this "we will destroy Disney for their sins" business works out.

My parents were actually teachers in florida and they read the bill. On one hand no one should be talking to kids in k-3 grades about sex to begin with. If anyone were doing that they would already be subject to termination and potential criminal charges depending on what was discussed. From what they saw it opens up the teachers to attacks from parents for talking about those issues. The reality is that the teachers are not protected by the lawyers from the schools. If the teacher gets in trouble the school is going to cover it's ass which would be to dump everything on he teacher who does not have the money to keep a lawyer around and protect themselves. To protect yourself would mean you would have to use your savings and mortgage your home to be able to handle the court costs. Even if you were to recover the costs from frivilous lawsuits which this law seems to make harder to prove, you still have to either lose or pay up for the years of fighting.

This open strategy is something so powerful scientology used it to defeat the IRS. The world of scienos opened up so many lawsuits against the IRS and it's people that the IRS caved and gave them tax free status. If the IRS cannot stand up to the barrage of bullshit lawsuits you can bet no teacher or teacher's union could either. This is what the law actually starts to open up. It starts to let every parent open litigation without danger of penalty for using litigation as a weapon. It really does not matter if the court is going to go not guilty when you have 10-20 right wing loonie parents funded by national right wing donations suing teachers who say anything positive about GLBT people.

This forces any teacher to turn their backs on GLBT students even if they are being abused by other students or faculty because they are open to litigation from parents that will destroy them if they are targeted. You are probably even better off in joining the anti-GLBT haters as a teacher because that is the best way of avoiding bullshit lawsuits that are funded by a nation of very rich evangelical organizations.

It is not the age that is the problem with the law. It is the fact the law can be used to punish people through the use of frivolous lawsuits.

If those are my options, I'm checking the fuck out.

Some Florida teachers are apparently taking steps to avoid getting sued under this new law by just removing all references to gender entirely. This includes any he/him and she/her pronouns for students references fathers and mothers. Since this law bans teaching gender identity, and those words allude to gender identity and sexual orientation, they can't use them. It's not clear if this is actually something teachers are doing or if this is just a meme going around.

Predictably, conservatives who supported the law are in a huff.

Which part is too far for you?

When we told you the Florida Bigotry Law was not about the actual text but the deliberate chilling effect - THIS is what we were warning about, and it only took a few days:

6th gr science teacher takes a few days off to get married. Student asks him about it; he answers.
Anti-gay parents tell school it’s “inappropriate” he mentioned his husband.

Teacher quits, says he can’t do his job if parents think who he is is wrong.

And do understand, the resignation was the intended outcome.


'I cannot teach in Florida': LGBTQ educators fear fallout from new school law (nbcnews.com)

Last month, a group of parents in Orlando, Florida, demanded “consequences” against sixth grade science teacher Robert Thollander. His crime? Thollander acknowledged his marriage at school.

“He married a man. This alone is not an issue. Sharing the details … with all his 6th grade students is the issue,” the parents wrote in a letter sent to their children’s school board, which was shared with NBC News. “It was not appropriate. Many of these students felt very uncomfortable with the conversations and shared this with their families.”

Had Thollander just “said he will be out for a few days because he was getting married, no problem,” the letter continued, “but to discuss the details and create an uncomfortable situation for the students with no benefit to teaching his subject matter is inappropriate.”

Thollander denied having discussed his marriage since he and his husband tied the knot in March of last year, aside from acknowledging it when he was asked. No action was taken against him by school leaders, who defended him several days later with a letter of their own, he said.

Nevertheless, the incident prompted Thollander to make this school year his last after 11 years of working in Florida as a teacher.

“A lot of trust is given to teachers, and it made it seem like I wasn’t trusted because there’s something wrong with me for being gay,” he said. “It makes it seem like being gay is something vile or disturbing or disgusting when it’s described as making children uncomfortable knowing that I’m married to a man. It hurt.”

While the Orlando parents did not succeed in having Thollander disciplined or ousted, he and other LGBTQ teachers in the state worry thatnewly signedstate law — titled Parental Rights in Education but dubbed by critics as the “Don’t Say Gay” law — will galvanize parents to take similar action against them. In fact, Thollander said he believes the parents who complained about him were emboldened by the bill even before it was signed into law.

With the new law in place, teachers fear that in talking about their families or LGBTQ issues more broadly, pointed letters will be the least of their worries.

I'm rejecting the choice. I'll accept neither option.

For someone who's checked out, he sure won't shut the fuck up.

You don’t think 12 year olds should be … “exposed” to the idea of non-binary genders?

The longer I live, the more I realize I’ve been non-binary since birth in the mid-60s. “Tomboy” is just one form of non-binary. My grandmother remarked multiple times that I should be in a dress and have long hair whether I liked it or not. More than one non-family or family friend chose to “berate” my mother for my actions. Regardless, whether due to indulgence or negligence, my parents allowed me to behave the way I was wired to behave.

Kids are gonna be kids. Parents and teachers and asshats who can’t keep their noses out of other people’s business should not be telling kids to behave any way other than how they are wired to behave.

"Free To Be You And Me" plays as corny and cringe now, but they had the right message way back in 1972.
And holy SHIT did Republicans hate that shit.
They shit enough bricks to build a new World Trade Center.


Depressing to see nothing's changed in 50 fucking years.

That is what that thing is made of. I get why they are so pissed off now. That rebar must have made those hemorrhoids a nightmare.

It's a conversation to be had with parents. I refuse to grant public school faculty a blank check to undermine parents, under the blanket assumption that they "know better."

So, you’re back on the “teachers should be automatons” thing. Don’t tell other people how to do their job.

Once again, if you were aware that your first-grade teacher Mrs. Johnson had a husband, that was sexual orientation.

If you were aware that your friend Bobby had a mom and a dad, and the teacher mentioned Bobby's mom and Bobby's dad one day, that was sexual orientation.

And if you were aware that Bobby was a boy, that was gender identity.

I don't recall any bitching about "undermining parents" in those situations.

Yes, we know you're a selfish hypocrite at best and a selfish bigot at worst. Or possibly just both.

Lauren Boebert argues people should have to wait until age 21 to come out as LGBT+

Uncle Albert agrees!

Fuck Lauren Boebert

Are you over 21? You can't say that yet if not.

Straight boys could say it from age 12 or earlier, and MAGA Dad would just be proud.

None of that is illegal in this bill, nobody’s preventing anyone from saying, “ my two dads…” it also doesn’t say that you can’t say the word gay in Florida.

So it’s just another law that does absolutely nothing? And you assholes insist it’s the left doing shit like this.

If a male teacher tells the class about their husband, a female teacher their wife, or something similar you really think that the type of people who wrote and supported this bill will be fine with it?

Let's say it's the last day of class, and the kids are getting to watch an animated movie.

Under this law, would a teacher be at risk if they showed a 90 minute animated film about a growing love between 2 women?