The Deep Dishonesty of ‘Don’t Say Gay’

By David Harsanyi

Thursday, March 31, 2022

 

There’s a good reason why nearly every major media outlet and the entire left-wing punditry keep referring to Florida’s Parental Rights in Education law as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill — rather than, say, the “Don’t Teach Kindergartners about Gender Dysphoria” bill. Any honest debate on the matter would almost surely be a political loser for Democrats.

 

Let’s turn to the Washington Post’s Philip Bump as our straw man, since his columns offer unfailingly misleading descriptions of conservative positions. Bump argues in a recent piece that Disney had publicly come out against the Florida bill because it “understands that American families don’t look the way they used to.” Of course, anyone who has read the law knows it has nothing to do with how families look or don’t look. There are absolutely no restrictions inhibiting anyone from talking about their family. Bump is compelled to discuss the acceptance of gay couples and adoption, and bring up fringe GOPers, because otherwise he might accidentally mention that the law merely prohibits adults in schools from teaching prepubescent kids about sexuality and transgenderism against the will of their parents.

 

When the bill was somewhat accurately described in a Politico/Morning Consult poll, a majority of Florida Democrats supported it. That said, the same people who continue to mislead with “Don’t Say Gay” had the gall to whine about the wording of that poll, so I doubt we’ll see another honest survey. (And I should also add that I don’t believe the morality or efficacy of a bill is predicated on public support. I’m merely pointing out the political realities.)

 

The entire controversy hinges on this sentence: “Classroom instruction by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity may not occur in kindergarten through grade 3 or in a manner that is not age appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards.” When Public Opinion Strategies used that language to poll the question, it found strong support for the bill across all party lines and all subsets (including 55–29 percent support among Democrats, 58–26 percent among independents, and 67–24 percent among parents.)

 

Bump claims that the bill “solely” focuses on “those parents worried about how interpersonal relationships and gender identity might come up in school curriculums.” Well, for one thing, it’s not like this fear is conjured up in the imagination of social conservatives. Here’s Human Rights Campaign’s “comprehensive, teacher-friendly lesson plans” on the matter. As it stands, any Florida parents interested in teaching their six-year-olds that they’re imbued with a metaphysical power to dismiss objective reality and biology are free to do so. Knock yourself out. Parents whose values don’t comport with that worldview, however, are now on equal footing. No one, obviously, is worried that kids are going to have to sit through a lecture on the benefits of traditional marriage during nap time. No, Bump simply believes that one group should be empowered to lord over others.

 

“The bill makes the long-standing assumption,” Bump goes on, “that conversations about same-sex couples are necessarily conversations about sex, an assumption that doesn’t apply to non-gay couples.” The bill isn’t predicated on any such idea — though it wouldn’t be far-fetched to mention that the subject is inherently sexual. The bill prohibits any person from teaching young children about sexual orientation or gender identity. It’s getting a bit disconcerting that so many people keep insisting it’s imperative we allow such things.

 

You will notice, surely, that the Left’s alleged reverence for “democracy” is no longer germane when Republicans figure out that they, too, can vote to make changes in their schools. Ron DeSantis, the Florida house, and the senate are all elected, lest we forget. This Calvinballing is reminiscent of the recent ginned-up “banned book” kerfuffle. Leftists believe they should not only be able to dictate what schools kids attend, but what books those kids must have in their libraries, and now which lifestyles must be normalized in schools. In the contemporary leftist’s worldview, it’s authoritarian to ask a parent to show identification before voting, but not to trap that parent’s kids in a state-run school and force-feed their second-graders trendy pseudoscientific ideas about gender.

 

Let’s also point out that suddenly deputizing giant corporations such as Disney to intrude on the sacred working of “democracy” is something to be celebrated. Disney, whose workers don’t seem to have any qualms about communist tyrants or slave labor, is free, as its diversity and inclusion manager explained, to remove “all of the gendered greetings” at its parks — to stop referring to “ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls.” Consumers, in turn, are free to take their business to places that haven’t been captured by woke ideologies. Parents with kids in public school, for the most part, can’t.

 

One strongly suspects that most teachers, straight or gay, have little interest in engaging in these topics, anyway. Which is why progressives are compelled to spend their time distorting the law, dissembling, and smearing its proponents. But it’s still untenable to have a free society where one side of the cultural divide believes it has the right to hold court in kindergarten class, but the other is expected to unilaterally surrender.