Florida education bill looks different depending on where you stand Inbox
Sad that you would have teachers, parents, or grandparents try to change the sex of 5-8 year olds.
Click here for the full story in the Pittsburgh Post- Gazette.
ORLANDO, Fla. — When you come to “the happiest place on earth,” your main focuses usually are: minimizing wait times for your favorite ride; not breaking the bank on food and tchotchkes, and — if your children can stand yet another wait in line — to get as close as possible to their favorite Disney character.
Most folks will tell you that politics, thank goodness, is the furthest thing from anyone’s mind.
In fact, on a recent sunny March day, the only thing close to political at Disney was the fact that masks were no longer required, and most of the parkgoers were happily embracing that freedom.
Two weeks later, Disney is now the center of a political fight largely pushed by social justice activists and the national press: They’ve dubbed a Florida education bill restricting sexualized discussions until after third grade as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill. In response, Disney employees have staged walk-outs and protests at the parks, forcing the CEO to criticize the governor and to use Disney social media as a platform for LGBTQ rights.
First, the facts: Florida’s Parental Rights in Education Act for kindergarten through third grade students does not have the word “gay” in it, nor does it prohibit students of LGBTQ families from discussing them. It does bar the “instruction” of sexual orientation or gender identity for that 4- through 8-year-old age group.
A Politico/Morning Consult poll showed a wide margin of American voters support banning the teaching of sexual orientation and gender identity to students that young, 51% to 36%.
There are two different things here worth addressing.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — in an interview from Florida with the Post-Gazette — said that the problem for the Democrats and corporations who have rallied around this issue is that the law, once you explain what it does, is fairly popular among the general public. But cultural and political elites consume media whose worldview is often not representative of how most Americans see the world, so they don’t see this.
“I think they live in a feedback loop with legacy media outlets, Twitter and their rabid base, so things that they think are catchy..., in reality the people who live in the real world just think that they’re nuts for what they’re doing,” Mr. DeSantis said.
So, things like the “Say Gay” billboards erected by activists and Democrats to continue the narrative across Florida and elsewhere only distance people further.
“I think that this is an issue — particularly when you’re talking about these very young kids — where you’re going to find very few parents who are going to want to do what the Democrats purportedly would like to see done by injecting concepts like transgenderism to kindergarten, first grade and second grade classrooms,” said Mr. DeSantis.
He thinks most parents will see that as inappropriate. And he speculates that’s why activists went with what they thought was a catchy slogan: “I do think that they understand that unless they try to really distort what the bill really is, it’s going to be hard for them to make affirmative arguments in favor of their position,” he said.
Mr. Sracic compared this activist overreach, which is repeated in the national media and creates panic in boardrooms, to Democrat Terry McAuliffe’s campaign for governor in Virginia last fall: “He doubled down on not understanding parents’ concerns about their children’s education because he was in this bubble of listening to a media and an activist base who held shared views.”
Mr. Sracic said what has happened recently in our culture is that there is a small but highly influential set of voices who are energized by a quasi-religious belief that it is their job to remake American society so that it will become more “just.”
“They correctly understand that if they are to accomplish their mission, they need to control the education of children. The only thing standing in their way are parents — who in both a literal and figurative sense, are not members of the social justice church and are equally passionate in their often-contrary beliefs,” Mr. Sracic said.
Since social justice has become a truth to be asserted rather than an idea to be argued, there is really no effort made to reach out to those who disagree. Indeed, disagreement is seen as a form of ignorance to be ridiculed. Hence “Don’t Say Gay” becomes a Saturday Night Live skit.
Mr. Sracic said the fact remains that many people simply don’t buy into the “truth” that is being offered — and don’t like being laughed at. “When it comes time to vote, they get the last laugh,” he said.
Mr. DeSantis — whose father is from Aliquippa and mother is from Youngstown — said that people are wise to this: “Are there progressive left voters who accept corporate media narratives without critical thinking? Yes, obviously. You saw it during COVID. The people that are the most ill-informed about COVID tend to be these very liberal Democrats who are consuming the media habitually without skepticism,” he said.
“I’d say the broader public, when they see the media whipping these things up, I think at this point they get so skeptical, they understand what the media’s doing,” he said.
Mr. DeSantis — who did not write the bill — added, “I think the thing about it is this wokeness, it’s permeated a lot of elite echelons of society, so it’s a mile wide in our society right now, but it’s really just an inch deep because once you get into the broader population, they reject this wokeness — and it’s not just Republicans who do.”
Mr. DeSantis said the whole idea of the “Don’t Say Gay” campaign was to create a set of assumptions around an issue that would make it very difficult for a conservative perspective to prevail.
And Mr. DeSantis’s relationship with Disney?
“When you don’t accept the premise, when you don’t accept what they’re trying to do with their narratives, then really the emperor has no clothes — and the same thing goes with the CEO of any company,” said Mr. DeSantis.
“It’s a free country,” he said. “If you think it’s your job as a CEO of a big company to wade into different political issues, honestly, you’re free to do that. I can’t say you can’t do it. But if you’re doing that and you get into the political arena — particularly if you’re trying to further false narratives — you’re in my arena now, and we’re going to tussle. And I’m not just going to let you get away with it. I’m going to fight back.”