Earlier this week, the Florida Board of Education approved a rule that bans classroom instruction about sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through grade twelve if the classroom instruction is not part of the state curriculum.
“We’re not removing anything here,” state Education Commissioner Manny Diaz Jr. told reporters. “All we are doing is we are setting the expectations so our teachers are clear: that they are to teach to the standards.”
The state school board’s action expands the Parental Rights in Education bill, signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis 13 months ago, that banned classroom indoctrination for kindergarteners through third grade in the state. As the names implies, the state law assures parents a female teacher with they/them pronouns can’t legally pull out a transgender-themed children’s book to read to first graders about her transition from “Amy” to “Andy.”
Jessica Graham, a spokesperson for education watchdog Moms for Liberty, tells AFN the purpose of the Florida law is to return classrooms to the “basics” of education, such as reading and writing, math, and science.
“And get rid of some of these age-inappropriate topics,” she says, “that have infiltrated the schools and basically taken the focus from the actual education."
After enjoying years of enjoying access to children's minds, LGBT activists watched Florida legislators finally caught up to them last year and introduce the parents rights bill. By that time so many defiant and cringy teachers have posted their own first-hand stories on social media that Twitter account Libs of TikTok took off and hit two million followers by exposing them. Some of those examples can be found here and here and here.
Libs creator Chaya Raichik started the account three years ago.
Passage of the state law state year was vilified as hateful and discriminatory, and it was slandered as the “don’t say gay” bill even though it covered the youngest of innocent school-age children. Even in an Associated Press story this week about expansion of the state law, the wire service referred to the law as “don’t say gay” but never once in the story referred to it by the official title.
At the White House, reacting to the expanded Florida law, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Thursday the expansion to grades 4-12 blocks students from “learning about, or discussing, L-G-B-T-Q-I-plus people in the classrooms.”
Reading from her prepared notes, the press secretary went on to claim classroom teachers have been forced to remove photos of same-sex spouses from their desks, which is a doubtful claim. She also said teachers have been forced to remove materials from their classrooms, which is a much more likely scenario, since those teachers made famous by Libs of Tik Tok show off their LGBT-themed books, flags, buttons, and posters in their classrooms.
“Censoring our classes in not how public education is supposed to work,” Jean-Pierre, who is a lesbian, told the White House press corps.
On the topic of honestly and censorship, Graham of Moms for Liberty says passage of the expanded rule is available for the public to read and review on the Florida Department of Education website. The meeting in which the rule was discussed and explained can also be accessed, she says, at the website floridachannel.org.
