When Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) and Florida’s conservative lawmakers finally shut down the 2022 state legislative session on Monday, I had a dispiriting epiphany. These state’s Republicans are living in a Trumped-up dystopia.
Sign up for a weekly roundup of thought-provoking ideas and debates
Their version of Florida swarms with wrongheaded teachers who twist children’s morals and welfare by raising LGBTQ and racial realities; scheming socialist professors who spread Marxist ideas; employers who shame workers for being White; runaway voter fraud that derails democracy; coronavirus vaccines that damage people’s health and freedom; and sex education so riveting it encourages teenagers to have sex.
No wonder the governor and his fellow Republicans dominating the legislature celebrated their slate of extremist culture war bills. Florida, it turns out, is on the brink of moral collapse, requiring immediate intervention. Or at least that’s what they want their conservative fandom to believe.
ADVERTISING
As we know, fear is a powerful motivator; it is helping DeSantis Inc. raise gobs of money, secure the fealty of Republican lawmakers and no doubt secure plenty of votes for the governor’s reelection this year and possibly the 2024 presidential contest. As if to underscore the fear factor, DeSantis expressed his gratitude to the legislature for protecting his family.
“Thank you for letting me and my wife be able to send our kids to kindergarten without them being sexualized,” DeSantis said, conflating sexualization with sexual orientation and gender identity.
I’m also thankful — that I live in a Florida that bears little resemblance to the one DeSantis and his colleagues imagine. My Florida has always been unmistakably loony. But it is also full of hard-working teachers who accept kids as they are and show others how to do the same. They, along with professors, teach responsibly, without the need to propagandize or brainwash.
My Florida boasts employers who know that the workplace should mirror society’s diversity. It’s a place where voter malfeasance is minimal and committed mostly by Republicans. And it’s a state where some people choose to get coronavirus vaccines and use masks as an act of kindness and consideration, not combat.
But amid such a powerful assault on civil liberties, I see my Florida in retreat. State Sen. Tina Polsky, a Democrat, sees the retrograde drift, too. “We are quickly becoming one of those backward states that young people and businesses will run from,” she told me.
Republican legislators seem to hope that their work this year will amount to a flashing neon “welcome” sign for fellow conservatives.
“We don’t want to just win in 2022; we want to completely dominate at the federal, state and local levels,” Joe Gruters, the chairman of the Florida Republican Party and an early Donald Trump devotee, told CNN in December. “We don’t want to be a purple state. We want to make a statement that Florida is red.”
That might happen. For the first time in recent history, Florida has more Republicans than Democrats registered to vote as of last year; the latest numbers show Republicans with 5.13 million voters and Democrats with 5.04 million. GOP victory is not a given, though. The state also has 3.8 million registered voters with no party affiliation, and more of them voted for Joe Biden than for Trump in 2020. But midterm elections typically benefit the party not in the White House, and Republicans in the state are palpably more energized that Democrats.
This was a brutal year for Florida’s Democratic lawmakers. They were devastated by the Republicans’ steamrolling. Some wept during debates; others railed against Republican lawmakers’ apparent indifference to the concerns of Black people, Latinos, women and the LGBTQ community.
The Parental Rights in Education measure in line for DeSantis’s signature, which critics are calling the “Don’t say gay” bill, would ban teachers from leading lessons on sexual orientation and gender identity from kindergarten to third grade — which isn’t happening, — and in any grade if it’s deemed developmentally inappropriate by parents. Parents would be able to sue schools over the issue.
But the bill is vague enough that it could discourage teachers from commenting, for example, on a student’s two dads or a boy’s preference for dresses for fear that commenting could be interpreted as classroom instruction. LGBTQ students protested that the bill seeks to make them invisible.
The other bills that DeSantis has signaled he will sign are no better, including the Individual Freedom bill. Teachers and professors will have to tiptoe around discussions about race and the country’s racial history to avoid prompting “anguish” in White students. Employers will also have to tread carefully when training or hiring workers. Books in schools will be easier for activists to ban. And women will have less time to contemplate an abortion.
State Sen. Gary Farmer, a Democrat, summed it up as the legislature raced to finish. He said Republicans were pursuing a “4H agenda” — “hurtful, harmful, hateful and homophobic.”
Has the deep-red Florida of DeSantis’s dreams really vanquished the purple one I’ve known and loved? We won’t know until November.
Sign up for a weekly roundup of thought-provoking ideas and debates
Their version of Florida swarms with wrongheaded teachers who twist children’s morals and welfare by raising LGBTQ and racial realities; scheming socialist professors who spread Marxist ideas; employers who shame workers for being White; runaway voter fraud that derails democracy; coronavirus vaccines that damage people’s health and freedom; and sex education so riveting it encourages teenagers to have sex.
No wonder the governor and his fellow Republicans dominating the legislature celebrated their slate of extremist culture war bills. Florida, it turns out, is on the brink of moral collapse, requiring immediate intervention. Or at least that’s what they want their conservative fandom to believe.
ADVERTISING
As we know, fear is a powerful motivator; it is helping DeSantis Inc. raise gobs of money, secure the fealty of Republican lawmakers and no doubt secure plenty of votes for the governor’s reelection this year and possibly the 2024 presidential contest. As if to underscore the fear factor, DeSantis expressed his gratitude to the legislature for protecting his family.
“Thank you for letting me and my wife be able to send our kids to kindergarten without them being sexualized,” DeSantis said, conflating sexualization with sexual orientation and gender identity.
I’m also thankful — that I live in a Florida that bears little resemblance to the one DeSantis and his colleagues imagine. My Florida has always been unmistakably loony. But it is also full of hard-working teachers who accept kids as they are and show others how to do the same. They, along with professors, teach responsibly, without the need to propagandize or brainwash.
My Florida boasts employers who know that the workplace should mirror society’s diversity. It’s a place where voter malfeasance is minimal and committed mostly by Republicans. And it’s a state where some people choose to get coronavirus vaccines and use masks as an act of kindness and consideration, not combat.
But amid such a powerful assault on civil liberties, I see my Florida in retreat. State Sen. Tina Polsky, a Democrat, sees the retrograde drift, too. “We are quickly becoming one of those backward states that young people and businesses will run from,” she told me.
Republican legislators seem to hope that their work this year will amount to a flashing neon “welcome” sign for fellow conservatives.
“We don’t want to just win in 2022; we want to completely dominate at the federal, state and local levels,” Joe Gruters, the chairman of the Florida Republican Party and an early Donald Trump devotee, told CNN in December. “We don’t want to be a purple state. We want to make a statement that Florida is red.”
That might happen. For the first time in recent history, Florida has more Republicans than Democrats registered to vote as of last year; the latest numbers show Republicans with 5.13 million voters and Democrats with 5.04 million. GOP victory is not a given, though. The state also has 3.8 million registered voters with no party affiliation, and more of them voted for Joe Biden than for Trump in 2020. But midterm elections typically benefit the party not in the White House, and Republicans in the state are palpably more energized that Democrats.
This was a brutal year for Florida’s Democratic lawmakers. They were devastated by the Republicans’ steamrolling. Some wept during debates; others railed against Republican lawmakers’ apparent indifference to the concerns of Black people, Latinos, women and the LGBTQ community.
The Parental Rights in Education measure in line for DeSantis’s signature, which critics are calling the “Don’t say gay” bill, would ban teachers from leading lessons on sexual orientation and gender identity from kindergarten to third grade — which isn’t happening, — and in any grade if it’s deemed developmentally inappropriate by parents. Parents would be able to sue schools over the issue.
But the bill is vague enough that it could discourage teachers from commenting, for example, on a student’s two dads or a boy’s preference for dresses for fear that commenting could be interpreted as classroom instruction. LGBTQ students protested that the bill seeks to make them invisible.
The other bills that DeSantis has signaled he will sign are no better, including the Individual Freedom bill. Teachers and professors will have to tiptoe around discussions about race and the country’s racial history to avoid prompting “anguish” in White students. Employers will also have to tread carefully when training or hiring workers. Books in schools will be easier for activists to ban. And women will have less time to contemplate an abortion.
State Sen. Gary Farmer, a Democrat, summed it up as the legislature raced to finish. He said Republicans were pursuing a “4H agenda” — “hurtful, harmful, hateful and homophobic.”
Has the deep-red Florida of DeSantis’s dreams really vanquished the purple one I’ve known and loved? We won’t know until November.
