Florida passes the 'don't say gay' act - yet another mean-spirited bill that only hurts people
The Florida legislature has just passed the so-called “don’t say gay” bill. Which Ron DeSantis will soon sign into law. The bill prohibits schools from addressing LGBTQ plus issues in grades K through third. After that, it allows teachers to discuss only ‘age-appropriate’ information.
If conservatives think that will shut down even the youngest children talking about sexuality, they are delusional. Children want answers to their questions. Now they will not get them from a trained teacher. They will learn - God only knows what - in the playground. From kids who are wildly speculating while spreading mistruths and lies. Meanwhile, any child who does not fit the heteronormative, cis-gendered mold will continue to feel the sting of ignorance and judgment.
Conservatives congratulate themselves on school censorship and metaphorical book-burning. They shouldn’t. Their aim may be to bowdlerize history and offer an altered reality - but lists of banned books are merely guides for teens to know what to read next. Tragically, they will read these books absent a conversation about the meaning and significance of the material. Imagine reading Shakespeare, James Baldwin, or Emily Danforth without being able to discuss them with a teacher. Ignorance is not bliss.
Time and again, conservatives have passed laws banning things — with dismal results. Prohibition enticed America to drink. And the “War on Drugs” has made millionaires out of private prison company owners and billionaires out of drug smugglers. The taxpayers have received nothing for the trillion dollars they have paid for this endless war. And addicts remain mired in their desolation. In America, whatever drug you want is available — usually at a reasonable price — because the illegal drug trade is perhaps the purest example of a free market at work.
Imagine the panic druglords would feel if governments developed effective plans to reduce the number of addicts. Because border walls, the DEA, stiff sentences, drug task forces, and even the threat of assassination mean less to them than a drop in demand. No addicts would be the death knell of their business. Without buyers, drug dealers would follow the same path as VHS manufacturers and Blockbuster.
It’s not just drugs and alcohol. If you want to reduce abortion, passing a law criminalizing it won’t get you close to your goal. Rich women will fly to where it’s legal. And poor women will take to back alleys or order abortifacients online. Before Roe vs. Wade, hundreds of thousands of American women got abortions every year. The Guttmacher Institute estimates that women obtained 829,000 abortions in the US in 1967. Why?
Because if there is a demand for something, no law will stop the supply. And the only way to reduce the demand for abortions is to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies. Conservatives never address that. Quite the contrary. Everything they do makes parenthood more onerous. From refusing the Medicaid expansion to resisting paid parental leave and funding pre-school. They put pressure on welfare programs, including food aid. What woman is more likely to bring another child into that environment? Note: it is ‘another’, as most women getting abortions already have a child.
Anti-sodomy laws are nothing more than a legal sanction of a minority’s warped morality. They do not reduce sexual activity. They merely give the state a tool to brutalize people the state has arbitrarily decided are criminals — although no one is getting hurt. No amount of moralizing about masturbation has ever diminished the number of self-pleasurers. And had Ted Cruz been effective in defending a Texas law banning sex toys, I am sure that instrumental stimulation would have continued unabated. The effect of all of this puritanical bigotry is to make people feel guilt for guiltless behavior — while doing nothing to stop people from doing what makes them joy.
As H.L. Menchen observed, “Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.”
School policies that worsen the mental health of kids. Abortion laws that put women at risk, without reducing abortion. Drug policies that do nothing to address addiction. None of these are pro-life positions. But what do you expect from a group that believes God wants them to have a gun so they can kill people they believe are trying to hurt them — no proof needed.