(Miami) The Florida Senate passed a controversial law Tuesday that bans the teaching of gender identity and sexual orientation in public elementary schools, a decision that critics say could harm young adults in the LGBT+ community.
Posted at 4:29 PM.
Nicknamed by its opponents “Don’t Say Like Me” (“Don’t Talk About Gay”), the text not yet signed by the Republican Governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, a supporter of the initiative, applies to kindergarten to CE2 classes where children are between 8 and 9 years old.
The law prohibits teachers from discussing gender identity and sexual orientation “in a manner that is inappropriate for students’ age or development,” language that critics say could extend it to older schoolchildren.
However, Republicans ensure that the law does not prohibit spontaneous discussions on these topics between teachers and students, but only the inclusion of courses in school programs.
“Leaders in Florida have decided that laws based on hate and discrimination are more important than our students’ recovery from the pandemic,” US Education Secretary Miguel Cardona wrote on Twitter on Tuesday.
Florida’s equal rights group, LGBT+, accused “parliamentarians of siding with hate mobs hurling anti-LGBT insults at people who are merely seeking sanctuary in school where they can be who they are”.
Hundreds of students demonstrated against the law in recent days in front of the Florida Parliament in Tallahassee.
Governors in this southeastern US state have been on an educational onslaught for several months now.
The Florida House of Representatives passed a law on February 24 that restricts teaching in race-related subjects in public schools.
The text aims without calling it “critical theory of race”, which analyzes racism as a system with its laws and the logic of power, rather than at the level of individual prejudices.
