In Florida, both Gov. Ron DeSantis and leftist gay activist groups touted a settlement over the Parental Rights in Education Act as a win for their side. On the PBS NewsHour on Thursday night, they turned to Danielle Prieur, a reporter for NPR station WMFE in Orlando. She couldn’t make up her mind on what had happened: The law was both “gutted” and “very much in effect” at the same time.
Co-host Stephanie Sy nudged Prieur to explain what happened. She said this first:
DANIELLE PRIEUR: So it actually clarified the language of the law. The law was quite vague. And moving forward, as we heard in your clip, parents and teachers and students will be able to speak freely and write freely about gender identity and sexuality in classroom discussions, on essays, on projects. Kids can read books again with gay characters. Teachers can put safe space stickers up and also have gay-straight alliances and other kind of LGBTQ clubs at schools. So it really gutted large parts of the law and clarified it.
Then Sy sought to clarify on that: “But, Danielle, the law does still remain in effect. What restrictions are still in place?” Then she fell back to “very much in effect:
PRIEUR: Yes, so the law still bans outright instruction about gender identity and sexuality here in Florida. So that would include like a class or a book or even a unit in a section of a textbook that would instruct people in any way about gender identity and sexuality.
So the law is still in effect, as well as a lot of the policies that were kind of inspired by the law, things like banning AP African American history because there was a queer-theory unit, or making it so that sociology is no longer a core curriculum course for undergrads here because it talked about human sexuality. So a lot of the law and the policies around the law still are very much in effect here in Florida.
Sy contended that both sides can't really claim victory here, but Prieur stuck to believing two things at once:
PRIEUR: So that's a win for the governor and for his party. This was a big win for his conservative base in 2022, when it was passed. But it's also a big win for LGBTQ advocates, folks who have lived under this law for two years and were afraid to be out publicly in the school system, fearing what might happen if you said the wrong thing or as a teacher maybe have the wrong book in their classroom.
Notice how PBS, like other liberal outlets, breaks down the two sides as "conservatives" vs. "LGBTQ advocates."
The DeSantis team strongly protested the liberals calling this the "Don't Say Gay" law, which doesn't match the language of the legislation. So now the lefties are proclaiming victory when they feel you can "say gay" in schools, which was also true after the law was signed. You're just not supposed to indoctrinate students with gender ideology or "queer theory."
