Seven Republican lawmakers in Florida just launched an all-out assault on LGBTQ people by filing not one, not two, not three, but four antigay bills all in the same day.
NBC News reports “the bills would ban gender-affirming health care for transgender children, repeal municipal and county ordinances protecting LGBTQ workers, and legalize so-called gay conversion therapy in places that had banned the medically debunked practice.”
Representatives Anthony Sabatini, Bob Rommel, Michael Grant, and Byron Donalds, along with Senators Dennis Baxley, Joe Gruters, and Keith Perry submitted the four pieces of homophobic legislation, each with a companion bill in the House and the Senate, late Monday, mere hours before the deadline for filing new bills to be considered in the forthcoming legislative session.
State Rep. Shevrin Jones, who is openly gay, called the actions of his Republican colleagues “shameful” and said they are “wasting tax dollars attacking Florida’s most vulnerable communities rather than prioritizing the issues that impact everyday people’s lives.”
“Clearly they’ve decided that discrimination and hate are central to their election-year platform despite our state’s incredible diversity,” Jones said in a statement. “Just as I’ve done since I was elected in 2012, I will continue to fight any legislation that marginalizes or threatens any Floridian’s shot at a secure, safe, and bright quality of life.”
Equality Florida also put out a statement against what has been described as a “late-session bill dump.”
“This is the most overtly anti-LGBTQ agenda from the Florida Legislature in recent memory,” Jon Harris Maurer, the group’s public policy director, said. “It runs the gamut from openly hostile legislation that would arrest and imprison doctors for providing medically necessary care, to legislation that would carelessly erase critical local LGBTQ protections.”
But Florida isn’t the only state to kick off 2020 with a homophobic bang. Lawmakers in Tennessee kicked off the new year by passing a new measure that grants religious adoption agencies the legal right to discriminate against same-sex couples.
Related: Tennessee kicks off 2020 by passing a bill that allows adoption agencies to deny same-sex couples
Mack
Hatred, bigotry and racism is alive and well in the South.
GayEGO
Now this is a real sham, fake bills that are meaningless! Maybe Trump tricked them by saying he would pay them, of course he will stiff them as he has done many of his Trumpsters.
PLAYS WELL WITH OTHERS
It boils down to this. Right wing conservatives simply love to wallow in hatred, bigotry, and intolerance of anyone they percieve as different from them…
They can no longer openly target Blacks, Jews, Hispanics or any other minority. The Orange Puppet and it’s misadministration have basically declared open season on the Gay population of this country.
And if it gets reelected it’s going to get so much worse….
he>me
is anyone else tired of reading your Schitt? you are SOOOOOOOOOOOOOO ignorant.
Den
So, if plays well is the ignorant one (as opposed to you), lets see some actual indications of what he is ignorant of.
1. The hatred, ignorance and intolerance of the right is easily determined from both their proposed legislation and statements. The clearest example being “religious freedom protection laws” written specifically to allow fundamentalists to discriminate against federally defined suspect classes.
2. The desire to spread hatred based on race, faith, ethnicity and culture is clearly demonstrated by a mountain of tweets, memes, speeches and actions from the republican rank and file all the way up to our president. There are no equivalents to be found among the Democratic party.
3. Though there is some recognition in the republican party that gay people are fully human, the appointment of judges to federal benches, as well as pandering to fundamentalist organizations indicates a clear level of comfort with stripping us of hard won equal protection under the law.
You will be hard pressed to argue that you are not terminally mired in ignorance. Hard pressed not to be a laughingstock among those skilled in using their own brains.
PLAYS WELL WITH OTHERS
Den: tyvm.
It’s like a stubborn STD that no medication will squash. It’s got multiple screen names and continues to infect this site..
truthseeker
@Playswellwithothers
>”People I don’t like love to wallow in hatred”
Meanwhile, it was you, just the other day, who was happy and rejoicing that a gay teen ended his life. But yeah, you don’t wallow in hatred. Ok, Karen…
Kangol2
Except that Drumpf and the GOP have openly declared war on “openly target Blacks, Hispanics…[and] any other minority,” including Muslims. Or did you miss the last 3 years? You know, Drumpf’s campaign launch and the slurs against Mexicans, his hiring of racists and White supremacists, Charlottesville, abandoning Puerto Rico (again and again), the racist comments about various Black politicians and cultural figures, the detention camps aiming to separate Latinx immigrant children from their parents, etc.? So it’s not just gays, and you know this.
PLAYS WELL WITH OTHERS
truthseeker:. That “teen” was a 21 year old man, who despite claiming to be Gay waged a war on Gays. Spewed hatred and bigotry. Fought against Gay marriage, adoption, and any Gay inclusive education or mention in schools. You know, the sort of thing that gives Gay kids a notion that they are not freaks and being Gay is ok and perfectly normal. The kind of thing that prevents Gay children from COMMITTING SUICIDE.
So I shed no tears for that man and am content to know he is currently burning in Hell…
gymmuscleboy
@Den While that may be true about some conservatives, it is not true about all. This “black and white” thinking inevitably fails to help our community understand the real world. It was only fair for he>me to make criticism about the comment “Right wing conservatives simply love…” – that is far more a blanket statement than the infamous Trump mexican/rapist comment.
Scribe38
@he>me I’m definitely tired of you
PLAYS WELL WITH OTHERS
Scribe38: One million percentage Co-sign
Manray
Everyone is tired of stupid basic trash like him
Ricanthony
Fu*kin Flori-duh. I need to move the hell out of this swamp zone. Maybe just outta the US. This place sucks ass.
Aires the Ram
What’s stopping you? Could it be the booming economy? The lowest unemployment rates across all races since 1969? Oh well, if you insist on leaving, we’ll wave goodbye.
Manray
Aires, you sound like a limited simple Republican twat. What a loser. Get a life you pathetic twit.
gymmuscleboy
@Ricanthony So many leftists claim to hate the US and say they want to leave but never do, and if you ask them where they want to go, they deflect the question. I’m sorry you’re unhappy here but maybe you won’t be happy anywhere!
Den
“the bills would ban gender-affirming health care for transgender children”
I wish that either this article or the one it is linked to would have outlined exactly what was defined as “gender-affirming health care”. Obviously kids need to be supported in exploration of gender issues they might have, and aided in understanding of who they are. But any sort of medical or pharmaceutical, and perhaps some psychological interventions need to be delayed until onset of puberty when sexual orientation and gender identity issues become more focused.
I assume that the proposed legislation was more along the lines of not allowing health care professionals to even imply that questioning gender was valid, but who knows for certain without seeing it?
The rest of the legislation is quite obviously right wing crap.
gymmuscleboy
@Den Your comment about the “gender-affirming health care for children” makes a lot of sense – I am surprised you were not lambasted by this crowd for making such an “anti-LGBT” statement.
It would have liked to see you to make an intelligent statement about the other bill, too. What about the existing local policies prohibiting employment discrimination, “nothing in this (change) is intended to alter (them)”?
brahbate
I moved to south Florida so I could be naked or near-naked eleven months out of the year. I moved here to swim and get some sun and fish for crabs and oysters and shrimp. I moved here to be among shirtless barefoot boys. I moved here to enjoy life. But damn if these Republican queens aren’t trying to ruin everything. These proposed pieces of legislation are terrible!.
stan2015
Anita Bryant state