The Miami Dade School Board on Wednesday night voted against a proposal that would recognize October as LGBTQ History Month.
Last year, the district voted 7-1 in favor of a similar proposal, but fearing it would now violate the state’s Parental Rights in Education law, aka the “Don’t Say Gay” law, every board member but one voted against it this year. That’s despite the fact that the board’s own attorney said it was on solid legal ground.
The law was signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis in March, and went into effect July 1. It bans the discussion of LGBTQ topics mainly at the primary grade level, but also limits discussion when “not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students” in all grade levels.
Related: Florida teen warned not to ‘say gay’ during graduation speech finds perfectly shady solution
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Lucia Baez-Geller, the board member who introduced the proposal — and assumedly the lone ‘yes’ vote — called it a “symbolic gesture” that succumbed to “ugly falsities” and “just plain disinformation.”
Another part of the proposal would have given 12th grade social studies teachers resources to include “important landmark civil rights” like Obergefell v. Hodges and Bostock v. Clayton County in their curriculum. Those cases grant the right to same-sex marriage and prohibit employers from discriminating against workers on the bases of sexual orientation or gender identity, respectively. Students would have been able to opt out of the lessons.
“This item does not indoctrinate students, it does not force an agenda on students,” Baez-Geller said at the meeting, stirring “groans from the audience,” according to Politico. “And, as was stated incorrectly, this item does not take away parental choice.”
Related: Professor points out the double standard Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law misses
“Our customers are our parents, and we have to be driven to give parents what they are asking us, this school system, for their children,” said board member Lubby Navarro, who voted against the proposal.
But not all parents agreed. It took six hours after public comment began for the board to ultimately vote. Supporters emphasized that “LGBTQ history is American history,” while opponents spoke of their rights as parents and their religious freedoms being violated. Some called the proposal “sleazy,” and a group of Proud Boys protested outside.
Prism, a Florida nonprofit working to expand LGBTQ resources in schools, had launched a Change.org petition to urge the board to vote yes.
Related: Florida school delivers message to LGBTQ students: “Leave immediately” and don’t come back
“In light of the harmful anti-LGBTQ laws passed this year, it is abundantly clear that MDCPS must remain steadfast in supporting and affirming all students,” the petition read.
“The recognition of LGBTQ History Month promotes education about the historical impacts, achievements, and contributions of our lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer community.”
BrownFriedRice
Florida is going to be underwater in 50 years, and this is what parents are most worried about? GOD these people are stupid.
scotty
hopefully it wont take that long.
jt1990
Fun fact about this particular county: Whites (non-Hispanic) account for only 13.5% of the population. I find this very strange because only racist redneck White folks oppose lgbt support.
Oh well, maybe when climate change forces us underwater, some of these non white bigots will finally have their first bath.
white-queer-african
@jt1990 racist moron spewing his shit!
RIGay
…and these parents are stupid because of God.
Cam
@jt1990
Except you’re lying, whites make up around 75% of Miami Dade. But it’s cute that you always try to come in here to deflect from the fact that Republicans are bigots.
Ronbo
How many people have already contacted their Senators asking them to support marriage equality in the Senate’s upcoming vote? I have.
Our nation is founded upon free speech and Florida’s censorship is anathma to Democracy. More speech is the answer. That goes for our side also. Conversations are the first steps to acceptance, understanding and support.
GentlemanCaller
Exactly. Also, a little fact-checking on jt1990: according to the 2020 US Census, 191,697,647 Americans identified as non-Hispanic white, accounting for 57.84% of the total US population–NOT the 13.5% you pulled out of your ignorant ass. Also also, jt1990 seems to conveniently have forgotten about the majority of Black churches that aligned with the Mormons to aggressively campaign in favor the antigay Prop 8 in California, resulting in the weird result that California’s electoral votes went to Obama, while that “liberal” state simultaneously told LGBT people to go f themselves. There’s plenty of ignorance, homophobia, and stupidity to go around. But it seems to be concentrated in Florida and Texas. 🙂
UlfRaynor
@GentlemanCaller–not that I’m defending JT, but your numbers are just as much crap. He wasn’t talking about national averages (and I’m betting you knew that, but the reality didn’t fit your narrative) the 2020 Census has the total white percentile in Dade county at roughly 45% with black and Hispanic/Latino’s making up the rest.
On a personal note, I go every summer with a long time lesbian friend to Miami to visit her family in a predominately Cuban/Hispanic neighborhood and there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that community (which is staunchly old school catholic) is virulently pro Trump and DeSantis.
jt1990
Those of you doubting the accuracy of my stats, check out census.gov and read carefully. The percentage of Whites alone, not Hispanic or Latino, is 13.6% exactly under the 2020 census LOL. Btw I’m LOLing at the looks on your faces when you see I wasn’t lying. Oh and Cam, contrary to your wishful thinking, I don’t have multiple screen names.
My2CentsWorth
scotty, Then decent people in the rest of the nation will have to worry about those folks moving into their communities.
cuteguy
Thx progressives for giving us Deathsantis and this trash. Had Charlie Crist represented the Dems instead of that loser Andrew Gollum, Crist would’ve won bc he’s a centrist and we would’ve been sparred Deathsantis. Now he’s unstoppable and Crist has no chance, unfortunately. I hope Gavin runs for prez in 2024 and kicks Deathsantis a$$
LumpyPillows
Hmmm. You sound a lot like me. Odd.
dbmcvey
How did progressives give you DeSantis? That’s just b.s. It wasn’t progressives who voted him in. And TrumpyPillows is just as delusional.
Cam
I see that @jt1990 broke out another screename so it could somehow blame Democrats for Republican bigotry.
Ronbo
Cuteguy is attacking progressives – just as expected. What a mess.
dbmcvey
Hey, Lump, are you admitting that you are “cuteguy?” Because blaming progressives for DeSantis is just stupid.
Kangol2
You are both wrong on the facts and the reality. First, DeSantis barely defeated Gillum. BARELY. Second, Crist is a former Republican who was walloped in the 2014 election by real right-wing Republican Rick Scott. Unlike Gillum or any other Democrat, Charlie Crist has LOST statewide elections in Florida as a Republican, Democrat, and Independent. There is no guarantee that Crist would have defeated DeSantis in 2018 or done better than Gillum but his track record isn’t great. Nevertheless, the 2022 election hasn’t happened and it’s not over yet.
cuteguy
@Kangoi Ur right the 2022 elections haven’t happened yet. I hope I’m wrong and someone defeats Deathsantis before he does anymore damage. And I was never attacking Dems, only the extreme progressives who gave us that mess Andrew Gollum. I’m not a big fan of Charlie Crist either but he was definitely the lesser of two evils. Deathsantis is a poor man Trump and he caters to the lowest of the low. And he has Faux News backing him. And someone needs to up Cam’s meds. I have only one screen name bc who has time to be creating fake screen names? Most of us have real jobs and responsibilities but find time to comment on here in the little down time we may have. Others are either living in their moms basement or at a senior facility each with too much time on their hands.
Ajs33308
All this coming from a county where SPANISH is the official language, too LAZY to learn English
jt1990
Very good point…also, what kind of people speak Spanish? I’ll give you a hint: they aren’t anti-gay bigoted Trump supporting Whites!
Cam
Troll alert! This is @jt1990 ;s new screename.
Notice how eager the right wing troll is to deflect the topic from the simple fact that Republicans want to erase LGBTQ people from history.
Oh also, sweetie, English is the official language, so first you lied about the racial breakdown of the county and now about language. Thank you for always reminding us just how rac-ist Republicans are.
Ronbo
@Cam You could just say he is wrong… most of us know that. Perhaps your other screenames “Cuteguy” and “white-queer-african” could chime in.
white-queer-african
Ronbo aka jt1990, you so dumb that you meant your screenname to be Rambo! Go figure or atleast try.
LOL! LOL! LOL!
I am NOT Cam. But like him, I stand up and fight racist bigots aka trolls. So go f*ck yourself fatty boom boom.
Kangol2
Wow, @Ajs, you are really going to muck around in the gutter with White racist Jt? Rather than trashing Latinos, why not ask yourself why the overwhelming support for the GQP and its horrible anti-LGBTQ, racist policies comes from White voters in Florida and elsewhere? I expect the absolute worst racist garbage from @JT but you don’t have to swim in filth with him.
Ronbo
I guess that white-queer-african doesn’t understand that my post was to mock Cam for consistently stating something that is knowingly false – as WQF ALSO does. Many people have different opinions; you shouldn’t bully people because they won’t submit to your invalid opinions.
I know Cam and WQF push FALSE info because I am only posting under my name – and both Cam and WQF accuse others (whom have their own opinions) of impersonating others. I don’t. Therefore, they are stating falsehoods without remorse or regret. THAT hurts the community because a belief based on false information – is invalidated. Up is not Down. Left is not Right. Ronbo is only Ronbo.
LumpyPillows
This is a really bad interpretation of the law. It’s a bad law. I had hope Miami-Dade would have been more pragmatic, but no.
dbmcvey
So is it a bad law or a bad interpretation? It could be both but what’s the difference? It’s a bad interpretation of a bad law?
Brian
It’s definitely a bad law. I work for a different state’s government (and this is the second state I’ve worked for) and we’re constantly giving input to politicians on ways to better craft language for laws. The first section of most new laws will give a long list of definitions. This is where “age-appropriate” should’ve been defined, or at the least, there should’ve been criteria to consider when determining what’s age-appropriate. The law was poorly written.
It’s also a bad interpretation. It blows my mind that several school districts have already decided that high school seniors (usually aged 17 to 18) cannot learn even the major facts involving gay people — like that the Pulse massacre happened in their own state. Also, those kids are old enough to get married, but they’re prohibited from knowing that gay people are allowed to get married. The school districts are so cowardly that their decisions are ridiculous.
abfab
The entire peninsula should have been designated a wildlife refuge. Long ago. Except for the Art Deco District of SOBE saved by us, and then destroyed by the hip hop crews and the silicon breast parades.
inbama
Nobody wants schools secretly transing their kids.
They want their kids to graduate physically whole and not missing breasts or genitals.
We are tossing aside 50 years of gay and lesbian progress for the lunacy of “Queer Theory” and the Singular They.
Cam
AAAAAANNNNNDDDD The right wing troll account brings out a FOURTH screename to deflect from the fact that Republicans are bigots and attacking Queer kids.
Ronbo
“We are tossing aside 50 years of gay and lesbian progress for the lunacy of “Queer Theory” and the Singular They.”
THIS! No adult is being denied their reality of being gay-straight-queer. THIS is all due to the brave men and women in the past who risked violence, death and incarceration.
@Cam Queerty has confirmed IP addresses… you don’t. Do you think that repeating your lie makes it true?!? Do you really think that we are so stupid that a concurring opinion will make anyone change their mind? We aren’t soft-boiled; please stop lying.
Your lying indicates that our community is based upon lies. We aren’t. We won a majority of hearts and minds – no need to lie.
Have you even called your Senators asking them to put marriage equality into law?
Bosch
@inbama
A person can’t be “transed”. Being trans is the result of a neurophysical configuration.
Just like being gay.
Being stupid is voluntary, though.
UlfRaynor
@Bosch–As an evolutionary biologist I can safely say there is absolutely zero proof that there are neurophysical configured trans brains.
Though we are a sexually dimorphic species, every scientific study, using scientific methodology, have completely refuted the assertion that the human brain is gender specific or gender differential.
The only real difference between a male brain and a female brain, is size, with the male brain being roughly 11% bigger in size overall.
Brian
I love how the bigots who say, “LGBTQRST is too long an abbreviation!!!” are the same people making up fake words like “transing.” Which is it? Do you hate new words or not?
James
GET LOST HOMOPHOBIC CREEP.
YOU DON’T SPEAK FOR GAY PEOPLE.
jt1990
@ UlfRaynor the brain also has plasticity and can be re-molded, or so I read in some psychiatric magazine once. I believe the whole trans thing is just mental illness made worse by encouragement. Up until recent times, anyone caught asking a doctor to remove his genitals would rightfully be declared psychotic. Medication, therapy, and healthy distractions are the best cure for many mental illnesses. Better than genital mutilation anyway!
dario717
To be fair, republitards aren’t so keen on acknowledging straight history, either.
Kangol2
You got that right, er, correct!
Mister P
No one is secretly transitioning kids. The Florida man gov is successfully ramping up the lies and hyperbole so that even people who should know better (ubama) are fooled into thinking schools are mutilating the bodies of children and then blaming pronoun usage as the problem.
Wise up readers.
Prax07
MiniTrump needs to be defeated, big-time.
LegionKeign
Okay, so I’m going to be that bitch…we have June for Gay Pride, that is our month. That’s the month we should be educating folks as to our history WHILE we celebrate ourselves and our accomplishments.
October is HALLOWEEN Month. It’s for ghouls, ghosties and all kinds of spooky shit.
I live in floridah (until October, Goddess Bless and then it’s back to CT!) and the “Don’t Say Gay” bill is going to bite the christo-fascists right in their collective asses. Don’t believe the MSM, they lie.
Let them keep October. It should be for the kids anyway.
Just my 2 cents.
Goddess Bless.
Mister P
Deflect and claim Cam is the one lying.
Where have we seen this playbook before? Oh yes all the right wing idiots use it to take attention away from the harm they are doing to this country.
Yes, your troll game is sad and weak. Cam is right and so is White Queer African.
Ronbo
About 50 people posting here have been accused of posting as someone else. I don’t, so I KNOW that this is an intentional lie – because WQF and Cam keep making the accustaitons. Are you also WQF and Cam? You have the same opinions and make the same accusations.
Be smart and understand that your opinion does not make you another person or poster. It may be an opinion shared by others; but, it does it make Mister P, Cam and WQF the same person? No. Just the same people trying to suppress conversation topics and steering towards their opinions. That’s just a tweak away from DeSantos’s censorship nonsense.
We can be better than the Republicans. Free speech is our community’s goal. More speech helps democracy; censorship hurts everyone. Can you even see the difference between attacking “people” vs. addressing their words? Try.
white-queer-african
Thank you @Mister P. As for Ronbo aka jt1990. You/both spewing shit against us. You claim to be part of our community with sudden sweet talk! The GOP stands for everything that is against our community and you support their bigotry. You/both are not part of us or our community. So FO!!!
James
COWARDLY STUPID SCHOOL BOARD.
DE SATANIS IS A PIECE OF SICK TRASH.
okokwhatever
Great news. Finally some dam sense in this God forsaken country.
Steve
Please for the love of the universe, everyone on here needs to read the history of Germany prior to WWII. What DeSantis is doing if following Hitler’s playbook to a T. Find a boogeyman, displace all of the state’s problems onto the boogeyman. Outlaw the boogeyman arguing this is the only want to keep everyone safe. It’s chilling. Of course Hitler’s hate bucket openly included gay people, people of color, as well as Jewish people although the other targeted groups don’t get as much air-time nor did the UN establish states for them after the war.
Florida and other states on this train are setting the country up for something terrible. Step-by-step, they are chiseling away at rights won and established as precedence. Now we have a SCOTUS that thinks precedence is meaningless because they know better how to interpret the Constitution that their predecessors. It’s very scary, and you can sit their wearing your “I’m a black or Hispanic Christian, so of course I’m anti-gay” hat no realizing that these people are using you, are not your friends, and you will next be in their hate bucket or do you know get that the “anti-critical-race-theory” people are (a) these same people and (b) “acrt” people are just the latest incarnation of the NRA people who were the latest incarnation of the KKK people. These people have fully evolved now and are preying upon this notion that teachers in schools are teaching children to be gay and driven to support equality of all people — two things they claim openly to despise. So, sorry, but the Hispanic voters who are supporting DeSantis, you are doing so at your own peril. They are not going to turn on you, they already turned on you, you just have been so excited about thinking you were aligned with them, only to find out, you are being used.
As for everyone else, I am very sad, because it seems like ever foot we go forward, we then have to take two feet back. Whether it’s rights of women to control their own lives and make their own choices, or the right to live without fear of persecution and discrimination based on biologically pre-determined characteristics, America is showing to be less and less the land of the free.