Written by Madelyn Engler
On March 28, 2022, Florida’s Governor, Ron DeSantis, signed a bill into law that prohibits discussion of gender identity or sexual orientation in kindergarten through third grade classrooms. The bill also gives school staff the responsibility to report to parents about any support their child receives for gender or sexuality-related issues, which would potentially 'out’ children at home if they seek support like requesting a different name or pronouns to be used by teachers or peers, even if just experimentally. Seeing the dangers this posed, the bill was quickly dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay Bill” and received plentiful backlash from LGBTQ+ people and rights organizations and their allies.
To make matters more concerning, the Florida bill comes as part of a larger wave of legislation and guidance that makes life for queer people more difficult, especially trans youth. Texas Governor Greg Abbott released a statement that encouraged citizens to report parents who help their kids transition to the Department of Family and Protective Services in order to be investigated for abuse. In Arizona, Oklahoma, and Kentucky, trans athletes are now banned from participating in the group that aligns with their gender. Arizona has passed a ban on gender-affirming care for youth and other states, like Idaho, have introduced similar legislation. As of early March, these are just a few of the around 240 anti-LGBTQ bills proposed around the United States. The leak of the Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v. Wade also raises concerns that Obergefell v. Hodges or Lawrence v. Texas may be revisited, decisions that made same-sex marriage and sex legal, respectively.
Many of these laws target youth and education, which is no coincidence. Positing queerness as dangerous to youth due to its apparent osmotic properties has been a powerful homophobic and transphobic talking point for years. In 1960, R.G. Waldeck wrote in support of the purging of LGBTQ+ people from government agencies, but insisted that “more important [to combating the homosexual invasion of American public life], in the long run, is the matter of public education.” One year later, the short film “Boys Beware” was released for use in classrooms. It showed a series of made-up scenarios where teenage boys are lured into entering cars with homosexual men and molested or killed. About sixty years later -- current day -- J.K. Rowling’s letter clarifying “in her own words” why she felt compelled to speak out about the threat that trans people pose to feminism, she says that the variety of people she spoke to about gender were “worried about the dangers to young people, gay people and about the erosion of women’s and girl’s rights.”
These “worries,” and the consequential laws, come from a fundamental misunderstanding of how queer youth identify themselves. Teenage years are a time to figure out who you are -- both separately from the surrounding world, and as part of it. For queer youth, this is often a process of finding labels, pronouns, and dress styles and names that feel most comfortable -- just like all of their cishet-identifying peers. The hostility and doubt they face because of cis-heteronormativity is more distressing and dangerous than the actual act of exploration.
For example, one study published in The National Library of Medicine states that “school belonging, emotional neglect by family, and internalized self-stigma made a unique, statistically significant contribution to past 6-month suicidality” among transgender youth.
Campaigns for laws banning gender-affirmative healthcare tend to exaggerate or completely make up what such healthcare includes. In Oregon, a state in which this care is relatively accessible, the process to even get medical care like puberty blockers or hormones takes time and money to “prove” a need. Surgery usually isn’t even on the table for minors. Ser Connolly, who started medically transitioning around the same time he started at STHS, explains that most insurances don’t cover gender reassignment surgeries until someone is eighteen, and the cost is still daunting with coverage. Getting access to hormone replacement therapy took six months for him -- an extremely short amount of time, relatively -- and requires regular doctor’s appointments. Yet, the idea that children need to be “protected” from these things -- as if medical transitioning doesn’t take a considerable amount of time, money, and emotional investment with multiple professionals making sure that medically transitioning is the best option for a child -- is used to fear-monger about scary, mislead queer people and their agenda.
Ultimately, parents can and should worry about their child’s well-being; however, this isn’t about the children at all: This is about making sure that queerness remains as penalized as possible. And, despite all arguments of naivety, kids have an opinion on this.
In Florida, many schools held student-led walk-outs to protest the “Don’t Say Gay Bill.” Thanks to social media, word spread. Gunnar “Gunzo” Haun, a senior at Springwater Trail High School, saw a post about a national walk-out. It was short notice, he explained, but they wanted to participate so they recruited people at lunch: “I walked around school to all the little hangouts … and I’m like, ‘Hey, we’re having a walk-out tomorrow, you in or you out?’” The next day, around thirty five students gathered across the street at Gradin Park adorned in colorful flags and holding signs.
STHS junior, Ryder Goss explained that bills like the one in Florida mean that young queer people feel ostracized and abnormal, “like a monster …
they learn that early on.” Another student says that the recent laws make them reconsider moving home to the South after they graduate. Connolly added,
“It’s just really silly to me because it is, at its heart, hypocritical. ‘You’re forcing the sexuality on the kids!’ … Sorry, last time I checked, every piece of media has cis and heterosexual couples kissing, having sex, romance.” Later, Connolly soberly notes that the recent legislation has made him anxious as a trans person, fearing the spread of transphobic ideas into Oregon or federal law.
At Springwater Trail High School, a few thousand miles away from Florida, the effects of this bill have been felt, acknowledged, and discussed -- in the hallways, at the lunch table, at GSA meetings. Yet, for one afternoon, these students are a stark reminder that Pride has always been a protest, and vice versa. The mood wasn’t somber -- a bit angry and hurt, sure -- but overall gay -- if you will -- among a group of people who have embraced their differences together. But, as Haun announced, we all share the same sky, so how could we be much different at all?
