Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis goes Beast Mode:
The chance that I am going to back down on my commitment to students and back down from my commitment to parents’ rights simply because of fraudulent media narratives or pressure from woke corporations, the chances of that are zero.
On Thursday, after a call from Disney CEO Bob Chapek that activist shareholders forced as the result of a protest, DeSantis stood up to woke cancel culture. Refusing to bow to pressure by radicals, DeSantis defended the new anti-grooming bill — mislabeled as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill by the activist media who carry water for the Left — and said, “Here’s what I can tell you: In the state of Florida, we are not going to allow them to inject transgenderism into kindergartens.”
The whole statement inspires and provides yet another beacon of conservative leadership for a Republican Party apparatus that too often backs down from the fight. Refusing to cede any ground to the Left, DeSantis continued:
First graders shouldn’t have woke gender ideology imposed in their curriculums, and that is what we’re standing for because we’re standing for the kids and we’re standing for the parents. And I can tell you this. The chance that I am going to back down on my commitment to students and back down from my commitment to parents rights simply because of fraudulent media narratives or pressure from woke corporations, the chances of that are zero.
And when you have companies that have made a fortune off being family friendly and catering to families and young kids, they should understand that parents of young kids do not want this injected into their kids’ kindergarten classrooms. They do not want their first-graders to go and be told that they can choose an opposite gender. That is not appropriate for those kids. So, if you’re family friendly, understand, the parents who are actually raising the families want to have their rights respected.
And I also think you have companies like Disney that are gonna say and criticize parents rights, they’re going to criticize the fact that we don’t want transgenderism in kindergarten and first grade classrooms. If that’s the hill that they’re gonna die, how do they possibly explain lining their pockets with their relationship with the Communist Party of China. They make a fortune and don’t say a word about the really brutal practices that you see over there at the hands of the CCP [Chinese Communist Party]. So in Florida, our policy is going to be based on the best interest of Florida citizens, not on the musings of woke corporations.
The defiance DeSantis expressed is especially important, given that the folks trying to change his mind come from one of the largest employers and tourist destinations in the entire state and one of the largest corporations in the world. To tie it off with a bow, he also took a shot at Disney for their hand-in-glove relationship with the brutally repressive regime of China, with which they do an ever-increasing amount of business.
Related: Disney Walks a Fine Line With Florida’s Parental Rights Bill
This all resulted from the phony outrage generated by LGBTQ activists who misrepresented Florida’s HB 1557 for cynical political points. As PJ Media’s Megan Fox reported,
Florida Democrats are really reaching with their opposition to what they call the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, which protects preschoolers through nine-year-olds from being assaulted with explicit sex talk in school. The bill, actually called Parental Rights in Education, passed the Florida Senate and will be signed by Governor Ron DeSantis. Democrats reacted with their usual decorum.
We’ve got one thing to say to our GOP colleagues — GAY! pic.twitter.com/AiXzW0chUq
— Florida Senate Democrats (@FLSenateDems) March 7, 2022
But in order to find out if there’s anything to scream about, we should go to the text of the bill and not to the hysterical harpies screaming “GAY” for no apparent reason.
The bill, HB 1557, requires “district school boards to adopt procedures that comport with certain provisions of law for notifying a student’s parent of specified information; requiring such procedures to reinforce the fundamental right of parents to make decisions regarding the upbringing and control of their children in a specified manner.”
Well, wait a minute. That seems reasonable. Why would Florida Democrat parents not want to be informed about every aspect of their children’s educational lives and be the ones in charge of directing decisions regarding those children? Why would they object to this? Maybe there’s something else in this bill that should make us all mad enough to screech at the top of our lungs.
As many have pointed out, nowhere in the bill does the word “gay” appear, nor does any provision prohibit saying it. Fox succinctly summarizes the reasons for the bill:
The reason this bill had to be written is that public school teachers and administrators are actively converting children into the trans cult and then hiding their brainwash-job from parents. They are leading children to irreversible hormone therapy and mutilation without informing parents. This bill is for teachers like this: “I never tell parents. Period. On their survey at the beginning of the year when it asks for a preferred name and pronouns it also asks for what you want me to refer to you as when I call home and what pronouns to use…even if someone told me I couldn’t do that…I would still do it.” Ok, Groomer.
She goes on to list several other examples of … ahem … questionable behavior by teachers across the country.
The entire Disney kerfuffle resulted from a shareholder call held by Chapek to address protests by activist shareholders in the corporation, who fell for the phony outrage over a bill they clearly hadn’t read:
Following backlash over Disney’s silence on Florida Legislature’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill, CEO Bob Chapek announced that the company is taking a public stance on the matter and that he has personally called Governor Ron DeSantis to oppose the measure.
During Disney’s annual shareholder meeting on Friday, Chapek took time to address the controversy before the question-and-answer period, saying, “While [the company has] been strong supporters of the community for decades, I know that many are upset that we did not speak out against the bill.”
“I called Governor DeSantis this morning to express our disappointment and concern that if legislation becomes law, it could be used to unfairly target gay, lesbian, nonbinary and transgender kids and families,” the CEO said. “The governor heard our concerns and agreed to meet with me and LGBTQ+ members of our senior team in Florida to discuss ways to address them.”
Disney has faced widespread criticisms since Chapek declined to condemn the bill, which would ban discussion of “sexual orientation or gender identity” in Florida public schools, earlier this week.
On Wednesday, Chapek said that the company had chose [sic] not to publicly address the bill in favor of working “behind the scenes” with lawmakers with whom the company has long-standing ties.
“We were opposed to the bill from the outset, but we chose not to take a public position on it because we thought we could be more effective working behind the scenes engaging directly with lawmakers on both sides of the aisle,” the CEO said during the meeting. “We were hopeful that our long-standing relationships with those lawmakers would enable us to achieve a better outcome, but despite weeks of effort, we were ultimately unsuccessful.”
This prompted the response from DeSantis to the press. Memo to Republican officeholders: When you stand up to the bullies, and you implement policies that work, you win every time.
Check out the entire video. It’s glorious.
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