Why Florida is banning lessons on sexual orientation and gender identity

“WE SAY GAY!” chanted students across university campuses in Florida. “Gay! Gay!” joked the hosts of the Academy Awards in Los Angeles, repeatedly. “Say GAY!” urged billboards on Florida’s roads. Their target was a law in Florida, dubbed “Don’t Say Gay” by its detractors, which prohibits schools from “classroom instruction…on sexual orientation or gender ideology” from kindergarten to the end of third grade (that is, below the age of about ten) or “in a manner that is not age appropriate”. Is the state trying to silence its gay-sayers?

Despite the common clubbing together of LGB with T, sexual orientation and gender identity are quite different. Most of the anger about the Parental Rights in Education bill, which was signed into law by Ron DeSantis, Florida’s Republican governor, on March 28th, has been directed at the sexual-orientation part of it. Though Mr DeSantis has claimed the law bans “sexual instruction”, it does not prohibit teachers from talking about heterosexual sex in any way. Sex education in America, which varies across states and school districts, is mostly not taught in the sort of detail that might worry some parents until about the age of ten.

By focusing, therefore, on “sexual orientation” and failing to define what constitutes “instruction”—is it everything that is said in the classroom?—the law creates the possibility that a teacher will fall foul of the law for simply alluding to the fact that a child has, say, two mothers. Such fears, which also apply to the discussion of a trans parent or relative, are compounded by another passage in the law, which states that parents who think it is not being followed can sue a school district and, if successful, may “win damages” and legal fees.

The impetus for Florida’s law is largely political. By backing it, Mr DeSantis, a likely front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024 if Donald Trump stays out of the contest, has cast himself as a right-wing champion in the culture wars. Such measures are particularly popular among voters in the primary elections by which Republicans choose their party’s candidates. At least 12 other states have proposed introducing similar bills.

But political opportunism is not the whole story. Banning the discussion of sexual orientation in schools promotes the erroneous idea that talking about it encourages children to become gay. When it comes to gender identity, however, there is some evidence, mostly anecdotal, that talking about the subject encourages children to identify themselves as trans—including those who might otherwise grow out of distressing feelings of gender dysphoria.

Medical associations in America, including the American Academy of Paediatrics, endorse “gender-affirming” care, which accepts patients’ self-diagnosis that they are trans. That means the materials that are handed out in schools, which are often produced by LGBT-rights groups, echo the belief that gender identity is as valid as biological sex. The worry is that this can lead to confused children being prescribed puberty blockers which, when combined with the cross-sex hormones that in the vast majority of cases follow, can lead to sterility and an inability to orgasm. But there are other worries about some of the materials distributed in some schools which invite young children to consider their identity. Julia Mason, a paediatrician in Oregon and a “lifelong Democrat”, thinks “it’s not helpful to ask young elementary students, kids less than nine or ten, to ponder their own gender identity or sexuality. Kids less than eight can be easily convinced that simple things like changing one’s appearance will actually change a person’s sex.”

For Republican lawmakers such concerns play into the increasingly prevalent belief that parental rights are being taken away by activist school systems. Discussing the Florida bill, Republicans cited the case of a couple who sued their school district after discovering that their child’s gender identity had been affirmed at school without their approval or knowledge (the court is yet to rule on the matter). Florida’s new law requires schools to notify parents of any “monitoring related to the student’s mental, emotional or physical health or well-being”. It also bans “third parties” from instructing children on banned topics.

One concern about all this is that a backlash against transgender ideology will harm gay and lesbian Americans and their families, as well as trans people. In recent years, and especially since the Supreme Court recognised gay marriage, there has been growing acceptance of gay rights among even the most socially conservative Americans. Florida’s new law offers a worrying sign that this may be changing.