ABOVE: Gov. Ron DeSantis, screenshot via Fox News.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis vowed to sign legislation targeting transgender youth who play sports into law during an April 29 appearance on Fox News.
While Senate Bill 2012 stalled in the Florida Senate April 20, leaving LGBTQ advocates to cautiously believe the anti-transgender measure would not move forward, Republicans resurrected it late April 28. They did so as a last-minute amendment to Senate Bill 1028, which deals with charter schools.
The state’s largest LGBTQ civil rights group immediately denounced the action. “In the 11th hour of the 2021 legislative session, Florida lawmakers are still hellbent on passing this discriminatory bill,” Equality Florida Director of Transgender Equality Gina Duncan shared.
“Despite hearing the voices of trans kids and their families time and time again, extremists in the legislature have made it their mission to make trans children pawns in their culture war,” she continued. “Now, instead of being open about their bigotry, they are negotiating the future of anti-LGBTQ discrimination in smoke-filled back rooms and attempting to attach this amendment to a completely unrelated bill.”
DeSantis confirmed he would sign the measure into law during The Ingraham Angle. The governor appeared on a “Red State Trailblazers Town Hall” with anti-LGBTQ host Laura Ingraham.
“We’re going to protect our girls,” DeSantis said. “I have a 4-year-old daughter and a one-year-old daughter. They’re very athletic. We want to have opportunities for our girls.
“They deserve an even playing field,” he continued, “and that’s what we’re doing: what Mississippi did, what Florida did, what other states are going to do. So I look forward to being able to sign that into law.”
The legislation stripped some of the most invasive elements from House Bill 1475, its counterpart approved by the Florida House April 14. According to the Associated Press, provisions requiring transgender athletes to undergo testosterone or genetic testing, as well as submit to having their genitalia examined, were removed. Instead, students would need to provide birth certificates to confirm the gender they were assigned at birth.
Despite this, “the message that the bill sends is an ugly message of exclusion, telling trans kids that who they are is not OK and that they need to change who they are,” Rep. Carlos Guillermo Smith shared.
Equality Florida, calling the legislation the “most anti-LGBTQ bill since the 1990s,” is urging supporters to contact DeSantis and advise him to veto the measure. You can do so below.
