Maybe the next homophobic salvo will be that the reason no wants to talk about Bruno is because Bruno is gay. It is also ironic that DeSantis has now taken aim at Disney for its belated stance against the new law.ĭisney is now the Big Bad Wolf promoting a gay agenda, the Tinky Winky Teletubby of the 21st century, for those old enough to remember Tinky Winky and Jerry Falwell. The irony in “We don’t talk about Bruno” from the Disney film “Encanto” is that that is all people are doing – talking about Bruno. Some children have teachers who are married to a spouse of the same sex. Some children have two mothers or two fathers.
Schools should be safe places for children to question, to learn not what to think, but how to think – how to take in information that is not familiar and process it. They do need to know – and they can understand – that people are often different from the people they see at home or in their neighborhoods. A second grader does not need to know – nor could they understand – what adults do sexually. “Six or seven or eight.” Hammerstein understood that basic concepts of decency are grasped at a young age. To hate all the people your relatives hate, You've got to be taught before it's too late, Way back in 1949, Oscar Hammerstein II wrote the lyrics, “You’ve Got to be Carefully Taught,” for the musical “South Pacific.” While on the surface it is about racial equality, it was about much more. The Trevor Project’s 2021 National Survey on LGBTQ Youth Mental Health found that 42 percent of LGBTQ youth seriously considered attempting suicide in 2020, including more than half of transgender and nonbinary youth.ĭeSantis and supporters of this law think they are standing on a righteous soapbox. It is the reincarnation of the self-loathing gay Roy Cohn. Supporters of the new law are labelling people who do not support it as “groomers,” a repugnant, homophobic trope that exposes the vitriol behind the law. And those people are mobilizing with great speed. For many people, lives have been uplifted.īut for many people who fear what they do not understand, lives have been uprooted. The relative speed of these victories from the Stonewall riots of 1969 to today is remarkable. In a very short time, same-sex couples won the legal right to adopt, get married, and have some protections from being fired from jobs or evicted from their homes. We are at an inflexion point with regards to LGBTQ equality. And for all the progress made over the last 60 years, that is still the way it is in too many places. If you moved out of your lane, it was open season on you. If this law coming out of Florida feels a little déjà vu, it’s because it is.īoys and girls had to fit into very defined lanes. Proponents of the new law claim it will do no such thing, but only prevent teachers from “indoctrinating” impressionable children into becoming gay or lesbian or transgender. The intent of the law is to stifle conversation about LGBTQ people inside schools. But there is no letter of the law the only letters are “No LGBTQ.” The law also empowers parents to sue school districts they believe are violating the letter of the law. The law states: “Classroom instruction by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity may not occur in kindergarten through grade 3 or in a manner that is not age appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards.”Įxactly what that means is unclear. Ron DeSantis signed what has been termed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill into law. Apparently, the only thing worse in 2022 than talking about Bruno is talking about gay people.