By Taylor Torres Taylor Torres
The recent passing of the Florida Parental Rights in Education Act, known by opponents as the “Don’t Say Gay Bill”, has been widely debated by people of all political affiliations both in Florida and in the broader United States. Democrats have derided the bill as a targeted attack on LGBT individuals in Florida, whereas Republicans and the political right in the United States view this bill as a necessary protection of children, believing the topics of sexual orientation and gender identity to be inappropriate for a young child to learn about without parental guidance. Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ Press Secretary Christina Pushaw, for instance, has referred to the bill as an “Anti-Grooming Bill,” subsequently claiming that any person opposed to it is “probably a groomer.” The ideological history of this bill dates to as far back as the 1970s, when LGBT rights began to be discussed in mainstream United States politics.
As far back as the founding of the United States, homosexuality had been viewed as “deviant” and as a “sexual perversion.” The United States military would, from its inception until 2011, discharge members for being gay, lesbian, or bisexual. The movement for LGBT rights in the United States did not truly begin gaining traction until the Stonewall riots of 1969, upon which the issue of LGBT rights began to find its place in the United States political discourse. Republican President Gerald Ford was the first US President to publicly refer to LGBT Americans in a somewhat empathetic light. In a 1976 Q&A event, he said of gay rights “I recognize that this is a very new and serious problem in our society. I have always tried to be an understanding person as far as people are concerned who are different than myself.” However, he also stated, “That doesn’t mean that I agree with or would concur with what is done by [gay people] or their position in society.” Following his presidency, Ford took a stance against the Briggs Initiative in 1977, which aimed to prohibit members of the LGBTQ+ community from teaching in public schools. He was one of the most prominent Republicans to do so, in a political party that was increasingly expressing concern with regard to gay people in education.
The Briggs Initiative, which was California Proposition 6 in 1978, sought to ban homosexual individuals from working in public schools. The initiative was inspired by a prior successful proposition in Dade County, Florida. The lead spokesperson of the campaign, Anita Bryant, said of the LGBTQ+ community, “What these people really want, hidden behind obscure legal phrases, is the legal right to propose to our children that theirs is an acceptable alternate way of life.” In order to pass the Florida initiative, Bryant founded the political coalition Save Our Children, Inc. Her campaign in Dade County led to a larger national movement against gay rights. The Briggs Initiative in California was defeated, but many other legislative movements inspired by Bryant succeeded, such as a 1977 Florida legislative measure to prohibit adoption by gay people. Anita Bryant’s success in Florida and beyond was the first sign of the up-and-coming prominent conservative movement against LGBT rights under the stated rationale of protecting children and upholding moral values.
Part of what led to the demise of the Briggs Initiative was former California Governor Ronald Reagan’s public opposition. Reagan wrote in an Op-Ed for the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner, “[w]hatever else it is, homosexuality is not a contagious disease like the measles. Prevailing scientific opinion is that an individual’s sexuality is determined at a very early age and that a child’s teachers do not really influence this.” In the same Op-Ed, however, Reagan suggested that Proposition 6 might enjoy much more support if it had “been confined to prohibiting the advocacy in the classroom of a homosexual lifestyle” instead of calling for firing teachers who engage in homosexual conduct.
When he ran for president just a few years later in 1980, Reagan clarified his stance on the gay rights movement, stating “[m]y criticism is that [the LGBT movement] isn’t just asking for civil rights; it’s asking for recognition and acceptance of an alternative lifestyle which I do not believe society can condone, nor can I.” Reagan won the 1980 election by a landslide, and his presidency led to a rebirth of American Christian social conservatism, a conservativism deeply critical of the gay rights movement. Despite his rebuke of the Briggs Initiative’s assumption that children can be influenced into homosexuality, by the time he was president, Reagan was publicly referring to homosexuality as an alternative lifestyle. Reagan has also been criticized for mishandling the AIDS epidemic, which disproportionately affected gay people.
While the 1980s was a time of growth for the Christian conservative movement in the US, the gay rights movement saw growth as well. According to Gallup, in 1977 only 27% of Americans were in favor of gays and lesbians being hired to be elementary school teachers, while 65% were against it. By 1989 those percentages had shifted to 42% in favor and 48% against. In an environment like this, laws that were explicitly against homosexual existence, such as those promoted by Anita Bryant, could not easily pass into law as they once did, and supporting such initiatives became increasingly unpopular among politicians looking to be elected. Religious conservatives narrowed their focus on LGBT issues down to same-sex marriage and adoption (issues that were contentious even within the Democratic Party), with Republican President George H. W. Bush allowing several laws to pass which protect gay people against hate crimes and discrimination. The trend within the National Republican Party of focusing on opposing gay marriage and adoption while allowing for these other protections regarding discrimination largely continued until 2015, when, in Obergefell v. Hodges, the Supreme Court determined that gay and lesbian individuals have a constitutional right to marry.
By the time Obergefell was decided, same-sex marriage was already legal in the State of Florida due to a 2014 federal court decision. Moreover, adoption by same-sex couples was legalized in Florida in 2010, with the bill being signed by Republican Governor Rick Scott. On the national stage, in 2016, then-President-Elect Donald Trump stated, regarding same-sex marriage, “[i]t’s law, it was settled in the Supreme Court. I mean, it’s done.”
Despite the liberalization, especially following Obergefell, of Republican Party views in the 2010s regarding issues of gay and lesbian rights, a core of Republican voters remained and remain to this day opposed to these rights. According to Gallup, only 55% of Republicans support gay marriage as of 2021. That number is growing, but it shows that there is still a presence of voters in the Republican Party who are committed to opposing certain LGBT rights. Accordingly, some politicians are passing laws that will help them win over this particular Republican voter while not alienating those voters who have become more liberal on the issue.
One of these politicians is Ron DeSantis, who became the governor of Florida during the presidency of Donald J. Trump, narrowly defeating his Democratic opponent, Andrew Gillum. In 2021, the Parental Rights in Education Act was passed into law, prohibiting teachers from kindergarten through third grade from discussing LGBT-related topics in their classrooms. This law sees its ideological origins in the Briggs Initiative and similar proposals, and supporters of the law such as Christina Pushaw have echoed the words which Anita Bryant once used in the very same State of Florida. Pushaw refers to opponents of a bill effectively banning discussion of LGBT topics as “groomers,” while Bryant once stated “[a]s a mother, I know that homosexuals cannot biologically reproduce children. Therefore, they must recruit our children.”
Ronald Reagan once suggested that the Briggs Initiative might have greater support if it outlawed the “advocacy of a homosexual lifestyle” in public schools instead of disallowing gays and lesbians from working as teachers. The Parental Rights in Education Act is, perhaps, a version of Ronald Reagan’s conception of an idealized Briggs Initiative, sanitized for the year 2021, a year when public support for LGBT rights in the US is at an all-time high. Owing to the unpopularity of explicitly anti-LGBT legislation, the act does not specifically mention homosexual relationships or transgender identity, but rather, states, “[c]lassroom 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.” With the understanding that heterosexuality and cisgender identity are hegemonic identities, the law effectively targets teachers educating students about minority identity groups, much in the way that Reagan suggested a successful version of the Briggs Initiative would. Wanting to appear more sensible to a twenty-first-century voter base, the Florida bill does this in a subtle manner and only explicitly prohibits these discussions for certain early grade levels.
Despite the controversy regarding this law on the national stage, DeSantis was seemingly rewarded in 2022, having comfortably won re-election for Governor of Florida, and building his case for a potential 2024 Presidential run after winning by nearly 20 percentage points in a midterm election that, outside of Florida, saw an underwhelming Republican performance.
Although Republicans are having success in Florida after having passed the Parental Rights In Education Act, it remains to be seen whether those successes would translate to the national stage. Especially with increasing acceptance of the LGBT community, these politicians may have problems employing this kind of rhetoric in the future and passing these kinds of laws. If this policy becomes any more unpopular, Republicans will be forced to adapt to meet the moment, as they were forced to in 2003 with the passing of Lawrence v. Texas and in 2015 with the passing of Obergefell, and with the subsequent increased support for the LGBT community.
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