Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Wednesday signed into law four bills targeting the state’s LGBTQ community — part of a record-breaking number of anti-LGBTQ policies championed by the Republican governor as he appears to prepare for a potential White House run.
The newly signed laws escalate DeSantis’ increasing attack on the rights of LGBTQ Floridians, particularly transgender youth.
The laws include a ban on gender-affirming care for minors, an expanded version of the state’s controversial “Don’t Say Gay” bill, and legislation that makes it a criminal offense for trans people in Florida — residents or tourists — to use bathrooms that align with their gender identity. DeSantis also signed the so-called “anti-drag show bill.”
“DeSantis has just signed into law the largest slate of anti-LGBTQ bills in Florida’s history,” Joe Saunders, senior political director for Equality Florida, told reporters during a virtual press conference Wednesday afternoon. “We received this as it is intended — an all-out attack on freedom.”
Over the past few months, Republican lawmakers in conservative states have used anti-LGBTQ sentiments as fuel for their political campaigns. This year alone, more than 520 anti-LGBTQ bills have been introduced in statehouses across the country, according to the Human Rights Campaign. Over 220 of those specifically restrict the rights of transgender and nonbinary people.
DeSantis has claimed the anti-LGBTQ legislation is a way to target what he calls the “indoctrination of youth.” But Saunders says DeSantis is simply using his staunch conservative take on the ongoing cultural war as a “campaign slogan in his bid for the White House.”
And transgender kids are suffering because of it, according to The Trevor Project, the nation’s largest suicide prevention and crisis intervention organization for LGBTQ youth.
The group’s research has found that “45% of young LGBTQ Floridians have seriously considered suicide in the past year, and 16% have made an attempt,” Casey Pick the group’s director of law and policy, told the Us.Mistertruth in an email.
“[Florida’s] anti-LGBTQ laws target the very things that we know can support and uplift LGBTQ young people — such as affirming environments at school and in the community, education about their identities and history, and best-practice healthcare,” she said.
Nathan Brimmer, a prominent trans rights advocate and the president of the Florida LGBTQ Democratic Caucus, fears DeSantis’ rhetoric could “fan the flames of hatred and bigotry, homophobia and transphobia in our state.”
In October 2022, an LGBTQ community center in Orlando canceled a Halloween edition of Drag Queen Story Hour after receiving “several threats from hate groups,” including the Proud Boys. Last month, organizers of a Pride celebration in Port St. Lucie canceled its annual PrideFest event after lawmakers passed the state’s anti-drag bill.
The local LGBTQ community has fought back, with several demonstrations bringing people from all across the state to voice their outrage at the ongoing attack from Republicans — which gives LGBTQ rights advocates hope.
“I see in the response from communities and from friends across the state, their resilience, and a steadfast resolve to … fight back against these circumstances, these attacks on our freedom as something I don’t think I’ve seen for many, many, many years,” said Brimmer. “Ultimately, unified in action, I know our community will come back.”