Growing Number of States Consider Parental Rights Bills like Florida’s

CV NEWS FEED // Lawmakers across the country are proposing bills similar to the Parental Rights in Education bill recently signed into law by Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, NPR reports.

“First Florida. Then Alabama. Now, lawmakers in Ohio and Louisiana are considering legislation that mimics the Florida law,” according to NPR: 

And Texas Gov. Greg Abbott says he’ll make a similar bill a top priority at the next session. Across the United States, at least a dozen states are considering new legislation that in several ways will mirror Florida’s new controversial law, referred to by some opponents as “Don’t Say Gay.”

Gov. Ron DeSantis stood firm against ferocious opposition to the bill from both Democrats and the corporate media. In addition, Big Tech-allied entertainment megacorporation the Walt Disney Company has joined the fray, publicly excoriating the new Florida law, which prohibits teachers from discussing progressive conceptions of “gender identity” and “sexual orientation” with children under fourth grade in the classroom.

DeSantis signed the law anyway. “This state is governed by the interests of the people of the state of Florida,” he said. “It is not based on the demands of California corporate executives. They do not run this state. They do not control this state.”

In addition, Disney and other opponents of the bill found themselves embroiled in scandals involving what opponents called “grooming” behavior on the part of children’s entertainment creators, teachers, and other education officials.

Perhaps inspired by DeSantis’ success in facing down opponents of the bill, and emboldened by a growing chorus of public support from concerned parents, other states are “taking Florida’s lead,” NPR reports:

• Alabama advanced a measure prohibiting early classroom instruction on sexual and gender identity. 
• An Arizona bill aims to change the state’s sex-ed curriculum to focus on biological sex and “not gender identities.”
• In neighboring Georgia, lawmakers targeted private schools — which the state can regulate. But it failed to get any traction this year.
• In Iowa, a Senate proposal would require that parents opt in — in writing — to any instruction “relating to gender identity.”
• In Louisiana, lawmakers introduced HB 837. It would limit discussion of sexual orientation or gender identity in some grades and prohibit it all together in others. A South Carolina bill is similar.
• A Missouri bill would ban “gender or sexual diversity training” in public schools. An Indiana bill does the same. As would a Kentucky bill.
• In Oklahoma, a senate bill would ban books from school libraries that focus on “the study of sex, sexual lifestyles, or sexual activity.”
• Tennessee’s HB 800 bans books and instructional materials “that promote, normalize, support, or address lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, or transgender issues or lifestyle.”
• Ohio’s HB616 has similar language used in the Florida bill.

CatholicVote Communications Director Joshua Mercer welcomes the trend.

“Children younger than fourth grade should learn reading, writing, and arithmetic. They shouldn’t be subjected to radical queer theory and told to question their sexual identity. Elected representatives are right to stop this madness,” said Mercer. 

Mercer noted that we’re witnessing a revolution in education and that parents are waking up and responding to what’s going on in the classroom. 

“We’re seeing elected officials doing just what they’re supposed to do; propose legislation in the interests of the American families who elected them,” Mercer said. “The Florida law shouldn’t have been necessary, but the radical Left’s freakout only confirmed that we need these strong laws to protect young children from sexual indoctrination.”