With the liberal mainstream media and the “woke” left continuing to meltdown over a Florida parents’ rights bill they’ve falsely dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill entering its third or fourth week, Florida-based corporations have been feeling the pressure to speak out against a bill that doesn’t say what its critics say it does.
Contra to what The Usual Suspects say, the bill does not ban saying “gay” in public school classrooms. What the most controversial part of the bill actually prevents, according to a plain reading, is “instruction by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity” in grades K-3 “or in a manner that is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards.”
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has also pushed back against the “Don’t Say Gay” characterization when asked about it by reporters:
There’s literally nothing about banning discussions about LGBTQ issues. It just says they need to be age and developmentally appropriate. The overall theme of the bill makes sure parents are absolutely part of the process and are not kept out of the loop when these topics come up in the classroom.
But because the left has made clear over the last couple of years that they don’t believe parents should have a say in their child’s education, and because everything starting from kindergarten on up has to be “woke” as far as the radical left is concerned, here we are with false narratives galore being spread far and wide about the bill.
Earlier this week, Disney CEO Bob Chapek and DeSantis spoke over the phone at Chapek’s request about the bill after Disney was criticized by the woke left including some LGTBQ Disney employees for not speaking out forcefully enough against it.
Apparently, the call didn’t go to Chapek’s liking, because he’s now saying he will meet directly with DeSantis to discuss it.
But if Chapek believes he’s going to persuade DeSantis against signing the bill into law, he’s got another thing coming. During a public appearance Thursday in Boca Raton, DeSantis went off on “woke corporations” like Disney, noting Disney, in particular, had “made a fortune” off of being family-friendly. Further, DeSantis pointed out that if Disney was really concerned with human rights issues, they wouldn’t have such a cozy relationship with Communist China.
“When you have companies that have made a fortune off being family-friendly and catering to families and young kids, they should understand that parents of young kids do not want this injected into their kids’ kindergarten classroom,” DeSantis remarked during the event. “They do not want their first-graders to go and be told that they can choose an opposite gender.”
“You have companies – like at Disney, that are going to say and criticize parents’ rights, they’re going to criticize the fact that we don’t want transgenderism in kindergarten, in first-grade classrooms. If that’s the hill that they’re going to die on, then how do they possibly explain lining their pockets with their relationship from the Communist Party of China?” DeSantis asked. “Because that’s what they do, and they make a fortune, and they don’t say a word about the really brutal practices that you see over there at the hands of the CCP.”
He concluded by stating that in Florida, “Our policies will be based on the best interests of Florida citizens, not the musing of woke corporations.”
Watch:
If you’re a Republican legislator who has sponsored one of these types of bills or if you’re a governor who supports it, this is exactly the way you need to craft your response when the inevitable “outrage” starts. It happened here in North Carolina when the backlash by the NBA, Nike, and others started against the so-called “bathroom bill.” Republican legislators here and then-Gov. Pat McCrory made sure to first correct the false media narratives and also pointed out that all the CEOs doing the criticizing about alleged human rights issues with the bill didn’t have any trouble lining their pockets with CCP money.
Basically, it puts the ball back in the court of these corporations and lets people see that all their virtue signaling and posturing is disingenuous and shouldn’t be taken seriously.
DeSantis was in a unique position here in that the Florida bill is specifically related to parental rights when it comes to school instruction to young kids, and Disney is a corporation that specifically caters to families and children. Regardless of how that in-person meeting between DeSantis and Disney goes, Disney is going to have a hard time explaining to parents who have enjoyed taking their kids to Disney parks over the years why they’re opposed to a bill that protects kids and enshrines parental rights when it comes to discussions of sensitive topics in public school classrooms.
— Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via Twitter. —
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