The Florida House could be poised to pass two fiercely debated bills that would place restrictions on how issues about race, gender identity and sexual orientation are taught in public schools.
The Republican-dominated House is scheduled to take up the bills Tuesday, after weeks of opposition from Democrats and other critics such as LGBTQ-advocacy groups.
Sponsors have given the title “Individual Freedom” to the bill involving instruction about race (HB 7), and the measure is an outgrowth of a push by Gov. Ron DeSantis to prevent the teaching of critical race theory. The bill related to instruction about gender identity and sexual orientation (HB 1557) has been titled “Parental Rights in Education.”
Despite the monikers, controversy continued Thursday as dozens of opponents turned out for a final committee meeting on the bill that would restrict instruction about gender identity and sexual orientation.
The bill, sponsored by Rep. Joe Harding, R-Williston, says in part that “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.”
Opponents have called the proposal the “don’t say gay” bill and alleged, in part, that it would further stigmatize LGBTQ people.
“If we are prohibiting discussion around sexual orientation, are we therefore prohibiting discussion around people being gay?” Rep. Fentrice Driskell, D-Tampa, asked Thursday before the House Judiciary Committee voted 13-7 to approve the bill along party lines.
But Harding said restricting sex- and gender-related instruction in younger grade levels is appropriate.
“I would also say that you could apply that to straight (sexual orientation). Again, we’re talking about kindergarten through third grade, children as young as 6 years old,” Harding said.
The other bill about race-related instruction is sponsored by Rep. Bryan Avila, a Miami Springs Republican who is a top lieutenant of House Speaker Chris Sprowls, R-Palm Harbor. It came after DeSantis announced a legislative proposal that he dubbed the “Stop Wrongs Against Our Kids and Employees Act,” or Stop WOKE Act.
Like other Republicans across the country, DeSantis for months has targeted critical race theory, which is based on the premise that racism is embedded in American institutions, from the workplace to classrooms. The State Board of Education last year passed a rule to prevent teaching of critical race theory, and the bill — while not specifically mentioning the theory — would effectively cement the ban in law,
The bill lists several race-related concepts that would constitute discrimination if taught in public schools or as part of workplace training programs. As an example, it targets instruction that would lead students to believe that a “person, by virtue of his or her race, color, sex or national origin, bears personal responsibility for and must feel guilt, anguish or other forms of psychological distress because of actions, in which the person played no part, committed in the past by other members of the same race, color, national origin or sex.”
During a Feb. 1 committee meeting, Avila said the bill seeks only to ensure that lessons are taught in an “objective” manner.
“Nothing at all in this bill prohibits or does away with anything that is related to historical facts about slavery, about sexism, racial oppression, racial segregation and racial discrimination,” Avila said.
But Democrats and other opponents said it would limit teachers’ ability to discuss the realities of American history.
“History is not objective. Conversations are uncomfortable,” said Rep. Robin Bartleman, a Weston Democrat who is an educator. “I understand what this bill is trying to do, but … the only way you don’t repeat history is by discussing it. By having honest conversations. By not stifling teachers.”
Senate versions of the bills also have received initial committee approvals, though they have not reached the full Senate.
–Jim Saunders and Ryan Dailey, News Service of Florida
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Jackson1955 says
DeSantis and Republicans are pandering to their base again. No one is teaching Critical Race Theory, if anything it is Republican politicians using it as red meat for supporters. It is just another theory only, not on anyone’s syllabus in school.
This and CRT is purely to rally the base that DeSantis will be doing at least until the 2022 elections. It is DeSantis political games instead of running the State, doing his job.
For all the whining they do about cancel culture, republicans invented cancel culture. conservatives try to “cancel” people and institutions they disagree with all the time: Nike, Target, Dixie Chicks, NASCAR, keurig, Gillette, and French fries, a tall, yellow bird, mental health programs in schools, and books like “The Story of Ruby Ridges,” the true story of a 6-year-old who was escorted by federal marshals past a vicious white mob to desegregate her New Orleans school. Somehow, a parent conflated the book with critical race theory, which is taught in law school, not second grade, and took offense to a sentence in which Ruby sees “angry white faces”.
T says
Right on I thought I was the only smart one here you nailed it
Deborah Coffey says
All these bills are just a cover for what Republicans are REALLY trying to do…destroy public education. By the time they get finished, every democratic institution in America will be dead…if we let them.
Ronald G. Schrein says
The people who refused to allow black children attend “white only” schools now want to prevent their grandchildren and great-grandchildren from learning that they refused to allow black children attend “white only” schools.
R. S. says
Tyranny is right around the corner when stupidity rules the roost and dominates educators, psychologists, physicians, and just about all other intelligentsia. This club of know-nothings has got to go.
Ray W. says
One of several consistent themes in my comments pertains to today’s so-called version of conservatism. I have posted several times of my discussions with a self-described conservative friend about the meaning of original intent. I told him that one of us needed to know what we were talking about and announced that I would obtain a lecture series about the making of our Constitution. After consuming the many themes presented in the series, I loaned it to my friend. When he returned the set, he announced that he had long thought he was a federalist, but he now realized he was an anti-federalist. Later, when we were debating the meaning of conservatism, I announced that I would obtain a lecture series on the history of the conservative movement, which is considered to have begun with the Glorious Revolution of 1688, when Parliament stood up to the British king. The more I listened to the lecture series, the more I realized that I was more of a conservative than was my friend. I loaned the series to him. Initially, he would discuss what he was learning, but after a short time he stopped talking about the lectures and returned the set. I inferred that he had realized that he was not the conservative he thought he was. Cognitive dissonance can be a positive force for learning, but it can also be a negative force that closes one’s mind to ideas. One is conservative. The other is not.
I recently read an Atlantic article by David Brooks, titled “I Remember Conservatism.” Brooks is one of many celebrated conservative authors, known for his books, essays, editorial columns for the New York Times, and for his media presence. I have long admired Brooks, though I do not always agree with his positions.
In the Atlantic piece, Brooks detailed his youthful flirtation with socialism and his exposure to conservative authors who provided insights into what became a lifetime of devotion to exploring conservatism as a political movement and a community lifestyle. Here are some excerpts:
“… Human society is unalterably complex, Edmund Burke argued. If you try to reengineer it based on the simplistic schema of your own reason, you will unintentionally cause significant harm. Though Burke was writing as a conservative statesman in Britain some 200 years earlier, the wisdom of his insight was apparent in what I was seeing in the Chicago of the 1980s.
I started reading any writer on conservatism whose book I could get my hands on — Willmoore Kendall, Peter Viereck, Shirley Robin Letwin. I can only describe what happened next as a love affair. I was enchanted by their way of looking at the world. In conservatism I found not a mere alternative policy agenda, but a deeper and more resonant account of human nature, a more comprehensive understanding of human wisdom, an inspiring description of the highest ethical life and the nurturing community.
What passes for ‘conservatism’ now, however, is nearly the opposite of the Burkean conservatism I encountered then. Today, what passes for the worldview of ‘the right’ is a set of resentful animosities, a partisan attachment to Donald Trump or Tucker Carlson, a sort of mental brutalism. The rich philosophical perspective that dazzled me then has been reduced to Fox News and voter suppression.”
And this excerpt:
“… What’s a Burkean conservative to do? A few of my friends are trying to reclaim the GOP and make it a conservative party once again. I cheer them on. America needs two responsible parties. But I am skeptical that the GOP is going to be home to the kind of conservatism I admire anytime soon.
Trumpian Republicanism plunders, degrades, and erodes institutions for the sake of personal aggrandizement. The Trumpian cause is held together by hatred of the Other. Because Trumpians live in a maze of perpetual war, they need to continually invent existential foes — critical race theory, nongendered bathrooms, out-of-control immigration. They need to treat half the country, metropolitan America, as a moral cancer, and view the cultural and demographic changes of the past 50 years as an alien invasion. Yet, pluralism is one of America’s oldest traditions; to conserve America, you have to love pluralism. As long as the warrior ethos dominates the GOP, brutality will be admired over benevolence, propaganda over discourse, confrontation over conservatism, dehumanization over dignity. A movement that has more affection for Viktor Orban’s Hungary than for New York’s Central Park is neither conservative nor American. This is barren ground for anyone trying to plant Burkean seedlings.”
Many FlaglerLive commenters who self-describe as conservatives either do not know what conservatism really means or they refuse to accept its meanings. They are nothing more that “so-called conservatives.” Our founding fathers, steeped in a conservative ethos derived in part from the Scottish Enlightenment, chose to throw off the English yoke and adopt a liberal democratic Constitutional republic. They hoped that their new government would foster men (and women) of virtue, but they greatly feared mob rule. They understood the influence of partisan politics and inserted checks and balances on every limited power they delegated to the fledgling federal government in order to pit party against party, region against region, state, county and municipal governments against the federal government and each other, but they never intended for one political party to ever gain complete control of all forms of government for an indeterminate period of time. This is the meaning of true conservatism. This is respect for the rule of law. This is respect for individual human rights. One of the greatest political acts in American history occurred when George Washington voluntarily relinquished power after serving two terms as president, setting an example for all other presidents to follow. Even FDR, who was reelected three times, never gave any indication that he would have attempted to subvert an election had he lost one.
Tomorrow, Florida’s so-called conservative House of Representatives begins debating bills that David Brooks might describe as motivated by “hatred of the Other.” This is not the end. It is not the beginning of the end. It is not even the end of the beginning. This is one small part of a long-term social upheaval, likely to last for decades. No, this is not a prelude to civil war. But it very well might portend a descent into a further round of violent insurrections.
During one of my many discussions with my self-described conservative friend, he insisted that the use of “militia” in the 2nd Amendment permitted loosely organized citizen militias that had no connection to any government. I decided to look for a post-Revolutionary War dictionary. I found a dictionary that was published in America just before the Constitutional Convention. Yes, there was a definition for militia. A militia was a group of citizens that could only be activated by the government. More negative cognitive dissonance for those promoting “original intent of the founding fathers.” Oy vey!
Mark says
Fantastically put Ray! Love it!
Ben Hogarth says
While I agree wholeheartedly with your accounting of traditionally viewed “conservative” political theory in these United States (from utilitarianism to neo-conservatism) I can’t help but to add my own observations coming from a political science and history background. For one, I think we always see historians and political theorists struggling to identify “conservatism” because it is always a moving target. The premise of what is “conservative” never changes, but the political rhetoric and times do. In other words, “conservatism” is an antithetical reproach (or at least admonishment) of what (today) is considered the “new progressive mainstream.” I hold the view that conservatism is not actually a political ideology, but rather a prescription of the rejection of ideas. If your “political philosophy” is to always maintain the status quo, then your ideological structure is no structure at all. The status quo is always an amalgamation of generational reforms and establishments comprising many many varied ideologies. Like water, your philosophy / ideology takes the form of the evolution that came before it – entirely dependent on the existing structures it is contained within.
In example, you cited the “conservative” Willmoore Kendall (a child prodigy), who was for all his early dogmatic beliefs – a Marxist. Following the Spanish Civil War and violent political strife (as a prelude to World War 2) his views on populism began to shift from one of liberal action to one that safeguards tradition and institutions. Kendall’s fear of new ideas coupled with political turmoil yielding only violent revolution pushed him away from the ideologies to which he ascribed in his early life. In his latter years, he married the idea of populism with the protection of well-established institutions, being further recognized as a founder of the mainstream neo-conservative movement, which inevitably gave rise to the modern autocratic seduction of “Trumpism.” I find it incredibly intriguing that a man so entrenched in the idea of political reform in his early life could be so easily frightened by the conflict such change historically presents. Surely he would have sensed such impending and inevitable conflict from the warnings presented by Marx?
Your efforts to help your friend better understand how terms like “conservative” and “liberal” have been largely bastardized (or repossessed) by new “enlightened thinkers” from generation to generation was a noble one. However, I feel in my own readings and observations that the human condition is largely “too predictable” and the idea that humans evolve terms like “conservative” in new, meaningful ways is often misinterpreted in a very generous way. Friedrich Nietzsche lamented that “To predict the behavior of ordinary people in advance, you only have to assume that they will always try to escape a disagreeable situation with the smallest possible expenditure of intelligence.” Conservatism (itself) is largely the embodiment of “least expenditure of intelligence.” Any individual who has ever stepped into a new job or role with the idea they can “improve the organizational system” only to be met with the age-old adage of “but this is the way we have always done it,” can attest. Our founding fathers (particularly Jefferson) recognized the fallibility of man so much, they stated essentially the same in the Declaration of Independence in this passage: “Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.” If this statement wasn’t an intended indictment against the institutional conservatives of the American Colonies, I don’t know what was. Conservatism was never about presenting new ideas or ideology, but rather the outright rejection thereof – and that is what I would define as “mental brutalism.” What could be more brutal and damaging to political discourse than the abdication of ‘reformism’ substituted with idle government?
I would also refute Burke all day long. Conservatism is in reality, the easiest and simplest form of the human condition playing out in political theater. The persuasion rests its laurels on the most bottom level of the Maslow’s “hierarchy of needs” – or in another example, Dr. Freud’s “ego” versus the “superego.” Conservatism is not a political ideology, but rather an antithetical mechanism rooted in the most basic human ego. It’s only prescription is the art of rejection. It’s form is dependent on its antithesis (progress/change), evolving only with the most prevailing liberal / progressive reforms and traditions / institutions of each generation. Conversely, liberalism and progressivism are mutually exclusive and do not depend on conservatism for their definition. Liberalism, like progressivism, is an actual political ideology rooted in particular institutional reforms and the enduring pursuit of social justice. Neither of these ideological structures depend upon conservatism or any another ideology for their form. Nevertheless, conservatism continues to be granted the same esteem of ideological standing as any other movement, when it is in reality a rejection of “movement.”
This is why we cannot conclude that “Trumpism” is “conservatism” – neo or otherwise. The terminology as used today is so far off base, we may as well invent an entirely new schema for it. “Trumpism” and “Fascism” are a more closely linked political ideology than any notion of “conservatism.” Censoring and/or burning books, firing teachers, and modifying curriculum in a way that does not conflict with a new ideological structure is NOT “conservatism.” Ironically, those who would protect our well-established (classical) liberal arts schools and curriculum are acting in a manner that is “conservative.” It’s not always a dirty word to liberals, when it is classical liberalism that is being conserved.
We can go on and on with all the comparisons, but I will always reject the notion that “conservatism” is a political ideology in any respect. Utilitarianism, Federalism, Liberalism, Communism, Socialism, Republicanism, etc… These are all ideologies. But merely rejecting reforms or ideas because they are “new” is NOT. Republicans can continue postulating themselves as “conservative,” but the average person needs to ask exactly what “that” means. The Republicans under Trump have a lot of designs to “change” our institutions into a frightful and shallow abomination of what so many before us have long protected. Under Trump, nothing will be conserved – least of all Democracy.
Pogo says
@Ben Hogarth
100%
Conservatism is the blind and fear-filled worship of dead radicals.
— Mark Twain
Ray W. says
Exactly the type of response I always hope to foster whenever I post a comment. Thank you, Ben Hogarth. I don’t necessarily agree with everything that you added to my comment, but that is not the point. I want your point of view and am happy that you provided it. This goes for Pogo, Sherry, and so many other FlaglerLive commenters, not to exclude Jimbo99 from the list. He has so many latent qualities that I know can be brought out by a little application of intellectual rigor.
As always, I accept that I am often less right than I could be in my comments because I am unable to see all possible differing views of any complex subject matter. I might strike a chord here and there, triggering a response like yours that adds to the discussion.
As a retired attorney who used to rely on witnesses to establish the facts and evidence that I needed to zealously represent the best interests of my clients, I have long held the belief that everyone knows something that I don’t know. If I cannot get the knowledge that I need from a witness when I need to get it, it is my fault.
Sherry says
@ Ray W. . . Bravo! One of your very best comments to date!
C.J. says
I echo that! It is unfortunate that “conservatives” (I refuse to capitalize this word in reference to them) will not read it, nor ever understand it, nor ever research the references. Knowledge and competency is not what they seek. That is what they actually resent and want to beat down.
Ray W. says
Thank you, Sherry.
T says
Ron dasantis is a pos what has he done for people of fl nothing but made worse and only doing things to make him look like he cares about how he can cheat and act like he cares about republicans here to feed there nonsense why he takes your freedoms you republicans calm to want but let need someone to tell you what to do
tulip says
The Republicans have always claimed that there is “too much government” interfering in our lives. Yet the Republican party has made so many rules like voter suppression, taken away some women’s choices, banned books , telling schools what they cannot teach or read, willing to believe all the lies and discredit themselves, etc etc etc. What a bunch of bullying, cowards. Glad I’m an Independent because the GOP is diabolical and shameful and, if they really believed in the constitution and democracy would not be bowing to Trumps dictatorship. I know there are regular decent Reps that don’t like what the party of Trump is doing, but at election time they will vote for all those extremist Republican candidates that are running for office just because they are Reps and the rest doesn’t matter.
Sherry says
An “Educated” populace is much harder to “CONTROL”!
Sherry says
@ Ben Hogarth. . . excellent comment. . . especially your last line!