Mirroring a House bill filed in November, a Senate Republican on Thursday proposed a measure that would place restrictions on government agencies in the use of personal pronouns.
Sen. Jonathan Martin, R-Fort Myers, filed the proposal (SB 1382) for consideration during the 2024 legislative session, which will start Tuesday. Rep. Ryan Chamberlin, R-Belleview, filed the identical House bill (HB 599). The bills could add to long-running battles in the Legislature about issues related to gender identity.
The bills say, in part, that it is “the policy of the state that a person’s sex is an immutable biological trait and that it is false to ascribe to a person a pronoun that does not correspond to such person’s sex.” They would prevent state and local government agencies from requiring employees and contractors to refer to other people “using that person’s preferred personal title or pronouns if such personal title or pronouns do not correspond to that person’s sex” as determined at birth.
Also, they would prevent employees of government agencies and contractors from providing to their employers preferred pronouns that “do not correspond to his or her sex” and would prevent employers from asking workers to provide personal pronouns.
–News Service of Florida
JimboXYZ says
It would save us from the introductory of being waterboarded & held hostage with “I’m so & so, identifies in the moment as a whatever for preferred pronouns.” Nobody does that when they meet someone at a party, & if they did I’d run from them than allow them to flex their pronouns for some dysfunctional power trip/dysfunctional advantage, creating their social hostage crisis as an agenda. I respect others, until they just get too stupid to be around.
Deborah Coffey says
Nazis much? Next thing, Republicans will call for their deaths. They’re already killing women across the country with their hateful anti-abortion laws. Yeah, let’s start calling Republicans what they are: NAZIS. And, let’s change the name of their political party to the Nazi Party of America.
DaleL says
Ms. Jimbo, in a polite society people normally call other people by the name those people wish to be called. The use of a preferred personal pronoun is simply an extension of that. The error is to assume that there are only two immutable genders. With most people this is true. However, various genetic defects can muddy the waters, so to speak.
In rare situations, infants are born with ambiguous genitalia. This creates a multitude of difficult medical, surgical, ethical, psychosocial, and physical issues for patients and their parents. Phenotypic sex results from the differentiation of internal ducts and external genitalia under the influence of hormones and other additional factors. When discordance occurs among three processes (chromosomal, gonadal, phenotypic sex determination), a Disorders of Sexual Differentiation is the result.
Sadly, it seems that Sen. Jonathan Martin, R-Fort Myers, and Rep. Ryan Chamberlin, R-Belleview, seem to be ignorant of human biology.
Bonnie M McGee says
What an informed and intelligent rebuttal to Ms Jimbo’s ignorant and self-serving comment! It is truly a shame that so many people living in (not just) Florida in these dark times will not even bother to try and understand what you have so clearly stated. Nor will they bother to look up scientific information!
Nancy N. says
I don’t understand why this is so difficult for some people. What happened to basic human civility? You call someone what they want to be called…whether it is their nickname, a hyphenated surname, a pronoun, whatever. It’s just freaking polite. Why is that so much effort for some people?