2-in-5 Residents Consider Leaving Florida Over “Don’t Say Gay”
metroweekly.comA new study shows that nearly 40% of Florida residents have considered leaving the state since the passage of the “Don’t Say Gay” law, with local Republicans encouraging the law’s detractors to follow through on such plans.
According to a new survey by the Williams Institute, an LGBTQ policy think tank at UCLA’s School of Law, half of the 40% considering leaving Florida claimed they “very much so” wished to leave the state.Overall, 11% of survey respondents said they would likely move within the next two years.
Yet despite its significant number of detractors, the law enjoys majority support — not only in Florida, but nationwide, with 51% of U.S.
residents supporting the idea of banning mentions of sexual orientation and gender identity in schools, according to a recent Politico/Morning Consult poll.The law, the “Parental Rights in Education Act,” more commonly known as the ‘Don’t Say Gay’ law, prohibits classroom instruction or discussions dealing with sexual orientation or gender identity in all K-12 public schools, with rare exceptions for high-school level biology or sex education classes, where the topic may only be mentioned in passing.An expanded version of the law also makes it easier to challenge books that people may find “objectionable” or “inappropriate” for minors — designations that, while ill-defined, have historically been used to target books by LGBTQ authors or that feature LGBTQ characters, even if their identity is not central to the main plot.Opponents of the law argue that it implicitly sends a message of disapproval to LGBTQ-identifying students and infringes upon Floridian’s First Amendment rights.
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