Conservatives continue to create a moral panic surrounding LGBT+ communities and children through recycling old tactics centred on ambiguous legislation and child protection.

‘The Parental Rights in Education’ Act, more accurately known as the ‘Don’t Say Gay’ Act, was recently passed in Florida in March of this year. The bill prohibits ‘classroom instruction’ on sexual orientation or gender identity in ‘kindergarten through grade 3 or in a manner that is not age appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards.’ If parents feel schools are in breach of these clauses, they have the ability to sue the school district.

No doubt this bill will worsen the situation for LGBTQ+ youth. The Trevor Project reports half of LGBTQ+ youth considered suicide this year alone and are a greater suicide risk compared to their straight peers. Meanwhile, queer positive school environments reduce this risk while improving academic attainment for LGBT youth according to GLSEN. Positive school environments are thus part of the antidote to this mental health inequity.

The law is extremely vague, leaving many fearing that any mention of queer issues in class could result in a lawsuit. How do we determine what is ‘developmentally appropriate’ for students? Lawyers themselves aren’t even sure of what ‘classroom instruction’ encapsulates - Will young children be able to say they have two same-sex parents? Will queer teachers be able to refer to their partners? Many educators are steering clear of these topics entirely. Yet, this law is nothing new. Tactics like these have been historically deployed against minorities in the United States.h Senator Joe Harding who introduced the bill to the Florida State Legislature has repeatedly argued in media interviews that the legislation does not contain any specific reference to LGBTQ+ and that any criticism is part of a ‘false narrative.’

, This bill doesn’t have to refer specifically to the LGBTQ+ communities to be harmful - what matters is how it's enforced.

Take for example Plessy v Ferguson, the 1896 landmark supreme court decision that permitted racial segregation on the principle of ‘separate but equal.’ In reality, , the segregated facilities for African Americans were anything but equal. Economist Robert Margo demonstrates that southern black children attended public schools that received fewer resources per pupil those public schools attended by white children. Historian Kevin Kruse concisely summarised this on Twitter, asserting that ‘When racists are in charge of administering seemingly race-neutral laws, they often apply them in uneven ways that reflect their racism.’

Similarly, it is implausible that the ‘Don’t Say Gay’ law will be used to silence discussions on the nuclear family. Heterosexual people are the ‘neutral’ party here and those enforcing the law are prejudiced against queer people. By definition, this legislation is underpinned by heteronormativity: that heterosexuality is the default and the norm, which excludes LGBTQ+

communities. The fact that the legislation does not mention any specific group is also intentional - it gives Republicans an easier means to deflect criticism and accusations of bigotry.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who signed the bill into law, has spoken at length about how the legislation protects children from ‘transgenderism [being] injected into classroom instruction,’ often speaking from podiums at press conferences surrounded by placards with the slogan ‘protect children, support parents.’ This rhetoric of ‘protecting’ children from queer people is again seen in the history of Florida.

Anita Bryant ran the ‘Save Our Children’ campaign in 1977 to repeal an ordinance that would have protected homosexuals from discrimination in jobs, housing and public accommodation in Miami-Dade County. Bryant feared queer people teaching her children in school since ‘homosexuals cannot reproduce, they must recruit,’ labelling queer people as groomers and paedophiles. Bryant was successful, with almost 70% of Floridians voting to rescind the legislation.

Gillian Frank, a historian, argues that this family-centred language was a guise for anti-gay beliefs. This tactic allowed Bryant to shift the debate from whether queer people should have a place in school, to one of the parents’ rights to control their family. More recently, these arguments were also employed during the battle against gay marriage and gay adoption. DeSantis has thus re-mobilised this age-old homophobic rhetoric to garner support for his bill, camouflaging his bigotry and that of his supporters.

This moral panic is spreading across the United States. Alabama has since adopted its own copycat bill of the Florida law while Louisiana, Texas and Ohio are all considering passing similar legislation. A federal bill currently waits in the wings of Congress that aims to pull federal funding for ‘sexually-oriented’ programs for young children, prohibiting further discussion of LGBTQ+ communities in other states.

Regardless of these new challenges, history also teaches us that LGBTQ+ communities have defeated attempts to roll back their civil liberties like this in the past and will do so again