Really, it’s the “Don’t Discuss Anything About Queer or Trans Existence and Don’t Counsel Trans or Gay Kids (Rather, You Must Out Them to Their Parents) or Else Parents Can Force an Investigation of the School, Get Damages, and Probably Get You Fired” bill
Members and supporters of the LGBTQ+ community attend the “Say Gay Anyway” rally in Miami Beach on March 13. Photo: Chandan Khanna/AFP via Getty Images Jean Eckhoff has been teaching history to middle- and high-school students in Live Oak, Florida, for the past 17 years without any fuss about her sexuality. “It’s like ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,’” she says. “Everyone knows I’m gay, but as long as I don’t talk about it, it’s okay.
Ostensibly, HB 1557 is about protecting the rights of parents, which sounds laudable enough. But a close read of the text shows it to be an overly broad piece of legislation that requires school mental-health counselors to “out” LGBTQ+ children to their parents and makes any discussion of LGBTQ+ issues or identities practically forbidden because parents could start a state investigation and sue for damages any time they feel aggrieved.
The provisions governing school counseling are even worse. School boards would be required to “adopt procedures for notifying a student’s parent if there is a change in the student’s services or monitoring related to the student’s mental, emotional, or physical health or well-being and the school’s ability to provide a safe and supportive learning environment for the student.
So what happens if a teacher or counselor does help? That’s where the bill’s vigilante provisions kick in. Since no school district can be expected to afford these kinds of investigations or lawsuits, they would be forced to act preemptively. That might entail removing books from the library, instituting gag rules, ending discussions of sexual orientation in sex-ed classes, curtailing faculty advising of gay-straight alliances, and, without a doubt, barring LGBTQ+ teachers’ personal statements of any kind about themselves, their kids, or their families.
“This bill empowers bigotry in the same spirit as we’ve seen anti-Semitic, anti-Black, anti-immigrant bigotry,” says Eckhoff. “It’s normalizing degradation.”
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