You're listening to the microversion of the Savage Love cast at Savage.loaf.

It feels like every week I start the show by documenting the atrocities,

which gets harder to do every week because there are so many atrocities to choose from.

This week I'm choosing Florida. Governor Ron DeSantis just signed a bill into law that expands the

states don't say gay law. The original don't say gay law, signed by DeSantis back in March of last

year, covered kindergarten through third grade. It banned all instruction about sexual orientation or

gender identity with very young children, third grade and under, and we were told at the time

no one needed to be talking to first graders about gay people or trans people anyway, so it was a

big nothing burger. And we were being hysterical when we compared Florida's don't say gay law

to Russia's anti gay propaganda law, which originally criminalized being out in front of children,

but has now been expanded to criminalize being out at all anywhere, period ever.

Now to be outdone by Vladimir Putin, Ron DeSantis's new don't say gay law, the expansion of the

don't say gay law prohibits any discussion of sexual orientation or gender identity in Florida

schools up through grade 12. So seniors in high school can't say gay can't mention having married

gay parents can't do a book report for an English class on the novel Giovanni's room by James Baldwin

or write a paper for their social studies classes about African American civil rights leader

and icon Baird Rustin. So yeah, it was never about what was age appropriate or very small children,

not that there's anything age inappropriate about first graders knowing that gay and trans people

exist. It was always about hate and always about trying to make queer people disappear. And it's

not gonna work. Take every LGBT book out of the library, banned discussions of LGBT civil rights

and classrooms, shove gay and lesbian teachers back in the closet. Kids will still have out gay

relatives. Kids will still have queer peers. Some kids will have gay parents. Some kids will be

...