You're listening to the micro version of the Savage Lovecast at savage.love.

If you're stuck in a relationship quandary, or if you're looking for sexual harmony,

well, there's nothing you can't ask on the Savage Lovecast. 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. Not to be outdone by Vladimir Putin, Ron DeSantis' new don't-say-gay-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 Bayard 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 going to work. Take every LGBT book out of the library, ban discussions

of LGBT civil rights and classrooms, shove gay and lesbian teachers back in the closet.

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