Florida Bill Could Destroy LGBTQ+ Nonprofits, Mandate "Don't Say Gay" In Many Workplaces

[Ivy]

Florida GOP is at it again

 

https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/florida-bill-could-destroy-lgbtq?utm_source=substack&publication_id=994764&post_id=139045858&utm_medium=email&utm_content=share&utm_campaign=email-share&triggerShare=true&isFreemail=true&r=k5hac

 

 "The legislation would establish “biological” pronouns as official state policy. The bill also would establish protections for what it calls “deeply held biology-based beliefs.”

 

"the bill would declare that it is the state’s policy that “a person's sex is an immutable biological trait and that it is false to ascribe to a person a pronoun that does not correspond to such person's sex.”

 

"The bill also would enshrine a new phrase into law: protections for employees “deeply held religious or biology-based beliefs.” The phrase “deeply held religious beliefs” has longstanding precedent in constitutional law and is used to overturn laws judged to be violating someone's freedom of religion. Deeply held “biology-based” beliefs, however, are not something that has ever been a part of any law. It would appear that this line is meant to provide religious-based protections to people who assert that their misgendering of transgender people and using transgender people’s [dead] names is part of their “biology-based” rights.

 

It's not law yet but it looks like they plan to legislate us out of existence, and forbid mentioning us publicly.  The insanity continues.

[VickySGV]

More ways to waste Taxpayer Money that could be used for better things, such as increasing the salaries of janitors at all state institutions.  Including the Governor's Mansion.

 

[MaeBe]

Alright, if we're talking immutability, to what standard? Are they funding full karyotyping at birth for all children with regular checkups to make sure that no one made a mistake or that puberty didn't completely alter the person's hormonal/chemical physiology? Nah! Doctor Joe was pretty sure it was a fully formed penis on his way out to the links, boy it is!

[KathyLauren]

Given that the best available research indicated that there is a biological basis for being trans, it ought to be possible for a good lawyer, backed by research, to argue that being trans is a deeply-held biology-based belief.  Turn the tables on them and use their own laws against them.

[AllieJ]

38 minutes ago, KathyLauren said:

Given that the best available research indicated that there is a biological basis for being trans, it ought to be possible for a good lawyer, backed by research, to argue that being trans is a deeply-held biology-based belief.  Turn the tables on them and use their own laws against them.

This! 

 

Plus the fact that genetically, only those who have had detailed karyotyping can claim to know their biological sex would completely invalidate the law. It seems like the facts would make it easy to overturn this lunacy, but facts and lunacy rarely go together....

 

Hugs.

 

Allie

[Betty K]

2 hours ago, KathyLauren said:

Given that the best available research indicated that there is a biological basis for being trans, it ought to be possible for a good lawyer, backed by research, to argue that being trans is a deeply-held biology-based belief.  Turn the tables on them and use their own laws against them.

I think it highly likely that this research indicates a biological basis for only *some* forms of trans identity, since the trans umbrella has become far broader in recent years. It seems clear that such a biological definition of transness could be used to deny certain trans people access to rights and healthcare. Is that really what any of us want, to create a two-tiered system of transness? It sounds dystopian to me.

[KathyLauren]

15 minutes ago, Betty K said:

I think it highly likely that this research indicates a biological basis for only *some* forms of trans identity

 

You are probably right.  But my point was to blow the law out of the water, not to use it as a reasonable basis for anything.  It only takes one or two cases to make the lawmakers look like the blithering idiots that they are. 

 

Just as laws allowing store owners to discriminate on religious grounds can be used against the majority religion, not just minorities, the laws allowing discrimination based on gender identity can be used against those who would discriminate.  If the law is shown to be not only evil but idiotically evil, even a corrupt court will have to overturn it.

[Betty K]

18 minutes ago, KathyLauren said:

But my point was to blow the law out of the water, not to use it as a reasonable basis for anything. 

Yes I know, but I just don’t want to start down that road. Who knows, maybe it would work in the short term, but I fear it would set a dangerous precedent. 

[awkward-yet-sweet]

I don't mind the part about "sincerely held beliefs" related to biology.  My own faith teaches that God created mankind specifically as male and female.  I believe that people's right to conscience and free speech is given by God and is inalienable - and includes positions that are not friendly or accepting.   Properly functioning government protects those things because it must if there is to be any free exchange of ideas and any challenge to the power structure. 

 

While this bill makes some (small) noises in that direction, I believe it totally undermines any protection it could possibly give to people with sincerely held beliefs about biology. The majority of the bill does massive harm to free speech.  I would think that even anti-trans folks on the right could see from the wording that it sets a really awful precedent.  There's a core truth of any supposedly representative government - "Your side won't always be the one in power."  You don't want to create something the other side can use.  And it makes even less sense for a side that supposedly believes in rigged elections, a deep state, and leftist domination of the media. This isn't the sort of move you pull if you're anxiously awaiting the sound of the other shoe coming down. 

 

Creating something worded like this bill is pretty nuts from almost all perspectives.  But then I'm perpetually confused by the Republican Party these days. 

[Heather Shay]

Things have not changed. For so-called Christians, they don't seem to practice the teaching of the Christ but rather act like those he preached against, namely, Pharisees. Minority rule seems to be their motto and that they are "more" right than those who oppose their belief. Wait for their judgment day. 

[Ivy]

It seems like the ones ranting about their rights, and free speech, are the most willing to take these rights away from other folks.

[Vidanjali]

Slave traders and unhealthy politics had deeply held biology-based beliefs. I doubt they have considered where to draw the line on such absurd language.

[Vidanjali]

Interesting, the filter evidently changed one of the words I typed into "unhealthy politics". Let me paraphrase as referring to eugenics in general.

[VickySGV]

1 hour ago, Vidanjali said:

referring to eugenics in general.

 

Yes, the crowd that feels that they are the SUPERIOR FOLK and most genetically advanced segment of the human race to which all others are the slime of the gutter and created to be trodden-on servants to them.  The ones who bred for skin color and not true intelligence in all senses.