Florida’s new “Parental Rights in Education Act”, or as critics call it the “Dont Say Gay” bill, is the new battle conservatives have started out of nothing in our culture war. The culture war, put simply, is the debate around social issues between conservatives and liberals in this country. While the Republican politicians themselves care more about being pro-business, Republican voters and conservative media mostly care about the culture war. The fear of the unknown, and the insecurity of losing a grip on culture and society is at the root of the conservative ideology. In the case of 2022’s Don’t Say Gay bill, the Florida senate passed a bill that would prohibit public primary schools from having classroom discussions around sexual orientation and gender identity. Not only is this bill damaging for the LGBT youth in Florida, but it is also a terrifying illustration of the implications that this wider culture war has on Americans.

The Don’t Say Gay bill is another successful attempt for Republicans to put their foot down against a changing culture. Throughout history, whether it was to expand rights for the LGBT community, or for African Americans, or for women, the right has stood against progress, making the familiar argument that this is going too far and will cause a moral panic. For the past 150 years, since the end of slavery, rather than use explicit legislation to enforce what they actually want, the Republican party use implicitly oppressive legislation in ways that is more legally or morally defensible to enact their bigotry like literacy tests or voting id laws. The desire to put minorities under second class citizenship is the constant theme of this party, and it is alive and well today. After the historic 2015 Supreme Court decision to legalize gay marriage in all 50 states, the Republican party generally moved away from attacking gay marriage and focused its attacks on the transgender community. However, the attack on the gay and lesbian community is making a comeback with more than 100 anti-lgbt pieces of legislations that republicans have been proposing through state legislatures. The “Don’t Say Gay” bill is a major bill carrying this backlash period against the LGBT community.

Conservative voters want sexual education to stay “in the home” because they don’t want a society they don’t like to tell their children what to think. Even though most doctors, educators, and scientists believe that sexual education for children is helpful, many parents would prefer to stay ignorant and find ways to reinforce their bigotry. The evidence suggests that discussions about sex and gender helps children figure themselves out, better identify sexual abuse, and clearly express themselves. The notion that this will make more children gay or transgender is a blatant misunderstanding of how human emotions and expression works. Young people are sentient beings, and they understand when they feel alienated and different. Pretending it doesn’t exist and harboring emotions is psychologically harmful to kids. This is especially alarming considering that one out of every four LGBT child in the United States has attempted suicide. Another dangerous part of this bill is that it will allow schools to out LGBT children to their parents. Not only is this a traumatizing invasion of their privacy, but it could also add to the homelessness crisis in the LGBT community as some children will be forced to come out to their homophobic parents before they are ready. Obviously, experts are best equipped to take into account all of these factors when it comes to this issue. However, parents want to pass down their deeply-held beliefs to their children without considering how it affects people, and the Republican party has exploited that dynamic for decades.

An important fact to notice is that the language used in this bill is very broad and up to interpretation. This is a deliberate act from Governer Ron Desnatis and Florida lawmakers as it allows for parents to determine for themselves when a school crosses the line. With the common right-wing talking point being “talking about gender identity is grooming children”, this should be very alarming. The Republican party understands that it is very hard to outright legally ban teaching about sexual orientation, so they weaponize the parents by allowing them to sue and act within their local governments. We have seen throughout the past year that Republicans have empowered parents to go to school board meetings and local district meetings and express their aggrievements. Conservative media outlets and Republican politicians worked in unison to activate their base through many different culture war issues. Not too long ago, the main topic on every conservative brain was Critical Race Theory. Parents around the country became infuriated with the idea that schools would handle teaching the history of race and slavery in this country to children. This was yet another made-up issue that pressed all the right buttons to cause a panic in school districts all over the country. Another recent iteration of the culture war is Texas’s war on abortion. People in Texas will be allowed to sue each other on the basis of aiding a women to get an abortion, again with the very broad language. Similar to the Desantis’s Don’t Say Gay bill, Texas Republicans have pit people against each other. The new vigilante system of law harrasment is a disgusting method that the Republican party is using to energize their voters to stay involved in local politics so they later come out to vote in the midterms and in 2024.

The Don’t Say Gay bill is an example for how destructive the Republican party can be when they are in power. The worst thing about all of this is that the Democrats don’t go on the offensive against this. For whatever reason, the Democratic party have decided that they are on the losing side of the culture war and should quiet down their progressive members, despite the fact that most polls tell a different story. The United States is a fairly progressive country when you look at polling on LGBT rights, the economy, and racial justice. Yet, the Democratic leadership have not made a concerted effort to fight against the Republican party and they largely stayed out of fights that are easy wins for them. We don’t know how to create a media frenzy the same way the Republicans do, and we don’t know how to establish a coherant national narrative against the right.

We are a fractured party, whose leaders right now, President Joe Biden, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, uphold a rosey image of politics and of the Republicans that only obscures the debate. Pelosi famously stated that the country needs a strong Republican party, and that there are many reasonable Republicans to work with. As we saw from Biden’s first 100 days, this generation of republicans are the most uncooperative group of people to work with. Outside of a decent but underfunded infrastructure bill, the Biden administration’s broader agenda has been ruined. Biden compromised and entertained the republicans and conservative democratic senators like Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin who tore everything down.

I believe that the Democratic party needs to step up and reframe the debate to communicate the message that the Republican party, throughout its existence, has synergized the worst of capitalism with facism. The more democrats legitimize them, the more harm they could do around the country. The Democrats need to realize that the US is in a backlash period with a rising reactionary right-wing and an extremely corrupt Republican party. They also need to realize that the majority of Americans are reasonable on all of these issues. Maybe a large part of the Democratic coalition simply doesn’t care, but there is so much untapped potential in the party that would meaningfully improve people’s lives if we had better politicians. If we don’t buy into the Republican party’s framing, and create our own arguments, we could convince a lot more people to vote and stop this country from slipping into an authoritarian facistic hellhole. All of the arguments against the Don’t Say Gay bill, or banning Critical Race Theory, or banning Abortion are profound ones that resonates with the majority of this country. The consensus of polls show that most left-wing positions on LGBT rights, women’s rights, healthcare, the climate, or race, are popular among Americans. Let us not forget how many people showed up for the George Floyd protests in 2020. Republicans are a very institutionally powerful minority that are doing everything they can halting progress and passing down their ideological torch to the next generation. They use the culture war to rile up support for a party that is broadly unpopular. If we clearly point that out, we would better reach voters, win more elections, and be able to more effectively fight the Republican party’s larger project of eroding our institutions and serving the wealthy.

The “Don’t Say Gay” Bill and The Culture War