Ultra-conservative Florida Governor, Ron DeSantis, is clearly doing everything he can to send a message to the LGBTQ community. Previously, he’s gained notoriety for spreading Trump’s lies about election fraud and making it illegal for companies to request vaccine verification (Florida also has one of the highest numbers of COVID deaths in the country)
Now, DeSantis is continuing his mission to disenfranchise the people of his state. On June 1st, the first day of Pride month, DeSantis signed into law a ban on transgender girls playing sports in schools. The Miami Herald even revealed that in the last six years, only two known transgender girls were playing high school sports…one of whom was on a bowling team; The Herald makes clear that this bill, for some reason, seemed more important than dealing with a deadly pandemic, and at the end of the article, the authors perfectly sum up what DeSantis is actually doing here. The article concludes by saying,
But Republicans’ true intent isn’t to fix an issue. No, this is about something else: giving DeSantis one more issue to brag about on Fox News as he sets himself up as the next Donald Trump ahead of the 2024 presidential primaries.
Then, on June 2nd, DeSantis made another move to purposefully hurt the LGBTQ community. According to a statement from the nonprofit, Equality Florida, “Governor Ron DeSantis continued his anti-LGBTQ crusade on the second day of Pride Month by vetoing all funding for LGBTQ programs from the state budget. Canceled funding includes money earmarked for mental health programming to support survivors of the Pulse Massacre, to house homeless LGBTQ children, and for Orlando’s LGBTQ Community Center.”
What makes this even more appalling is that this June marks the fifth anniversary of the Pulse shooting…the second deadliest mass shooting in America’s history.
To make your voice heard, speak out against DeSantis and his anti-LGBTQ policies. You can contact his office here.Â
