Monday, April 04, 2022

What Does ‘Don’t Say Gay’ Actually Say? A close read of the controversial Florida bill. (NY Times)

On this day in 1968, 54 years ago today, Senator Robert Francis Kennedy responded to the murder of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in Memphis, Tennessee.  

RFK spoke in Indianapolis, Indiana to a Black people who learned of the murder from him:

My favorite poet was Aeschylus. He wrote: "In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God."

What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness; but love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or they be black.

So I shall ask you tonight to return home, to say a prayer for the family of Martin Luther King, that's true, but more importantly to say a prayer for our own country, which all of us love--a prayer for understanding and that compassion of which I spoke.

Gooberish GQP handlers of hateful Florida Dull Republican Governor RONALD DION DeSANTIS produce nothing of value. 

These unAmerican lackeys have worked with rightist to manufacture a Kleenex box of lachrymose lies -- tissues of issues for crybabies looking to create divisions and affect martyrdom.  

Is Boy Governor RON DeSANTIS one unprincipled pouty pompous petty pachyderm?

Gov. DeSANTIS is never happy.  

Gov. DeSANTIS is always complaining.  

Often about nothing.

Never about anything that really matters.

He's a piker, jetting around the state to pander to prejudice.  He recently spoke in St. Johns County, where Sheriff ROBERT HARDWICK emitted effusive praise, albeit undeserved.

Texans would call this nattering nabob of negativism "all hat and no cattle."

DeSANTIS is guilty of pandering to Kulturkampf, a term that the late Justice Antonin Scalia used to describe rightist's anti-Gay animus in legislation in 1996.

DeSANTIS contributions to public policy in Florida are de minimus, if not de micromis.

But as long as he can work the word "woke" into the peroration, or trash a group subject to discrimination, or push "junk science," DeSANTIS thinks he's got your vote.

Like his idiotic idol, twice-peached, coup-plotting DONALD JOHN TRUMP, is DeSANTIS a bitchy, nasty, malevolent, contemptuous, retaliatory, obnoxious, self-absorbed, selfish, snide, snooty, conceited, self-righteous dictatorial demagogue, full of piss and vinegar?

DeSANTIS chooses staff with links to odious fascist elements at home and abroad.  They want despotism.  Ask CHRISTINA PUSHAW, his pitiful, bigoted press secretary, about her career working for the KOCH BROTHERS, in Ukraine, Georgia and in Eastern Europe, and how she got her job with DeSANTIS!   Twitter temporarily suspended PUSHAW in 2021 for abusive behavior aimed at journalists. 

PUSHAW's website states:

political consulting & analysis      communications, pr, media  

political consulting isn't a job for me -- it's a calling. i can't imagine anything more inspiring than elevating the causes and people i believe in. 

​i have unique depth of experience in eastern europe, particularly georgia and ukraine, and trusted networks of contacts in politics, media, and business. i have advised a range of policymakers and thought leaders on the region. 

communications, pr, media  

political consulting isn't a job for me -- it's a calling. i can't imagine anything more inspiring than elevating the causes and people i believe in. 

​i have unique depth of experience in eastern europe, particularly georgia and ukraine, and trusted networks of contacts in politics, media, and business. i have advised a range of policymakers and thought leaders on the region. 

Educators' handling of history, racism and LGBTQ subjects are under attack by today's thermal equivalent of the "Know Nothing" political party in Lincoln's time.

Lincoln wrote in an August 24, 1855 letter to Joshua Speed.

I am not a Know-Nothing. That is certain. How could I be? How can any one who abhors the oppression of negroes, be in favor or degrading classes of white people? Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we began by declaring that "all men are created equal." We now practically read it "all men are created equal, except negroes" When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read "all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and Catholics." When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretence of loving liberty -- to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocracy [sic].








From The New York Times: 





EDUCATION BRIEFING

What Does ‘Don’t Say Gay’ Actually Say?

A close read of the controversial Florida bill.

This is the Education Briefing, a weekly update on the most important news in U.S. education. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox

Good Wednesday to you!

Today, we have an analysis of a piece of education legislation in Florida that critics have referred to as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill.

And we have news of our own: We’re making some changes to the Education Briefing. See below for details.


Demonstrators marched during a Florida rally against House Bill 1557 this month.
ImageDemonstrators marched during a Florida rally against House Bill 1557 this month.
Credit...Martha Asencio-Rhine/Tampa Bay Times, via Associated Press

Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida is expected to sign House Bill 1557, a proposed law that supporters call the “Parental Rights in Education” bill and opponents refer to as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill.

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