FLORIDA (LifeSiteNews) — Homosexual advocacy groups filed a federal lawsuit on Thursday to stop Florida’s new Parental Rights in Education Act.
The legislation, signed last week by Governor Ron DeSantis, aims to protect students from teachers and counselors who might groom them to identify as homosexual or transgender, meaning gender dysphoric. It applies to schoolchildren until fourth grade. Critics have called it the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, though that word appears nowhere in the legislation.
The homosexual groups state in their filing that the law is an “an unlawful attempt to stigmatize, silence, and erase LGBTQ people in Florida’s public schools.”
“It seeks to do so by imposing a sweeping, vague ban covering any instruction on ‘sexual orientation and gender identity,’ and by constructing a diffuse enforcement scheme designed to maximize the chilling effect of this prohibition,” attorneys argued on behalf of Equality Florida, Family Equality and individual plaintiffs.
The law would also “deny to an entire generation that LGBTQ people exist and have equal dignity” and “control young minds through state censorship.” It would “demean LGBTQ lives by denying their reality” and is a “grave abuse of power.”
The lawsuit continues to say that the bill “erases” people. “H.B. 1557 erases other LGBTQ members of the school community and parents, to the detriment of all.” Furthermore, the new law “reflects an effort by the state to use its power over public schools to demean and deny the existence of people.”
Some of the plaintiffs include a 17-year-old boy who “has known that he is gay since a very early age.” Another homosexual male “has known he is gay since middle school” the lawsuit alleges.
The attorneys also represent a male fifth-grader who has been encouraged to live as a female since he was a three-year-old, according to the lawsuit. Proof cited in the lawsuit that he is actually a girl is that the boy liked princesses and didn’t like traditionally masculine toys he received for Christmas.
“McClelland [the unnamed student’s mom] decided it was best for Doe’s development and safety to allow her to socially transition to a girl in preschool. Since then, Doe has used female pronouns and presented as female at school,” the lawsuit states.
The lawsuit names Governor DeSantis, members of his administration and several school boards that oversee the districts where the plaintiffs attend school, teach or have children enrolled.
Attorneys want the law declared unconstitutional and enjoined from enforcement while the lawsuit is deliberated.
“Parents’ rights have been increasingly under assault around the nation, but in Florida we stand up for the rights of parents and the fundamental role they play in the education of their children,” Gov DeSantis said in a statement when he signed the legislation. “Parents have every right to be informed about services offered to their child at school, and should be protected from schools using classroom instruction to sexualize their kids as young as five years old.”