 Florida has been ground zero for anti-LGBTQ plus legislation, and even though it feels like things can possibly get worse in the state for LGBTQ plus people, it absolutely can and unfortunately it will very soon thanks to multiple new anti-LGBTQ plus bills that Rhonda Santis just signed into law as of today. Two of them actually take effect immediately and the other two are slated to take effect on July 1st. Now 2023 has already been a record breaking year for anti-LGBTQ plus legislation. In fact, the ACLU has mapped a total of 474 bills at the time that I record this video, but out of all of these states, Florida has just produced some of the harshest, most draconian laws that literally threaten trans existence, and we're going to go through all of them one by one because all of these bills collectively, they're just going to make it difficult for trans people to exist in this state, which is going to force many of them to flee the state. So these are the laws in question, courtesy of trans researcher and journalist Aaron Reed who breaks it down, there's HB1521, a trans bathroom ban, there's HB1061, an expansion of the don't say gay law to grades 12 and under, there's SB254, a ban on gender affirming care for trans youth, and also heavy restrictions on gender affirming care for trans adults that will make it nearly impossible for them to exist as trans people. One last but certainly not least, there is SB1438, which is a new obscenity law that targets drag shows and it effectively bans them while not explicitly saying that drag shows can't exist, but we'll break it down, we'll talk about it. Now let's start with the most obvious, I'm sure that you're already familiar with the don't say gay law, but it has been expanded now, or it will be expanded as of July 1st, so originally the law applied to grades K through 3, now it's going to apply to K through 12, and basically this law is going to censor all discussions in the classroom related to sexuality and gender identity, meaning that teachers probably aren't going to be allowed to use the preferred pronouns of their students. On top of that, GSAs, which are gay straight alliances, really crucial resources for LGBTQ plus youth probably won't be allowed to exist because of this law's expansion. And on top of that, LGBTQ plus students are likely going to be forced into the closet. I don't know how they're going to be able to transition in high school given these restrictions on queer speech. And on Monday, we talked about a Florida teacher who is under investigation for showing her fifth grade classroom, a Disney movie that features a homosexual character. Now I was under the assumption that the investigation into her was triggered because she violated the newly expanded version of don't say gay, and news outlets also made this assumption as well, but that was an incorrect assumption because the expansion doesn't even take effect until July 1st, meaning the following school year. So what that tells us is that this teacher literally did not even break Florida law, yet she's still under investigation and her students are being grilled. So if that insanity can take place before the law even went into effect, imagine how bad it's going to get after these bigots are emboldened by the weight of Florida law. I mean, it's going to be insane. Anyone who is suspected of being LGBTQ plus will probably be the targets of witch hunts in Florida. It's just going to get really bad. So you already know about that, but let's move on to the other laws that Rhonda Sant is signed. So I'm going to talk about the drag queen ban. It is an effective ban. It's not an outright ban. And the way that they do this is they're using obscenity laws to basically penalize businesses that host family friendly drag shows. As CBS Miami reported last month, the law would allow the state to revoke the food and beverage licenses of businesses that admit children to adult performances, adult classified by the state, by the way, the DeSantis administration has moved to pull the liquor license of a Miami hotel that hosted a Christmas drag show alleging children were present during quote lewd displays. Now to be clear, there was nothing lewd about the drag show, but since the right has characterized any and all forms of LGBTQ plus entertainment as porn, well, that's what they're saying. They're saying basically it was lewd because there were men who were dressing up as women. Yeah. Now the law is already having a chilling effect on free speech in the state of Florida because it led to one pride event being canceled in anticipation of this being signed into law. In particular, the Port St. Lucie pride parade and other traditionally family friendly pride events are now just having to restrict their events to ages 21 plus. I mean pride, sure there were some adult centric events, but as it got more mainstreamed over the years, there were more family friendly events as you know society realizes that this is a necessity because you have queer families who attend these events. But DeSantis is unilaterally pushing LGBTQ plus people back into the closet and is stripping away the mainstream status of these pride events. But it gets worse, believe it or not, because I want to talk about the bathroom bill because this is a piece of legislation that was so vaguely worded and far reaching that I can't see how this doesn't result in genital inspections of trans people. Erin explains bill 1521 will effectively give second class citizen status to transgender people in Florida. The wording of the bill states that if a cisgender person is in the bathroom with a transgender person, an employee can tell the transgender person to leave. Should the transgender person not leave immediately for any reason, they will be charged with criminal trespass, which can carry sentences of up to one year in jail, likely a jail of the wrong gender identity which will put trans people in immense danger of sexual assault. She continues, while the provisions do not ban all bathroom usage, they cast a wide net over an alarming number of locations that would fall under the definition of public in the bill. This includes all buildings owned or leased by any governmental entity, educational institutions spanning from elementary schools to private colleges and universities, numerous hospitals owned by universities, many sports arenas, convention centers, city parks, beaches, airports and more. So in other words, let's say you are a trans professor and one of the students realizes that you're trans because perhaps you don't pass, well they can unilaterally get you jailed if you refuse to leave because let's say you want to leave because you're uncomfortable too, but the problem is that it's an emergency and you have to go. You can go to jail now because of this law. And what makes it even more cruel is the fact that it uses language to erase trans existence. So even if you changed your birth certificate and your driver's license, that doesn't matter. It doesn't matter because the text, as you can see here, specifically defines sex as what you were assigned at birth. So how else can you prove that you're trans or cis for that matter unless you are subjected to a genital inspection? Like how else do you facilitate this law? How do you maintain compliance with the law unless you look at somebody's genitals? I mean what if a cis person mistakes another cis person as trans? This can affect them too. And even if they went by the gender on someone's driver's license to determine eligibility for a fucking bathroom, I mean trans people shouldn't have to be forced to provide documentation to take a fucking piss or a shit. But the law isn't even that lenient. It's a law that is based on antiquated gender norms that is going to literally legalize harassment against trans people by cis people who don't want them in their space. It's not only cruel but it's brazenly unconstitutional. And let's say that the ACLU sues and this gets appealed all the way to the Supreme Court, who do you think the court's going to side with? They're going to allow for this discrimination to legally continue. It is just a nightmare scenario and again it's just Florida criminalizing more elements of trans existence. But it gets even worse, as Erin Reade explains again, one of the most problematic of those bills is a ban on most gender-affirming care for transgender adults. Senate Bill 254 bans gender-affirming care for trans youth and bans nurse practitioners from providing gender-affirming care to trans adults. Spectrum Health, a provider in Florida, has indicated in an exclusive interview with Erin in the morning that up to 80% of all gender care in this state is provided by nurse practitioners, a statistic in line with information provided by Planned Parenthood. Already people are losing access to medication in Florida and Lena Dunn of Spectrum Health has stated that transgender people are having appointments canceled by medical organizations around the state and this is because, unlike the bathroom ban which goes into effect on July 1st, SB 254 has an immediate effective date due to penalties provided by SB 254, many medical providers have determined they can no longer provide that care. So this is something that is happening in a supposedly free country. I don't even know what to say about this. We're seeing laws so draconian that they are similar to the restrictions on LGBTQ plus people that we see in authoritarian regimes. It's just deeply theocratic and it's unconstitutional but this is happening regardless and as a direct result of this law, trans youth are likely going to be forced to detransition which we all know is going to lead to increased suicidal ideation so how many kids are going to die as a result of them being denied access to gender from in care. How many adults are going to be forced to detransition because now gender from in care even for them is being heavily restricted. I mean, think about this. If nurse practitioners provide 80% of gender from in care, this means that many trans adults, they're just not going to have access to gender from in care and as a result the state is effectively forcing them to to detransition. I mean, you don't have to ban it to get the same result. They're trying to regulate trans people out of existence and this takes effect right now immediately. It's the same strategy that we saw Republicans use to curtail abortions before Roe v Wade was struck down. You don't have to just straight up ban abortions to get the same result. You can effectively regulate something that you don't like out of existence and that's what they're doing now when it comes to gender from in care for adults and children. They're just banning it for children and for adults they're imposing more restrictions because they know that that probably wouldn't hold up to legal scrutiny so that's what they're doing. Most Floridians who are adults probably are going to really struggle now to get access to gender affirming care because of this. Little by little they are totally criminalizing the existence of trans people in Florida. An entire group of people are being subjected to cruel laws that literally legalize discrimination against them and restrict their access to life-saving care that they need. We're witnessing a fascist state perform a slow-moving genocide against a vulnerable group of people and it's time for everyone else to wake up and acknowledge the gravity of the situation. This is very serious. It's time to sound the alarms. I don't even know what to say about this. It's like he went on a anti-LGBTQ plus marathon in Florida today and I desperately want to recommend that anyone who still lives in the state to get out but I mean it's easier said than done right. I mean moving takes a lot of money especially if you're moving out of state it requires money, it requires you to find new employment, housing. It's not that easy to just up and leave but unfortunately we're to the point where a lot of trans people in Florida don't even have the choice. Merely existing in Florida is becoming increasingly difficult if not impossible. So consider helping a trans person that you know in Florida leave. I mean on a massive scale I don't know how we facilitate getting trans people out of Florida but we can help on an individual basis. For example my friend Ashley, she's an amazing person and she lives in Florida and she's a trans person and she deserves better. So she organized the GoFundMe for herself so she can escape and she's just, I mean she's an amazing person. She's an absolute sweetheart and she deserves a good life. Also her cash app in Venmo is ashy slashy22. So if you can please consider sending her a couple of bucks and she was kind enough to recommend that other trans people share their GoFundMe's as well which led me to find Sarah's GoFundMe who is trying to help her and her trans husband get out. So I'll link to both of these GoFundMe's down below or consider helping out a trans person that you know personally get out of Florida. We can't again realistically get every single trans person out of these red states using GoFundMe but again at the individual level we can make a quick difference in someone's life by throwing them a couple of bucks. So at the macro level however we're going to have to come up with solutions because this is not sustainable. Trans people have to be able to exist but more states are making it very very difficult for that to happen. So do what you can to help out your trans friends but meanwhile there needs to be a plan to get trans people out of these red states because it's just no longer safe in these states for them.