 Last March, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed the Don't Say Gay Bill into law, which banned classroom discussions about sexuality and gender identity for grades K through 3. Now, the problem with the law, aside from it being inherently discriminatory against LGBTQ plus people, is that it was very vaguely written and the parameters were never actually outlined by the legislature or the governor, which led to outright discriminatory outcomes for counties who were trying to be cautious and not violate the law. For example, officials in Orange County reportedly warned teachers to remove photographs of their same-sex spouses just to be safe, just to make sure that they complied with the law. The question is, what actually is and isn't appropriate under these weird circumstances because if you reference a student's mommy and daddy, well, you're technically using gendered words to reference sexuality because, believe it or not, heterosexuals and cisgender people also have sexualities and gender identities. But nobody really knew what was and wasn't illegal, but they had an idea that the goal obviously was to censor anything related to LGBTQ plus people, but fast forward to April of this year and, well, don't say Gay was expanded to all K through 12 grades. And this came after DeSantis initially defended the law because it was narrow in its scope. Let's watch. It says advanced classroom instruction on sexual identity and gender orientation. For who? For grades pre-K through three. So five-year-olds, six-year-olds, seven-year-olds, and the idea that you wouldn't be honest about that and tell people what it actually says, it's why people don't trust people like you because you peddle false narratives. Give a fascist an inch and they will take a mile. But now the don't say Gay law has been expanded by Florida's Board of Education and the procedural notice period required for regulatory changes like this is seemingly over since a fifth grade teacher is now under investigation by the Florida Department of Education, all because she showed her students a Disney movie. Yeah, so as Tallahassee reports, at a Hernando County School Board meeting Tuesday, fifth grade teacher Jenna Barbie alleges school board member Shannon Rodriguez reported her to the Department of Education for showing her students Disney's 2022 movie, Strange World. It's the first Disney movie with an out Gay character. Hernando County School District confirmed a fifth grade teacher is being investigated for showing Strange World and that a parent complained to the principal about the movie not being appropriate for students. Rodriguez, who was elected to the school board last fall, was endorsed by conservative parents' rights group Moms for Liberty. In her short tenure, she has argued that there is smut and porn on schools library shelves and has asked for books to be removed according to Suncoast's news. Yeah, she sounds like a very sane and reasonable school board member who should definitely be in that position. Now, I've never heard of this movie, but I looked it up, watched the trailer for it, and it looks like every other Disney cartoon or Dreamworks cartoon. There's nothing outwardly gay about it. It's about a bunch of cartoon characters who take a spaceship to explore an alien planet. But because apparently one of the characters, he references a crush that he has on a male character. Well, that apparently makes it some sort of LGBTQ plus pride piece. It's just, it's so insane, like the mere inclusion of a gay person, that makes it bad for conservatives and possibly illegal in the state of Florida. Now, the reason why the teacher thought that it was okay to play this movie despite the existence of the gay character was because every single one of her students brought in signed permission slips from parents and they okayed their child watching their children, I should say, watching PG rated movies. Now, this is a first year teacher and she said that administrators told her that the main approval method for movies if she wanted to show one was to get that permission slip signed by every single parent. And unless there's no objections raised, you can play these movies. There's no Christian court currently to submit approval to, at least yet in Florida, so she thought that it was fine since not only the parents signed the permission slips, but they cited no specific objections. So she talked about how there was one parent who wrote on the permission slip that they don't want their child to watch the Buzz Lightyear movie, but that child moved away, right? So she didn't play that movie, by the way, she respected the desires of these parents. Furthermore, the teacher, she thought it was appropriate to play this movie because as she's going to explain in this TikTok that we're about to watch from her, the movie itself was relevant. She wasn't trying to indoctrinate children into LGBTQ plusism. She played the movie because it was related to the course material. Let's listen. So I chose this movie because it relates to our curriculum. Our unit at the time was earth science and ecosystems and how they interact, plants, humans, animals. So this movie is perfect. My thought process was what a better way to showcase all these standards, along with huge lessons of overcoming differences, spreading kindness, communication, and chasing your dreams. A lot of which were in our social-emotional Florida best standards as well. Is a character in the movie LGBTQ? Absolutely. Is that why I showed it? No. I have a lot of fifth grade students who have come to me this year long before showing this movie talking about how they're part of that community as well. And it's not a big deal to me, so I just said, okay, that's awesome. Do you? Not pushing anything, just being accepting. That's what I do. Does that have anything to do with why I showed it? Not in the slightest. The LGBTQ aspect of the movie, they're harmless. It's just a talked-about crush. And it's only a couple lines in total scene time of just over two minutes. The parents in the movie kiss a lot. And that wasn't even brought up. And that's the issue. I also want to bring up the fact that none of my students cared or batted an eye. They didn't even know this was a big deal until the board member and the state made it a big deal. They're using it against me saying they're protecting the children and it's for their safety. But what is this actually showing them? Their teacher showed a movie to help them connect to our curriculum and learn some valuable life lessons. But the minor representations that have nothing to do with the movie are such a big deal that now admin is in their room, pulling their teacher out, calling the students one by one down to the office to interrogate them in the middle of my lessons. And now there is an investigator from the Florida Department of Education coming to pull my students out of class again to investigate them individually. And by the way, they don't even have to have assigned parent permission slip for that. This investigator is allowed to come and pull them out and a letter got sent home to some of the students. But I doubt a lot of my parents are even going to get it. And if they don't call and object, the interrogator is allowed to just pull them out. Do you know the trauma that that is going to cause to some of my students? They are fifth graders. Some of them can barely come up and have a conversation with me and are just getting comfortable with me and now an investigator is allowed to come and interrogate them? Are you kidding me? The outrage. I mean, conservatives want you to think that that perfectly pleasant person is a groomer now. But because she played a Disney movie that was relevant to the lesson because the movie is about exploring a planet looking at the flora and fauna and they were learning about earth science and whatnot. Well, she got penalized for it. She's being investigated for it. And also she wanted to play the movie because she wanted to give the kids a break because they were doing standardized testing. I mean, we shouldn't even have to justify it, right? We shouldn't have to explain why it's okay for a teacher to play a fucking PG-rated Disney movie especially after the kids had parental permission slip-signed. But not only is she now being investigated but every single student is being pulled out of the classroom and being interrogated essentially about the inappropriate content that they were subjected to. This is fucking insane. Okay, this is not a healthy learning environment and it is brazenly discriminatory against LGBTQ plus people and it's unconstitutional. But this is happening in the state of Florida because Ron DeSantis has dictated that everyone has to abide by his will. He has determined for all parents what is and isn't appropriate for the kids of Florida. He also removed in African-American studies AP course, books have been pulled from shelves and in true or welly and fashion, Ron DeSantis has declared that Florida is the freest state in the country. Yeah, and also war is peace and freedom is slavery according to Ron DeSantis. Now, I'm going to link you to the full TikTok posted by this teacher. It's too long to watch all of it on this show. It's about six minutes long. So I'd highly recommend that you watch it because you can tell just by that six minutes that this teacher is a very wholesome person and she genuinely cares about her students and she's motivated by altruism. So the fact that she's now being investigated as if she's some sort of a criminal who's a danger to children is genuinely just insane. Now, she's going to explain here that if she knew that this film would have posed a problem or that a parent would have objected to it, she wouldn't have played the film and with this conversation that she had with the school board member who turned her in, the school board member, according to her account, seemingly realized that, oh, I didn't actually have to turn her in. I could have just talked to her and she would have heeded what I had to say and not played the fucking movie. But let's listen to her retell the conversation. That school board member is currently on a rampage to get rid of every form of representation out of our schools. She even spent days this past week going to all the high schools to get rid of anything that had to do with representation whatsoever. She even had admin escort her to a teacher's classroom that had a sticker of a black hand and a white hand holding hands and the white hand had a different color fingernail for every finger. So the school board member called the Department of Education on me for indoctrination before ever coming to our school to talk with me or admin about the situation. When she did come to our school, she came as a school board member and our principal said, no, you can come as a concerned parent but then you need a schedule meeting. So she did. She came and later that day and admin was in and out of my room, pulled me out, a lot of, a lot of. And we had a meeting and I understood her perspective that, okay, she really doesn't want this sewn at her house. I never saw that perspective before. So I didn't think it was a big deal, but seeing how upset she was, I told her, I understand my lesson. That's that. But come to find out, she had already reported me and there was nothing she can do about it. So it seemed like the school board member didn't realize that she could just talk to the teacher and maybe she'd understand. But instead, she assumed that this teacher was a bad person trying to indoctrinate kids and turned her in before she even vocalized her objections about the fucking movie. This is unhinged behavior. This is not healthy behavior. This is instability. This is unhinged nonsense. And first of all, fuck this school board member because this idiot thinks that you can indoctrinate children into a particular sexual identity or gender identity but that's not the way that it works. We've had this conversation for decades now and if you don't know, then you're just stupid. It's not a choice. If you don't believe me, test it out for yourself. Try to live as a gender that you don't identify with or sleep with someone of the same sex and if you don't like it, then you're proving that you can't be indoctrinated into it. It's not like an acquired taste. You are who you are. These things are innate. But the bigger issue also is that there are LGBTQ plus students who are going to feel as if they are inferior to their cis and straight peers because of this law. Because if the mere mention of homosexuality for two fucking minutes in a movie triggers an investigation and interrogation of every single student, I mean imagine how degrading this must feel if you are a gay student. Imagine being a trans student feeling like public enemy number one if your identity gets out. Like what if you tell your friend that you're trans and then you have a fight with your friend and then they basically have your life in their hands that can turn you in. It's just, it's so sad this isn't an environment conducive to learning even for cis and straight kids as well. It's just a toxic environment that Ron DeSantis has cultivated all throughout Florida. But last year when we warned people about the dangers of the Don't Say Gay Law and how it would inevitably devolve into an LGBTQ plus witch hunt, everyone accused us at the time of being hyperbolic. And now we're calling the GOP's anti-trans witch hunt a genocide and we're being accused of hyperbole again. But it's always been this way. We've always been accused of being too emotional, too hysterical, chicken little. Even in the 80s during the AIDS crisis gays pleaded with the Reagan administration to take that seriously but they were literally laughed off. They were literally laughed off as they were dying. So what I want to say to everyone is maybe listen to LGBTQ plus people's warnings for once before it's too late again.