The "Parental Rights in Education" bill, dubbed the "Don't Say Gay" bill by LGBTQ+ activists, has now been passed by both the Florida Senate and House, and would limit what schools can teach about sexual orientation and gender identity.
Under the legislation, lessons about sexual identity would be illegal in schools from kindergarten to third grade and the bill would allow parents to sue schools and teachers that engage in these topics.
"I didn't come out of the closet until I was 32-years-old and I lived in fear and yeah know I lived basically a lie," Leslie Ewing told KCBS Radio.
Ewing is a long-time LGBTQ+ advocate and the former Director of the Berkeley Specific Center in California. She said Florida's proposed law reminds her a lot of being gay in the '70s.
"Words do mean something, it is going to be harmful to the next generation of young people who know who they are deep down but literally don't know how to say it because they never hear anybody else saying it," she explained.
She sees the proposed legislation as an assault on the next generation of the LQBTQ+ community and encourages people to write letters and reach out to those living in Florida. She also said the biggest weapon the LGBTQ+ community has at their disposal is humanism.
"The one thing I learned especially through the AIDS crisis was that it was much easier to be prejudiced or to say hateful things, until someone you loved let you know that they were gay," she said.
If the bill was ultimately signed it would go into law on July 1. Florida's governor said he supports the bill, though he hadn't explicitly said he would sign it if it crosses his desk.
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