(Screenshot from YouTube)
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) has come out in defense of the legislation in Florida known as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, downplaying its potential negative impact on LGBTQ families and rejecting the name critics have given the bill.
During an interview with a local ABC News affiliate that went online Monday, Rubio said the “Don’t Say Gay” label for the bill, which would prohibit classroom “instruction” on sexual orientation and gender identity in grades K-3 or “not age-appropriate” settings, was “ridiculous.”
“That’s not what the bill is about at all,” Rubio said. “The bill basically says that sexual orientation is just not something schools should be talking to children about from kindergarten to sixth grade.”
Rubio shifted the argument from the content of the bill to the role of schools and parents rights to raise children, which proponents of the legislation have claimed is the limit of the “Don’t Say Gay” measure.
“We don’t send kids to school so the schools can raise our kids,” Rubio said. “We send them so they can teach them; raising kids are the job of parents and families, not schools. And so that’s what that bill does.”
Rubio concluded opponents of the measure have dubbed it the “Don’t Say Gay” bill because they want schools to have a role in raising children more appropriately left to their parents.
“And so those who call it whatever they want to call it is because they do want to turn our schools into a place to raise children,” Rubio said. “Schools are not raising children. They’re about teaching children.”
Rubio’s remarks in favor of the “Don’t Say Gay” bill are consistent with his voting record on LGBTQ issues, which includes “no” votes on the Employment Non-Discrimination Act and thwarting the confirmation of a gay Black judicial nominee.
Additionally, Rubio spoke at an anti-LGBTQ group on the two-month anniversary of the 2016 Pulse nightclub shootings, although he used the occasion to urge pastors to love gay people consistent with their faith. The Florida Republican also denounced from the Senate floor in 2017 the anti-gay killings in Chechnya.
