Florida recently passed a new, controversial law: In the southeastern US state, teachers are no longer allowed to talk about sexual orientation or gender identity in elementary schools because of what opponents dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill. Critics call that shameful and want to sue.
Meanwhile, a class president at a high school in Florida creatively circumvented the regulation, the video of his graduation speech is currently being shared millions of times on the Internet and on social networks. It shows 18-year-old Zander Moricz resorting to a linguistic ruse because he wasn’t allowed to share his experiences as a gay student. Observers take the speech as a protest against the “Don’t Say Gay” law and as a description of its effect on students like him.
Moricz, who has curly red hair and is openly gay, used an analogy in his speech to avoid the word “gay.” He began by announcing that he now wanted to discuss one part of his identity – his curly hair. He hated her for a long time and tried to smooth her out. But that did a lot of damage. So he decided to change things up: “Even though it’s difficult to have curly hair in Florida due to the humidity, I decided to be proud of who I am and started going to school the real me. “
Not the first controversial project by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis
The controversial legal document has been in force since March. It prohibits teaching about sexual orientation and gender identity “in a manner that is not age or developmentally appropriate for students.”
At the end of March, the Republican governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, proudly presented himself to the press in the presence of elementary school students with the signed “Parental Rights in Education” ordinance, as the law is officially called. DeSantis is considered a possible candidate for the presidential election in the United States in 2024. He has already sparked sharp controversy several times.
In June 2021, the 43-year-old signed a law requiring university faculty and students to declare their political orientation to a government agency. DeSantis explained that depending on the results of these surveys, funding for universities could be cut. Republicans in the US have long argued that universities are places where “leftist ideologies” are disseminated and conservative staff and conservative students are discriminated against.
The “Don’t Say Gay” law actually affects children from kindergarten through third grade. From the point of view of the critics, it is formulated in such a way that the ban on certain teaching content can also be applied to older children. Like the US broadcaster CNN reports, class representative Zander Moricz reassured himself during the preparations for his speech what he could talk about. The headmaster told him he couldn’t talk about his homosexuality.