And a moving, stirring book. Controversy and concerned Florida Republicans have introduced a
bill that we could drastically alter the legal legal landscape for lgbt LGBTQ plus individuals.
The proposed legislation aims to criminalize what in terms as lewd or las vicious
grooming, thrusting it into the realm of second degree felonies put shool by hefty
fines and extensive prison sentences. Spearheaded by Republicans Taylor Yaravoski and Douglas Bankson,
the bill takes a hardline stance against any communication received as promoting sexual activity to
minors. However, critics argue that the bill's broad language can disapportionately target LGBTQ
plus content and performances, infringing on free expression and potentially censoring file discussions.
With LGBTQ plus advocates bracing for yet another legislative session marked by potential discrimination,
the bill's fate remains uncertain and miss an ongoing bow between Flor's conservative leadership and
lgbtwo plus right activists. This story is from the National Review, published on
Jerry eleven. Okay, Lie, I got some shit to say, but
I'm going to pass it over to you opinions. Yeah, I gotta,
I gotta take it breather, Okay, go. So so I personally our
title, and I'm like, hold on, Like we already knew that grooming
is not a good thing to do, right, But important is about actually
protecting anybody. It's about criminalizing groups of people for existing, so representative Yarkowski
daili Orkowski decries drag shows specifically, and and probably even anything seen as remotely
not straight, as confusing for young kids, as if children are born knowing
the rules of heteronormative society. And and that's always been such a strange concept
to me, that they assume children are going to be confused by things like
this. You know what, I was just thinking, just because you're confused
doesn't mean your children are. Kids are smart, they learn quick. So
but as you look at the language of the bill, it seems like just
acknowledging to a person younger than sixteen that sex exists about having sex? Why
would you ever do that? So this would require abstinence only education in Florida
schools, which is already the case in Florida. I looked up states that
have abstinence only education, and in Florida is one of the states that stresses
teaching abstinence, but we all know that that is not an effective tool for
preventing pregnancy. You're actually teaching kids about how to be responsible. Out of
the ten states with the highest birth rate among people age fifteen to nineteen who
can get pregnant, five of those states either don't require sex education and in
any way at all, or require abstinence focused education. Surprising everyone, Florida
is actually not in that top ten list. They come in just they come
in at number twenty three with fifteen point four berths or sorry, fifteen point
two berths per one thousand pregnancy capable teenagers, just under the national average of
fifty four. Just as a side note, but I was thinking about this,
and I remember hearing on an episode several months ago, and I'm pretty
sure Cross Examiner you were the one that said it turn about is fair play,
and that was our art something he would saying an article about Florida once
again, because we cover that a lot on this show covered last time I
was on. But there are descriptions in the Bible of Sex of things that
would now be considered illegal, for example, the story of Lot and his
daughters that would be considered illegal today. And the bill specifies, you know,
encouraging minors younger than sixteen to engage in illegal sex act that is felonious.
So I wonder if any of these, you know, the Christian nationalists,
you know, lawmakers in Florida, are going to consider that before they
really lean in art on this bill. Sorry a cross examiner, what do
you have to Well, I hadn't thought of applying it to the Bible,
but I think you're right. So there's two issues with this particular thing.
I'm gonna I'm gonna go to town a little bit on this. My background
is in the law, so I've read the bill. They have changed the
bill since this article was written. So that's the first story is somewhere.
And it only took about eight or nine days since the bill was introduced.
Between that time and the amendment that people realize they really screwed up. But
let's talk about the bill. It was introduced because it highlights the ineptitude of
state legislators. They generally are not very good at writing laws. They don't
understand how to create sentences that have good definitions and good structure and and define
activity that they want to make illegal and excludes activity that they want to remain
legal. And sometimes that's on purpose. They just want to get up and
say, I introduce this bill that will get rid of those you know,
drag queens to their constituents. And that's true. They introduced it, and
then after the hubbub dies down, they go to amendment to make it the
mendate to make it constitutional. First the first bill, and this is what
the highlights. It would make it a felony for a person to engage in
the process of preparing or encouraging a child whatever that means, a process of
preparing or encouraging a child to engage in sexual activity, either through overtly overtly
I shouldn't say overly overtly sexually themed communication with the child whatever that means,
or in conduct with or observed by the child. Right, So, it
would be a felony for someone to teach the child what sex was, because
that would be the process of preparing a child to engage in sexual activity through
overtly sexually themed communication. That would be a felony. I have a book
here that I have given to my kids. And on the cover it says
over two million copies sold. This is called Where Did I Come From?
It teaches kids the birds and the bees in a very good way. Right
now, there's a clause at the end that says you can't do this without
permission of the child's parent or league art. That's when that's when it becomes
illegal. If the parent does this, you're okay, So I'm okay to
give this to my kid. But it leaves open like what if I didn't
tell my wife that parent didn't give permission, so I would be a felon.
Maybe if I gave this to my child and didn't tell my wife forgot
to or more specifically, the school nurse gives this to somebody or information about
birth control or anything like that without telling the parent, it is a Now
it would be a felony under this old version. Now the new version they
changed it, so it's basically criminalizing that which is already criminal, which is
you know, again watering it down to be nothing. Now it has Oh
and by the way, they didn't exclude anybody who was under eighteen, So
if you were sixteen hitting on your boyfriend or your girlfriend in a communicative way,
you were a felon now under that old bill, right, So the
new bill says a person who is eighteen years or older who engages a pattern
of not a process of a change of that. And then they describe written,
verbal, electronic communication that demonstrates sexual condentt or sexual incitement, and they
refer to all of the Sex Crimes Acts to get their definitions for the directed
at a person who's less than sixteen years of age. They're trying to get
the seventeens and eighteen year olds from dating each other. That's okay for the
purpose of preparing, encouraging, or enticing such a person to engage in any
unlawful sexual activity. They added all of that stuff. So now they're basically
saying, if you do stuff sexually to get a kid to participate in unlawful
sexual activity, that's a crime. Well, it already was a crime.
So they introduced a bill that was targeting drag shows they accidentally would criminalize probably
their own behavior in educating their kids, or their neighbor's kids, or the
school that's educating kids, and then quietly without any press watered it down to
basically, this is going to be criminalizing that which was already criminal, which
is exactly what the GOP constantly rails about. Why do we have so many
laws? Why do we have so many regulations that we don't need all this
stuff? Exactly? This is a good example. It is now, it
is now, but at the time, like when it came out, I'll
get trying. If I gave this book to my neighbor's kid, or the
school nurse gave this book to my kid in Florida under the original bill without
my permission, like not like against my will, but just not telling me,
forgetting to tell me, or just having into the library. If if
the librarian gave it to them, it would not just be illegal or not
the civil offense, it would have been a felony. And these these these
legislators put these laws out and occasionally they slipped through because nobody notices, and
the original language stays in and they go in because they're inept or they want,
as we were talking in an earlier segment with Eli, they want this
to become a Christian nation. So uh, yeah, Kelly, you were
applauding. I didn't mean to take up so much time, but I was,
actually I was. It was actually very self centered. I was plotting
myself because I was thinking along the same lines as you were, and I
thought if I was doing that, that was pretty smart of me. So
that is clapping for myself. So, like my whole my notes start out
with, let's put forth a scenario, and this would have been under the
old version of the bill. My sixteen year old granddaughter comes to me for
advice. She's her mother, My daughter's on vacation. Grandma lives in a
different state. She's having trouble urine eating. It's never experienced anything like it
before. And after fifteen to twenty minutes of conversation, I become concerned that,
you know, she might have an STD, so I volunteer to drive
over to our house, pick her up, take her to the doctor.
Along the way, I tell her not to worry about it. Most of
this, most of these can be cured easily. Just you should let all
your sex partners know. Nobody's going to pass judgment and nobody's going to tell
you you can't have sex anymore. Now under that law, I could have
gone to jail for thirty years. Yes, you would have been, and
you would have engaged in the process of preparing a child something under eighteen to
engage in sexual activity through overtly sexually themed communication. You talk to her about
sex, you're preparing her to have sex safely, but that they don't say
safely or anything like that. You would have been a felon right and that
that's as soon as I saw this law, I was like, this is
because this is the thing that they keep doing this this a lot of these
uh, these anti woke crusaders. They make these bills with language that is
so overly broad, like the Protection of Child Act that Florida legislator passed in
May twenty twenty three, you know, and it just the laws can't can't
be implemented. I'm having a hard time. Toy boat, toy boat,
toy boat. Okay, Now that law was eventually struck down because they they
make these laws with this overly broad language that you can't pin down exactly what
it is that they're supposed to actually be legislating about. You know, absolutely
right that. Yeah, that's something I was going to bring up when you
mentioned that, is the first bill would have been unconstitutional due to vagueness,
Like that's a that's a standard that the court says, you can't have a
law that's vague, you can't criminalize behavior and just be like we don't.
We're you're not allowed to do stuff that's yucky and that be a law because
that's too vague. Yeah, and it seems like it's almost like it like
a strategy, like you were saying, there's this big fan for we put
this bill in, We're gonna pet oh, we're gonna get loaded against it,
right, and then when the bill dies six months later because it's not
constitutional, there's there's no fan faar and nobody, you know. And then
then when it's judging the election I introduced that bill when it's time to elecd
it right, right, exactly, Helen. So I do want to point
out like the way that the like I'm going to do this little quota your
Vosky said, which this seems so fucking silly to me. All ages welcome
should be a crime in Florida for these types of events, and under five
year old free should be a felony. One of the best sponsors your Oscy
tweeted in twenty twenty two, referencing a drag performance. I've been saying this
publicly while campaigning over the past year. There there's nothing okay about any any
of this evil grooming and confusing of young kids hashag child abuse. Now I
got problems with these mofos because, like, like we were talking about under
the previous language of the lot that was very broad strokes. And this is
what happened with the book bands that happened in my was happened in Florida,
is that the language was so broad that any mention what might cause a parent
to make it like a stink eye about they because there's no way to tell
what's going to offend somebody, you know, like I might find, you
know, something very offensive where other another person may not. And I can
go to the school board and be like, hey, I don't like this,
this is making this is making me feel bad, please and I don't
want kids to read it. Please get rid of it, you know,
And the school's like because because that's that's the world we live in right now.
And you have to think about like, like imagine and if it's Halloween
and you dress up and drag as like you know, a character, like
I did it, like it come as your favorite queer person party, you
know. A couple of years ago, for Halloween and is that illegal because
they were miners present, Like like the way this was worded, like what's
the line? And I am glad that Like people are like, no,
we can't really do this, but my but I think it's rhetoric. It's
like we're going we're going to make a big stink of like you know,
you know, like liberals in you know, and like you know, the
radical laugh and blah blah blah. Okay, cool. I was the agenda,
the welcome to agenda, which is basically like, yeah, can we
just all treat people like human beings and let them have echol rights? That'd
be great, thank you. For some reason, they always make it about
children. But the thing is, though there's queer kids, you are I
knew I was queer when I was seven years old. It was confirmed when
I was fifteen, but I was seven. And also I would like to
point out that I gave my kids better as sex education the Florida school system.
My kids that told me that, like, you were much better at
teaching me about sex than the Florida school system, so you know, and
those are the like I think there has to be a combination of education and
home home safety and balance, like there has to be. There's always been
this tandem between the two, between schools and the state, and you know,
people's private you know, private wants and you know, desires, and
we've always under kind of understood this, but lately it's saying like, well,
if I find something icky, I'm going to make a think about it
and hopefully somebody makes a law. And and I know that this didn't pass,
you know, and we're just going to make things that were already bad
like, okay, yes, we all agree that, you know, people
shouldn't be weird around kids because it's gross. Don't do that, people,
But also you can say boys have penises, girls have vaginas and tell her,
you know, like we can have those conversation about sex, and then
we can talk about gender identity and all that sort of thing. But those
are normal conversations should we should be having with kids so they can understand.
They guess what, your generals don't make your personality who you are as a
person, same with your sexuality, same as being a person in the world.
So you know, I have any sweet summer time. I'm a sweet
little summer child. Sorry, sorry, I'm sorry, I'm a clear ass,
you know, uppity woman. Okay, there's a prong in the law
that we didn't talk about that covers what your question actually and it covers what
Eli was talking about about this being a law designed to criminalize people existing.
So one of the prongs was, again the first version of the bill,
a person who engages in the process of preparing the child to engage in sex
sexual activity through overtly sexually themed communication. That's one or in conduct observed by
the child. So did you engage in a process of preparing a child to
engage in sexual activity in conduct by using conduct that a child observed? So
that's where they're going after that generic thing. Oh, you went to a
drag joe. We're going to call that preparing or encouraging a child to engage
in sexual activity because you observed a drag joe. And that says more about
the GOP than it says about anything else, because they view a guy in
address as overtly sexual. I was just thinking that too. I mean that
that says something about them because they're looking at men and men in a dress
and getting turned down by it. Right right, I'm kind of like it's
like, hey, man, like whatever makes you happy, like it's okay,
like I'm not gonna dumb your now and again again very vague, unconstitutionally
vague, engaged in conduct like what conduct you didn't talk about that they do
later in the bill. But yeah, it's it's it's designed, as Eli
was saying, to criminalize people for existing. If a child observes you wearing
a dress or maybe even just who knows, wearing a tea shirt that says
gay people exist, is that conduct observed to a child that is encouraging them
to be sexual? They think it is. That's the problem. It isn't.
This is all very silly, by the way, Ali, do you
think this is silly, because please see Queen from Yarkowski that you read,
Helen. But it really just kind of gives away their intent behind it.
And in the article it even says like you don't need to hypothesize what this
bill is about. It's pretty clear based on who the supporters of it,
who the authors of it are, and like that that specific language you read
across exam and just the way these politicians are or these representative, Yeah,
representatives are are conducting themselves socially publicly, like on social media that makes it
extreme, namely clear what it is. And I think Kelly, I didn't
think of it before, but you mentioned that this is just so that the
next election term they can say, oh, well, you know, I
wrote this bill, I introduced this bill. What did my opponent do or
what did you know anybody else do to try to get rid of those you
know, get rid of wokeism. You know you don't care about the children,
which they don't. I really hate this. I'm just going to say
this right now. I'm stick and tired of political puponents using children as like
propping them up as for a win so they get votes. I think it's
very gross. I don't like it. Sorry, it was just a side
thing that drives me crazy. Go ahead, you well, I was going
to add. It's also to Eli's point, it can also be a poison
pill. They may not intend for it to pass, They just want to
put the bill up to so they can go in front of their voters and
say I introduced a bill that would stop this drag queen nonsense. And the
liberals voted against it or it passed, but the activist judges shot it down.
So we should hate the judges and we should hate the liberals when they
knew all along it was a ship bill. That's what they do. I
don't think they care whether it passes or not. It's just for image.
Yeah, yeah, you're right. It's just it's just a symbol to show
that, look, I'm anti woke, just like all you people think I
should be, which I'm not sure is a winning strategy to begin with anymore.
You know, it might have been for a brief moment of time,
but I don't think it is anymore. Yep.