Outrage as Florida Republicans pass ‘fascist’ bill to remove trans kids from parents’ custody

Authored by independent.co.uk and submitted by Ardielley
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Republican lawmakers in Florida have sparked outrage after passing a bill that LGBTQ advocates say will strip trans children from their parents' custody.

SB254 — which one former lawmaker has called "fascist" legislation — would allow the state to rip children from their parents when they are "at risk" or "subjected" to gender-affirming health care. The bill is written so that even a child of Floridian parents living out of state could trigger the law.

“I can’t believe I’m writing this,” Carlos Guillermo Smith, a former House lawmaker, and the state’s first Latino LGTBQ representative, wrote on Twitter last month. “This is fascist.”

Kara Gross, the legislative director and senior policy counsel of the ACLU in Florida, called the state's assault on trans existence "shameful."

“It is shameful that our Florida Legislature continues to pass dangerous bills designed to silence, harm, and erase trans people in Florida," she said in a statement. "These bills directly threaten transgender Floridians’ fundamental human rights and safety. The Florida Legislature’s insistence on targeting trans people is bizarre, unnecessary, unconstitutional, and extremely dangerous."

She said bills like Florida's make it "impossible for transgender people to go about their daily lives like everyone else," and that it invites abuse and hostility from the public.

"This is state sanctioned discrimination against Florida's vibrant trans community," she said.

The Florida legislature approved three bills on Wednesday that aim to eliminate any expression of non-cis, non-hetero expression from public life.

HB1521 is the state's restroom bill, which prohibits businesses from utilising gender-inclusive bathrooms.

SB1438 empowers the state to take punitive measures against businesses that host LGBTQ friendly shows or drag performances. It also gives the state the power to prohibit minors from attending events it deems "inappropriate." Minors will be barred from events even if their parents consent, a policy that flies in the face of Governor Ron DeSantis’ educational agenda that favors parental consent to an extreme degree.

If SB1438 is made law, it would also likely mean the end of most Pride parades.

Alejandra Caraballo, a former staff attorney at the Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund, noted on Twitter today that Treasure Coast Pridefest has already cancelled its parade for this year.

She previously condemned HB254 as a Florida-approved pass for kidnapping trans children.

“This is a greenlight to transphobic family members to engage in state sponsored kidnapping,” she wrote.

The bills were approved shortly after the state renewed its controversial "Don't Say Gay" law, which prohibits teachers touching on sexual or gender identity issues while teaching young children.

digiorno on April 21st, 2023 at 15:31 UTC »

Just remember the Nazis made it legal to do terrible things. And then they used the laws they wrote as cover when they did those terrible things. Their cries that they were just enforcing the law didn’t hold up in court but that mattered little to the people that they had already killed.

The GOP is taking many of the same steps that the Nazis did to start genocide and enact a coup. And they are using our legal system against us because most people believe a law is only passed if the majority of people support it. And then they feel as if they have no position questioning a law if it seems unjust.

How many times have we heard, “if people want abortion to be legal then they’ll legalize it in their states”, only to watch the GOP do everything they can to make sure minority opinions dictate the laws that are made? Same goes with countless other topics. They pass laws pretending it is popular legislation when it is anything but and then it takes forever to remove the laws and often they don’t get struck down at all.

Again, the GOP is using our legal system against us. They are going to make it legal to commit genocide against minority groups and they will attempt to convince voters it is okay because it is legal. Don’t let them win that war of public opinion, have those tough talks with your conservative relatives and friends.

PhutuqKusi on April 21st, 2023 at 15:23 UTC »

So, in Florida, women are now forced to have children, who may later be taken from them if the State doesn't like that their parents support them. Yeah, those quotation marks around "fascist" can be deleted.

Frankenmuppet on April 21st, 2023 at 15:11 UTC »

Reminds me of when we were kidnapping aboriginal children from their parents against their will and putting them in Government and church run Residential Schools where they were then neglected, abused and ultimately left in unmarked mass graves to be forgotten.