How Florida became ground zero for U.S. culture wars

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Alyssa MacKenzie can rhyme off a litany of bigoted attacks that have hit Orlando, Florida’s LGBTQ community over the last two years.

There were the men who disrupted a rally for transgender health care outside of city hall, shouting abuse at the protesters and holding signs labelling them “pedophiles” and “groomers.” There were the threats from hate groups that forced the cancellation of a local drag queen story hour. And there was the time someone put white supremacist stickers on the side of an LGBTQ community centre.

“It makes you feel not only dejected but unsafe,” said Ms. MacKenzie, 42, a trans rights activist. “I don’t have a good way to describe how dehumanizing that feels.”

She ties these actions to the culture war launched by her state’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis. His Parental Rights in Education legislation – better known as the “Don’t Say Gay” law – curbs discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity in schools. Another law, Stop WOKE, restricts anti-racism teachings in classrooms, universities, and corporate trainings. In his rhetoric, Mr. DeSantis rails against gender-affirming health care in graphic terms.

Such moves have put Mr. DeSantis at the forefront of national Republican politics, setting up a possible 2024 presidential bid. And they have spread like wildfire ahead of the Nov. 8 midterm elections, with candidates across the U.S. promising to copy Florida’s policies.

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To Ms. MacKenzie, it all feels like a regression in the fight for equal rights. “It seems like anybody who may be vulnerable to attacks, or maybe needs a little bit of help, are the ones they are going after,” she said.

In Michigan, Republican gubernatorial nominee Tudor Dixon has made banning talk of transgender issues and critical race theory in schools central to her platform, even as she has downplayed her opposition to abortion – signalling a pivot in her party’s approach to wedge-issue campaigning.

“We’re not going to let our kids be radicalized, we’re not going to let our kids be sexualized,” she declared at a rally earlier this month. Added Matthew DePerno, who is running for attorney-general: “Do you think we need drag queens in every classroom? No, people.”

This messaging is ubiquitous among Republicans on the campaign trail.

The party’s candidate for Pennsylvania Governor, Doug Mastriano, accuses teachers of “indoctrinating our children.” Incumbent Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson blamed the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas on “wokeness” taught in the classroom. In Arizona, gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake tweeted: “A child’s gender is determined by God at conception, NOT by some Woke Teacher in the 3rd grade.”

There is no evidence American children are routinely taught critical race theory, a university-level framework for examining structural racism, much less being regularly entertained by drag queens. But this talk has struck a chord.

“The issues around the gay rights have gone too far left. It’s getting into the schools on a lower and lower level. And the business with language and trying to change the words that we use to describe gender,” said Susan Carson, a 73-year-old retiree, as she cast her ballot in an Atlanta suburb during early voting this week.

Ms. Carson said she used to vote for candidates of both political parties before “cancel culture” pushed her away from the Democrats. “It goes immediately into personal attacks: everything is racist or transphobic,” she said.

Chatting with a friend at a Detroit-area mall, Angela Bahu said she was pro-choice and planned to vote for an amendment to the Michigan state constitution enshrining the right to an abortion. But she was opposed to gender identity discussion in schools. “I’m offended by it,” said Ms. Bahu, a 48-year-old retail manager. “You’re either ‘a’ or ‘b’, you’re not ‘c’ or ‘d’.”

To those on the other side of the political divide, however, it’s nothing but far-right dog whistles.

“Critical race theory is just a made-up excuse. They don’t want to teach people the real history of the United States. Our history is racked with pain and racism and anti-Semitism and they don’t want to teach it,” said Diane Bolton, 65, a retired communications manager in Novi, Mich., as she waited for a takeout order.

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In Florida, meanwhile, Mr. DeSantis is doubling down. On the campaign trail, he refers to support for trans rights as a “woke mind virus.” And in a debate this week, he said critical race theory was designed to “teach our kids to hate our country.”

Anh Volmer, a mother of two, said her social circle has already started to see the effects of Mr. DeSantis’s policies on Orlando’s school system.

In one case, she said, a teacher got in trouble with her school for having a non-fiction book about sexual orientation in her classroom and ended up quitting her job. In another, her friend’s son asked about transgender people and his teacher felt unable to answer for fear of reprisals.

“The more educated children are, the better prepared they are for life. If you shield them, they will not know how to handle relationships in the future,” said Ms. Volmer, a 42-year-old data analyst for a political marketing firm.

With Mr. DeSantis holding a sizable lead in polls, his laws’ opponents are turning to the court system. Some provisions of Stop WOKE are currently blocked by a judge.

Jerry Edwards, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union handling one of the legal challenges, said the law both stifles free expression and damages students’ education by withholding factual information.

“Even setting aside the free speech aspect – dissent is patriotic, being able to say things the government may not agree with – it feels like gaslighting to tell students, ‘We have a colour-blind society, police are always fair,’ when your own experience tells you that’s empirically untrue,” he said.

Joe Saunders, political director with human rights group Equality Florida, contended that Mr. DeSantis’s sudden commitment to culture war was nothing more than a flagrant attempt to build a national base for a presidential run. In the preoccupation with accusing LGBTQ people of pedophilia, he also sees a nod to the QAnon conspiracy theory, which holds that former president Donald Trump’s opponents are secretly part of a Satanic child-trafficking ring.

“His bare-knuckle, raw calculus of what it takes to win Republican primary voters has been brutal, relentless, offensive attacks on the LGBTQ community. It’s been punching down on the Black community,” said Mr. Saunders, 39, a former legislator who was one of the first two openly gay members of the state legislature. “We’re all just held hostage by that ambition right now.”

Beyond the policies themselves, he said, the political climate has emboldened conservative activists to pressure schools away from any attempts at equity. In Miami, for instance, the school board last year overwhelmingly approved a motion to recognize LGBTQ history month. This year, however, the same board rejected it in the face of a concerted campaign.

Still, he held out hope: such reactionary politics almost always come in the face of social change that is starting to work.

“I’m not surprised that there is backlash to progress that this community has made,” he said. “I think any student of history and civil rights of the United States knows that progress rarely comes in a straight line.”