The last two weeks were momentous for transgender advocates and their critics. On Monday, Florida governor Ron DeSantis defied Disney, the state’s largest employer, and a slew of other corporations by signing the Parental Rights in Education Act—egregiously mischaracterized as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill—into law. The bill, which mandates that discussion of sexual matters in the classroom be “age appropriate” and requires that parents be involved in medical decisions regarding their children, is, as some critics have charged, vaguely worded, and vague language can indeed be an invitation for regulatory trouble. But it is trans activists who have spent the past decade inflating the meaning of ordinary words like “safety” and “inclusion” to encompass radical and highly controversial ideas and policies. On the whole, given what is happening in our nation’s schools, especially at the K-3 level, the Florida law is eminently reasonable—so much so, in fact, that activists have had to mislead the public into thinking that the law is primarily about homosexuality.
