Florida’s ‘Don’t Say Gay’ law has no business coming to Ohio

When a professional football game isn’t going your way, you can simply turn off the TV and stop watching. Unfortunately, our tendency to treat politics like sports results in people attempting exactly that – they simply stop watching. 

But the targets of hateful legislation can’t switch the TV off – it’s not just a game. The outcome isn’t competing numbers on a board and gloating rights: It results in sweeping devastation for our neighbors, our families, and our friends. These consequences will not disappear if we look away. 

After three years of relentless attacks, Ohioans can’t ignore this ugly obsession with harming marginalized communities for political gain.

This is not simply a matter of differences of opinion between reasonable people. On the side of attacking and dehumanizing transgender people, removing access to lifesaving medical care, and sparking violence against marginalized LGBTQ+ people are self-described Christian nationalists, estranged parents, fringe medical associations, and hate groups. Generally, the same people arguing that vaccines make you magnetic and that abortion providers should be jailed are the same people fighting to ban gender-affirming care and eradicate trans people from schools and public life.

On the side of believing trans people deserve to live healthy, joyful, and safe lives, on the other hand, you have every single major medical association, parents with fantastic, healthy relationships with their children into adulthood, actual transgender people, practitioners who provide care to transgender patients, and licensed mental health professionals.

This is not a close call. Transgender students deserve safety and respect just like other students and already face incredible challenges. Many transgender people already face barriers to accessing public restrooms, with 32% reducing food and drink intake to avoid having to use the bathroom in a public place. 

In states that passed laws discriminating against LGBTQ+ students, hate crimes against them in schools quadrupled. Transgender individuals already face a heightened risk of sexual violence, with transgender college students experiencing sexual assault at practically the same rate as cisgender women. Legislation like this perpetuates harm to transgender youth and negatively impacts their mental health. 

This session, Ohio legislators have spent a whole lot of time and attention specifically targeting LGBTQ+ kids in dozens of pieces of legislation. In 2023, the Ohio legislature passed fewer than 15 total bills on all topics. Yet, in the same year, they held 25 hearings on anti-LGBTQ+ bills. Their priorities are clear – and those priorities don’t do anything to help Ohioans.

In the first quarter of 2024, we’ve seen Ohio’s legislature focus on armchair-diagnosing other people’s kids with mental illness. Then, “protecting” those same kids by taking away medication that is improving their mental health, kicking them out of school activities, and banishing them from school bathrooms. Underpinning this entire onslaught is an assertion that transgender and gay people aren’t real, or ought not to be.

House Bill 8, Ohio’s version of Florida’s ‘Don’t Say Gay’ which could get sent to the governor’s desk as soon as this week, for example, would ban teachers from discussing “sexuality concepts” or “gender ideology” which is right-wing speak for transgender and gay people. Ohio’s bill goes even further than its Floridian twin by mandating students be reported to their parents if any school administrator perceives that a student may be questioning their gender, even in cases where the student is at risk of being abused.

If passed, House Bill 8 would add all school personnel — from teachers to janitors to district administrators — to the list of folks potentially subject to new legal ramifications. Not only is the legislature stripping individuals of their liberties; they are simultaneously broadening the scope of whom and what the government can arbitrarily surveil and punish.

This raises the question: Do we want Ohio to become the next Florida, a state at the forefront of some of the most partisan, harmful, divisive, and disgusting political ploys in our country?

We don’t have to agree on everything. But when we disagree, we need laws that allow us to live without government encroachment. Yet the Ohio legislature is persistent in its efforts to interfere in the personal lives and liberties of Ohioans through a barrage of anti-trans and anti-LGBTQ+ bills. These efforts are nothing short of big government in its worst form. 

No more sitting on the sidelines or changing the channel when we see Ohio’s leaders pushing hateful legislation. If you haven’t been speaking up for LGBTQ+ youth in Ohio yet, it’s time to suit up and get on the field.