The theater lights are about to dim at Prayer for the French Republic, a new Broadway play that tracks the journey of a Jewish family in Paris from World War II through the 2017 French presidential election and the country’s rise in antisemitism. My companion leans over and asks earnestly, “Why do the Jews get a country and no other religion?”
Playwright Joshua Harmon’s cast of characters debates the question for nearly three hours, as do we over post-show cocktails. I suggest, perhaps with a bit of earnest strain in my voice, that it might have something to do with millennia of persecution, from the biblical story of Exodus and the pogroms of the Russian Empire to a CNN poll indicating that a third of Europeans believe Jews use the Holocaust to advance their own positions or goals. But does that give the Jewish people a right to land also claimed sacred by Palestinians?
I was born and raised Jewish — jumping through the Bar Mitzvah and confirmation hoops and celebrating the High Holy Days with requisite challah and subsequent fasting. I visited Israel in 2015 for Tel Aviv Pride, thinking I’d feel an immediate kinship with my fellow Jews.
I didn’t.
While I fell in love with the city, pulsating with the youthful sun-kissed glow of tech millennials, I didn’t feel any more “Jewish.” Upon my return home, I resided myself to the fact that my Russian and Polish ancestral roots — pale skin, receding hairline, perpetually nervous stomach — was my lot in life, and my desire for a larger sense of community needed to be cultivated from within.
Tel Aviv Pride. Photo by Matthew Wexler
Though rarely asked before the horrific Hamas attack on October 7, 2023, and subsequent retaliation by Israeli forces that has left upward of 22,000 Palestinians dead, I would describe myself as Jewish but not Zionist. But it’s not that simple.
In a recent interview with the New York Times, Anti-Defamation League chief executive Jonathan Greenblatt said, “Zionism is fundamental to Judaism,” comparing it to the civil rights movement by suggesting that to be anti-Zionist but not antisemitic is the equivalent of saying, “I’m against the civil rights movement, but I’m also against racism.”
The article’s author, Charles M. Blow, further dismantles the argument, questioning, “There are several forms of Zionism, and people in these debates rarely seem to be explicit about which form they are for or against. Political Zionism? Cultural Zionism? Religious Zionism? Some combination of them? Does it matter?”
I ask myself the same questions regarding my gay identity. Am I politically queer? Culturally queer?
In a recent interview with LGBTQ Nation, out actor Danny Kornfeld told me, “One of the things I love about the Jewish religion is the encouragement to ask questions, to say, ‘Why is this?’”
Barry Manilow’s “Harmony” unearths the story of a musical group impacted by Hitler’s Germany. Marginalized communities see the terrifying connection.
So I’m asking why.
On International Holocaust Remembrance Day, I’m asking how this near extermination came to be. And January 29, the anniversary of the Bear River Massacre that left hundreds of Native Americans. And June 12, when Omar Mateen killed 49 people and injured more than 50 at Pulse Nightclub. And on September 11, when I watched the plumes of smoke and disintegrated souls hover above lower Manhattan from my apartment window.
Depending on the algorithms of one’s digital search history, the day’s social media feed may be flooded with Holocaust-related content, or scrolling might look like any other, filled with reels and TikToks and stitches and tweets and posts. Made-up words and content that often pretends to be rooted in reality.
As nearly eight decades drive a wedge between World War II’s end and modern-day atrocities, it becomes increasingly harder for me to put on a happy face. Jews weren’t the only ones sent to the gas chambers. Under Paragraph 175 of the German Penal Code, upwards of 15,000 gay men were deported to concentration camps, where many were subjected to medical experiments or castration and ultimately died.
Photos of arrested gay men under Paragraph 175 of Germany’s Penal Code circa World War II. Schwules Museum, Berlin. Photo by Matthew Wexler.
My identity on this particular day leaves me feeling vulnerable as I question what may become of us outliers in the years to come. But then I recall pot-stirring intellectual Susan Sontag, who wrote in 1964’s Notes on ‘Camp’: “Jews and homosexuals are the outstanding creative minorities in contemporary urban culture. Creative, that is, in the truest sense: they are creators of sensibilities. The two pioneering forces of modern sensibility are Jewish moral seriousness and homosexual aestheticism and irony.”
I could do worse than a modern sensibility and homosexual aesthetic. Yet a growing number of anti-LGBTQ+ laws threaten my very existence in “the land of the free and the home of the brave.” Happy? With a side of caution, yes, aware that we’re one small step away from history repeating itself.
It can be hard to follow what states are doing to attack (and sometimes protect) transgender people’s rights. Here are some stories from us and from around the web.
Ohio’s governor backs off his attempt to restrict gender-affirming care access for transgender adults and minors. (LGBTQ Nation)
West Virginia Republicans want to pass a “Women’s Bill of Rights” that contains no actual rights for women. Instead, the bill says that “equal” does not mean “same” or “identical” and bans trans people from using the correct bathroom. (AP)
A similar “Women’s Bill of Rights” bill made it out of committee in the Iowa legislature. (LGBTQ Nation)
Georgia Republicans introduced a “Women’s Bill of Rights” that would also end hate crimes protections for LGBTQ+ people in the state. (LGBTQ Nation)
Arizona Republicans have a bill to legally erase transgender people and ban trans women and girls from participating in school sports as their gender. (AZ Mirror)
Florida Democrats want the Biden administration to block the state’s new ban on transgender people correcting the gender markers on their ID. (LGBTQ Nation)
Virginia lawmakers voted to table all anti-transgender bills in their state, which included another “Women’s Bill of Rights,” a sports ban, and a bill to forcibly out transgender students to their parents. (Los Angeles Blade)
A transgender sports ban in Maryland was killed in committee. (Metro Weekly)
Tennessee Republican introduces a “detransitioner bill of rights.” (News Channel 9)
Assistant Secretary for Health Rachel Levine warned of “medical refugees” being forced to travel from their home states to other states to get access to gender-affirming and reproductive health care. (Politico)
Kansas’s attorney general is telling public schools to out transgender students to their parents. (LGBTQ Nation)
A Colorado Democrat proposed a law that would require teachers to use their students’ correct names and pronouns. (LGBTQ Nation)
A bill to ban the Pride flag from Oklahoma state premises passed a committee vote. (KJHR)
Indiana launched an anti-LGBTQ+ tip line to combat “political ideology” in schools. Online activists flooded it with memes. (LGBTQ Nation)
In partnership with Fabulosa Books, we welcome Sarah Schulman to our museum for a reading from Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP New York, 1987-1993. Schulman will be joined by Lito Sandoval, our former Board Chair and former Secretary of ACT UP San Francisco.
Amber Glenn has won the U.S. Figure Skating Championship, becoming the first openly LGBTQ+ woman to win.
Glenn — who identifies as bisexual and pansexual— has competed in the championship eight times prior, and won the silver medal in 2021 and the bronze medal in 2023.
Despite making mistakes on two major jumps in her free skate routine on 26 January, Glenn won with 210.46 points to silver medalist Josephine Lee’s 204.13 points and bronze medalist Isabeau Levito’s 200.68 points.
She’s competed in the competition eight times prior. (Matthew Stockman/Getty Images)
In an interview with NBC Sports, the victor said: “Being the first openly queer women’s champion is incredible. When I came out initially, I was terrified. I was scared it would affect my scores or something.
She continued: “It was worth it to see the amount of young people who felt more comfortable in their environments at the rink, [people] who feel, ‘Oh, I’m represented by her, and she’s one of the top skaters [so] I don’t have to try and hide the sight of me.’ Just because you have this aspect doesn’t mean you can’t be a top athlete.”
Glenn’s win marks the first openly LGBTQ+ woman athlete to reach the top spot at the competition, but there are other out queer U.S. figure skaters, including Adam Rippon, Eliot Halverson, Karina Manta, and Timothy LeDuc.
The figure skater won the championship a decade after winning the junior U.S. championship title in 2014, and navigating a few bumps in the road during her professional career.
At the start of this season, Glenn suffered from a severe concussion and was previously forced to withdraw from the 2022 Olympic trials after testing positive for Coronavirus.
“This wasn’t exactly how I wanted to win my first national title, but I’m extremely grateful for it,” she said during a press conference following the event. “It means so much to me, after everything I’ve been through in the last 10 years.”
Glenn proudly lifted the Progress Pride flag following her win and came out publicly in 2019. She said to Dallas Voice at the time: “The fear of not being accepted is a huge struggle for me.
“Being perceived as [going through] ‘just a phase’ or ‘[being] indecisive’ is a common thing for bisexual/pansexual women. I don’t want to shove my sexuality in people’s faces, but I also don’t want to hide who I am.”
Since he moved from Atlanta in 2012, Detroit native Kevin Heard has been devoted to one ambitious goal: creating opportunity for LGBTQ+ entrepreneurs to succeed in the challenging business environment of Motor City.
“I didn’t see or was aware of a professional LGBTQ community. I wanted to cultivate that,” Heard told The Detroit News. “I saw a need for organizations that have a fiscal responsibility, voice for and advocate for LGBT-owned businesses. I also felt as though it’s really important to possibly and intentionally curate an LGBT business district within the city of Detroit, like all major metropolitan areas across the nation have.”
She faces off against Trump’s hand-picked election-denier, MAGA Republican Matthew DePerno.
So Heard founded the Detroit LGBT Regional Chamber of Commerce, which has distributed thousands of dollars to up-and-coming small businesses and entrepreneurs to pay for leases, buy equipment, and scale their dreams. Recent contracts for members include a Ford Motor Co. agreement and a pending contract with the NFL Draft when it comes to Detroit in April.
One chamber member is coffee house Eastside Roasterz, a passion project from Tiffany and Riss Dezort, who moved from Washington, D.C., where the LGBTQ+ population is three times higher than in Detroit.
It was a culture shock.
“When it comes to building a business with all of that in mind, that’s really what we went to Kevin for. ‘Hey, would you have a better understanding of queerness and business crossover and how to navigate that here in Michigan?” Riss Dezort said.
The Dezorts have earned over $35,000 in business grants from Michigan organizations, but the biggest boost came from the LGBT Chamber, which provided a 12-week accelerator program and mentorship in navigating the business environment in Detroit.
Members of the LGBT Chamber include Corktown Health, La Feria + Cata Vino, Welcome Home Yoga and Wellness, and the Dezort’s Eastside Roasterz, which supplies coffee for BasBlue, Sister Pie, and Next Chapter Books. The coffee spot also offers wholesale coffee purchases online and operates pop-up shops.
Heard offered, “I’m looking at this as an opportunity to bring more great, innovative young people who would like to stay and live in the state of Michigan. To be inclusive of that, to know that this is a space that people can start their families regardless of sexual orientation, gender identity expression.”
“Discrimination is bad for business… we know this to be true,” out Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said recently at a town hall for the LGBT Chamber. “This is not wishful thinking… the more inclusive we are, the more we do to reach out to all communities, the better it is for business in our state.”
People want to live in a place “that will treat them equally and fairly, where they know that they won’t be discriminated against in all different areas of their life,” Nessel said.
But obstacles remain, Heard says.
“The barriers in which LGBT people get when it comes to businesses are the gatekeepers at traditional banks that are maybe homophobic, may have their unconscious biases in when looking at or actually meeting the candidate. They look great on paper, but they don’t like their lifestyle, and that has been honestly one of the biggest barriers.”
Part of the Chamber’s mission, Heard said, is showing LGBTQ+ people in spaces “other than just the typical bar-hopping, Pride parades.”
“We are in every industry, every level of an organization,” Heard said, “and we own more than bakery shops and bars.”
A landmark ruling by a Pennsylvania court could set crucial precedent for child custody decisions when LGBTQ+ couples separate or divorce.
Nicole Junior and Chanel Glover went through the entire IVF process together, splitting the massive costs to help Glover get pregnant, co-signing contracts, and establishing Junior as the intended co-parent, according to a report from the Philadelphia Inquirer. They had also been working on paperwork for Junior to obtain a second-parent adoption.
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But the couple experienced trouble in their marriage when Glover was about halfway through the pregnancy. Once Junior moved out, Glover declared she wanted to be a single mom and that Junior would not be allowed any contact with the baby.
The court, however, decided Glover had no right to make that decision.
Junior petitioned to be recognized as the baby’s parent, and the judge agreed that she deserved to be, as the couple had participated in the conception of the baby together.
Glover accused Junior of emotional abuse and volatile behavior, but Junior denied the accusations. The judge said accusations of abuse also do not have bearing on parental rights and could be discussed in a future custody hearing.
Glover appealed the judge’s decision just before the baby was born, and in August 2023, a panel of nine judges on the Pennsylvania Superior Court unanimously determined that Junior deserved full co-parental rights due to the couple’s “intent-based parentage.”
The decision declared, “The couple not only evidenced their mutual intent to conceive and raise the child, but they also participated jointly in the process of creating a new life.”
The decision is considered a victory by LGBTQ+ advocates, who praised the court for thinking beyond marriage and genetic connections for what makes someone a parent – especially as the number of LGBTQ+ people using assisted reproductive technologies continues to rise.
Helen Casale, a fellow of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, told the Inquirer the state now has precedent for judges to take into account the decisions and actions that lead to a child’s birth.
“How did they come to this determination to plan this family together?” Casale explained. “Did they go to doctors appointments? Did they make decisions related to the type of person who’s going to be the sperm donor?”
Attorney Mark A. Momjian described the suit as a “multigenerational legal battle to confirm civil rights in the LGBTQ community.”
Grover is now trying to get the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to take the case. According to Inquirer, she said someone contributing money to the IVF process is not enough to show intent, and if it were, her mom could claim parental rights as well.
“My mom was at the majority of my doctors appointments, majority of my son’s pediatrician appointments. My mom has done more,” Grover said.
But Junior has desperately been trying to be part of the child’s life. She has yet to meet her son or even see a photo of him since he was born.
Are transgender athletes allowed in the Olympics? With Paris 2024 soon approaching, many people have been asking that question.
Unfortunately, recent years have seen transgender athletes competing in sporting events face increasingly extreme restrictions.
While transgender athletes are technically allowed in the Olympics, they’re not exactly given a warm welcome given the increasingly demanding requirements placed on them.
Ahead of the Paris 2024 Olympic games, the topic of trans athletes’ participation is once again being raised. The forthcoming Olympic games are set to introduce further restrictions to previous editions.
Can trans athletes compete at the Olympics?
Taking place in Paris this July and August, the 2024 Olympics includes a new requirement that athletes must have completed their transition before the age of 12 to compete.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has suggested that transitioning after the age of 12 could give an advantage to athletes over their cisgender competitors.
There are examples of transgender athletes at the Olympics. At the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, New Zealand weightlifter Laurel Hubbard made history as the first openly trans athlete to compete at the Olympic Games.
Now, athletes like Hubbard who have previously represented their nation at the Olympics will not be eligible for the Paris 2024 Games.
Previously, the IOC had guidelines in place that allowed trans women athletes to compete if their testosterone levels were below 10 nanomoles per litre a year before competing.
Various further bans have also been enacted against trans athletes recently in a number of sporting groups.
Laurel Hubbard speaks to media after competing in the Tokyo Olympic Games (Laurence Griffiths/Getty)
Are there restrictions on trans people in professional sports?
Last March, the governing body of athletics (World Athletics Council) banned women from competing in elite female competitions if they have gone through male puberty.
At the time, World Athletics president Sebastian Coe said the tightening restrictions to exclude transgender women was due to the “overarching need to protect the female category.”
The decision was enacted on 31 March, Transgender Day of Visibility.
Unfortunately, similar attitudes were then adopted by World Aquatics in its ‘Gender Inclusion Policy’.
The governing body voted to bar trans women from competing in women’s swimming events if they had gone through any part of puberty.
Swimmer Lia Thomas has now filed a legal dispute against World Aquatics’ anti-trans policies, citing a number of decisions from the governing body disqualifying most trans women and intersex athletes from international events.
The International Cycling Union (UCI) has also introduced bans on trans women participating if they have reached puberty before transitioning.
Such restrictions are introduced with the attempted justification of ‘safeguarding’ women’s sport. These trans bans have reached every corner of the sporting world: professional golfer Hailey Davidson was pushed into testosterone testing to verify her eligibility after she won a women’s pro tournament in Florida.
A pizza restaurant in upstate New York has agreed to pay a transgender former employee $25,000 and take other steps to settle a lawsuit brought by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that alleged the worker was subjected to invasive personal questions and told he wasn’t “a real man.”
Quinn Gambino, a trans man, was a cook at T.C. Wheelers Bar & Pizzeria in Tonawanda, which is near Buffalo. Beginning in January 2021, according to the suit, the owners repeatedly asked questions about his genitalia and transition procedures, such as “Does she have female parts?” They “also intentionally misgendered Gambino by using female pronouns (such as ‘she’ or ‘her’) and stood by as employees and customers did the same,” says an EEOC press release.
Managers and coworkers further told Gambino he wasn’t “a real man” or “a real guy” and even likened being trans to pedophilia, according to the EEOC. Gambino reported the harassment to management, but it continued, so he resigned after four months. The EEOC, a federal agency, filed the suit last March in U.S. District Court for the Western District of New York after an initial attempt to reach a settlement failed.
Under the settlement reached last week, T.C. Wheelers, which has denied any wrongdoing, will pay Gambino $25,000 in back wages and compensatory damages. The restaurant also agreed to take steps to prevent discrimination and harassment, such as requiring all owners, managers, and employees to undergo training on federal antidiscrimination laws, and it has hired an independent human resources monitor to investigate all employee complaints. The monitor will provide annual reports to the EEOC, which will look at the company’s business records when needed to ensure compliance.
“We appreciate T.C. Wheelers’ agreement to settle this lawsuit and make proactive changes, and we are proud to have obtained an effective resolution that compensates Gambino for what he endured and helps ensure that other transgender employees will be treated fairly in the future,” Jeffrey Burstein, regional attorney for the EEOC’s New York District Office, said in the press release.
“The EEOC considers protecting members of the LGBTQIA+ community to be an important enforcement priority,” added EEOC New York District Director Yaw Gyebi Jr. “We will continue to assure that transgender employees receive the full benefit of federal antidiscrimination laws in all industries.”
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 bans sex discrimination in employment. In 2020, the Supreme Court ruled in Bostock v. Clayton County that sex discrimination includes discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity.
Former Las Vegas Raiders star Carl Nassib made history during Pride month in 2021 when he came out as gay.
“I actually hope that, one day, videos like this and the whole coming-out process are just not necessary,” he said in a post on Instagram. “But until then, I’m going to do my best, and my part, to cultivate a culture that’s accepting, that’s compassionate.”
Having also played for the Cleveland Browns and Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Nassib announced his retirement from the NFL last September.
Many people believe that Nassib was the first player to come out, but that’s far from the case. Sure, he was the first to come out while on the sport’s regular season roster, but the title of “first” actually goes to Dave Kopay, who revealed his gay identity 26 years earlier, three years after retiring.
What’s more, in 1969 Kopay was on the same team as two other gay NFL football players, training under the legendary (and open-minded) Washington coach Vince Lombardi. He also played for the San Francisco 49ers, Detroit Lions, New Orleans Saints and the Green Bay Packers.
To date, there have only ever been 16 out gay or bisexual NFL players – hardly any, in the grand scheme of things, especially when you think about the huge number of footballers who have donned a uniform since the NFL was founded in 1920.
There are undoubtedly more players who never came out, but sadly that means their stories are lost in the mists of time.
Thankfully, we do know the incredible, powerful and heart-wrenching stories of three players. Two lost their lives during the Aids crisis, but all of them were truly talented.
These are the stories of running back Dave Kopay, who played between 1964 and 1972, Jerry Smith (1965-77), a tight end with Washington, and Ray McDonald (1967-68), a running back, also for Washington.
Dave Kopay
Dave Kopay was the first professional team sport athlete ever to declare his homosexuality. He made the announcement in 1975, three years after his retirement, following a nine-year NFL career.
He played for five teams during his career: San Francisco, Detroit, Washington, New Orleans and Green Bay. After he came out, he tried to get into coaching, but he claims that NFL and colleges expressed no interest after his sexuality became public knowledge.
Dave Kopay, pictured in 1977 (Getty)
Kopay spent a lot of his younger years denying his sexuality. He joined the Theta Chi fraternity when he arrived at the University of Washington, and it was at the there that he says met the man he now calls the great love of his life. But he was still very much in the closet, and trying to deny who he really was. After all, this was the early 1960s, when declaring he was gay would have essentially ruined his prospects.
Describing that time to the University of Washington Magazine, he said: I was never thinking I was a gay man because I just wasn’t like ‘one of them’. Just talking about it like that almost reinforces the utter bullsh*t that society uses to identify gay folks.
“I didn’t have the knowledge or strength to take it on then, and even after I did take it on, there were many, many times that it almost consumed me and took me into deep depression.”
Letters from fans helped him to find the strength to carry on, the former running back explained.
Kopay is alive and well. He became a Gay Games ambassador, and was a featured announcer in the opening ceremony for Gay Games VII, in Chicago in July 2006.
Jerry Smith
In 1986 Kopay revealed, in his autobiography, a brief affair with fellow NFL star Jerry Smith, who played for Washington (then the Redskins, but now called the Commanders) from 1965 to 1977, playing in a losing Super Bowl team in 1973 – although he didn’t name Smith at the time.
Tight end Smith kept his sexuality very private, focusing on his career. After officially retiring at the end of the 1978 season, he quietly came out as gay to a few family members. He moved to Austin, Texas, where he co-owned a gay bar called The Boathouse.
Jerry Smith kept his sexuality private even after revealing he had Aids. (Getty)
In 1986, Smith revealed that he had contracted AIDS, hoping to bring awareness about the disease and de-stigmatise it – a brave move as, at the time, the prevailing belief was that it was an illness that only affected “drug addicts and hairdressers” as Jim Graham, director of the Whitman-Walker Clinic, put it in an interview with the Washington Post in 1986.
Smith’s teammates all visited him as he lay in a Maryland hospital. He died, aged 43, on October 15, 1986, of an AIDS-related illness, a year after being diagnosed with HIV. Twenty-three players from Washington’s 1973 Super Bowl team reunited for the funeral, with several, including Sonny Jurgensen, Charley Taylor and Bobby Mitchell, serving as pallbearers.
“I don’t know how many of the players even knew he was gay, but I’ll tell you one thing: if they had known, they wouldn’t have cared,” Jurgensen has said.
Ray McDonald
As it turns out, Washington had not one, not two, but three gay men on the roster in 1969. The third was Ray McDonald, who had studied at the University of Idaho.
Questions about McDonald’s sexuality are believed to have started late in his college career, with rumours spreading that he was seeing a man at Washington State University, about 10 minutes from Idaho’s campus.
He went on to be drafted by Washington and during the rookie talent show at a training camp in 1967, McDonald delighted some with his singing skills, while others, it’s said, raised their eyebrows.
Ray McDonald played for Washington for two seasons and once delighted teammates with his singing voice. (University of Idaho)
At the time, Washington was coached by the now-legendary Vince Lombardi, who was no stranger to the LGBTQ+ community: his brother was gay, and many former players say he knew some of his team were gay. Not only did he not have a problem with it, but he also went out of his way to make sure no one else would make it a problem.
“Lombardi wanted to give him every benefit of the doubt and every chance and said if he found out that any coach was challenging McDonald’s manhood, they [would] be fired immediately.”
Former running back A.D. Whitfield, who played for Washington between 1966 and 1969, agreed that McDonald’s sexuality was something of an open secret.
“People more or less knew he was gay,” he said. “In the first year, there were all kinds of stories about incidents around town.”
One of the biggest incidents was when McDonald was reportedly arrested for having sex with another man in public.
It’s tragic that none of these great athletes felt they could come out during their career, but their legacy lives on through players like Carl Nassib.
LGBTQ+ advocates slammed Florida higher education officials for eliminating Sociology courses and any diversity programs on campuses.
The Florida Board of Governors, which oversees the state’s university system, made the decision in implementing higher education reforms championed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis.
“It should be no surprise that today the Florida Board of Governors, a rubber stamp for Ron DeSantis’s agenda of censorship and surveillance, approved unprecedented rules that effectively abolish diversity and inclusion programs in our State University System intended to support LGBTQ and minority students,” said Carlos Guillermo Smith, Equality Florida’s Senior Policy Advisor.
“The Board’s rules go well beyond its authority granted by the Legislature and instead impose broad censorship on a vast array of campus activities and speech and seriously threaten student and faculty participation in public life across the political, social, and religious spectrum. The shockingly broad and vague language will inevitably lead to self-censorship and a chilling effect that will end academic freedom as we know it on university campuses.”
The university action took place just over a week after the Florida Board of Education voted to permanently ban any diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives in Florida’s public colleges as well.
“Higher education must return to its essential foundations of academic integrity and the pursuit of knowledge instead of being corrupted by destructive ideologies,” said Florida Education Commissioner Manny Diaz, Jr. “These actions today ensure that we will not spend taxpayers’ money supporting DEI and radical indoctrination that promotes division in our society.”
Smith said the actions taken to stop any recognition, much less promotion, of equality on Florida campuses marked an appalling blow to education in the state.
“The sweeping away of academic freedom combined with the elimination of sociology as a core course option, a reckless and unresearched decision made with little review of potential impacts, has diminished the prestige and reputation of Florida’s public universities,” he said. “The Board of Governors had the opportunity to hit the brakes, but instead, shamefully followed their censorship agenda off a cliff in service to DeSantis’s failed political ambitions.”
DeSantis embraced anti-LGBTQ policy in the build-up to a run for president, one he suspended earlier this month after a distant second-place finish to former President Donald Trump in Iowa, the first state to hold a presidential contest this year.
