Skip to content Skip to search

Republish This Story

* Please read before republishing *

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free under an Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives Creative Commons license as long as you follow our republishing guidelines, which require that you credit The 19th and retain our pixel. See our full guidelines for more information.

To republish, simply copy the HTML at right, which includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to The 19th. Have questions? Please email partnerships@19thnews.org.

— The Editors

Loading...

Modal Gallery

/
Sign up for our newsletter

Menu

Topics

  • Abortion
  • Election 2024
  • Education
  • LGBTQ+
  • Caregiving
  • Environment & Climate
  • Business & Economy
View all topics

The 19th News(letter)

News that represents you, in your inbox every weekday.

You have been subscribed!

Please complete the following CAPTCHA to be confirmed. If you have any difficulty, contact community@19thnews.org for help.

Submitting...

Uh-oh! Something went wrong. Please email community@19thnews.org to subscribe.

This email address might not be capable of receiving emails (according to Bouncer). You should try again with a different email address. If you have any questions, contact us at community@19thnews.org.

  • Latest Stories
  • Our Mission
  • Our Team
  • Ways to Give
  • Search
  • Contact
Donate
Home

We’re an independent, nonprofit newsroom reporting on gender, politics and policy. Read our story.

Topics

  • Abortion
  • Election 2024
  • Education
  • LGBTQ+
  • Caregiving
  • Environment & Climate
  • Business & Economy
View all topics

The 19th News(letter)

News that represents you, in your inbox every weekday.

You have been subscribed!

Please complete the following CAPTCHA to be confirmed. If you have any difficulty, contact community@19thnews.org for help.

Submitting...

Uh-oh! Something went wrong. Please email community@19thnews.org to subscribe.

This email address might not be capable of receiving emails (according to Bouncer). You should try again with a different email address. If you have any questions, contact us at community@19thnews.org.

  • Latest Stories
  • Our Mission
  • Our Team
  • Ways to Give
  • Search
  • Contact

We’re an independent, nonprofit newsroom reporting on gender, politics and policy. Read our story.

The 19th News(letter)

News that represents you, in your inbox every weekday.

You have been subscribed!

Please complete the following CAPTCHA to be confirmed. If you have any difficulty, contact community@19thnews.org for help.

Submitting...

Uh-oh! Something went wrong. Please email community@19thnews.org to subscribe.

This email address might not be capable of receiving emails (according to Bouncer). You should try again with a different email address. If you have any questions, contact us at community@19thnews.org.

Become a member

The 19th thanks our sponsors. Become one.

Caregiving

More than half of queer Florida parents have considered fleeing the state in the wake of ‘Don’t Say Gay,’ study finds

Of the respondents, 17 percent have already taken steps to leave Florida, and 11 percent have considered transferring their children to other schools. 

Demonstrators wave pride flags as they march across a bridge in protest of Florida's "Don't Say Gay" bill in St. Petersburg, Florida.
Demonstrators wave pride flags and march in protest of Florida's "Don't Say Gay" bill in St. Petersburg, Florida in March 2022. (Martha Asencio-Rhine/Tampa Bay Times/AP)

By

Orion Rummler, Sara Luterman, Kate Sosin

Published

2023-02-09 14:00
2:00
February 9, 2023
pm

Republish this story

Share

  • Bluesky
  • Facebook
  • Email

Republish this story

Your trusted source for contextualizing the news. Sign up for our daily newsletter.

One in five parents went back in the closet in some capacity — including some who no longer hold their partner’s hand in public. More than half considered leaving Florida. Nearly nine out of 10 parents said they worried the bill would make their kids less safe. 

Those numbers are the stark findings from a study on the effects of Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law just released by the Williams Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law. Unlike much of the reporting around the Parental Rights in Education Act, which went into effect last July, the study focuses solely on LGBTQ+ parents in the state. 

The 19th thanks our sponsors. Become one.

Professor Abbie Goldberg of Clark University, who authored the report, said she was moved to conduct the study because so much attention has been paid to queer youth and teachers. 

“If you’re 7, you may not know that you are gay, for example, or may not be thinking about your identity in that way,” she said. “But you certainly know that you have two moms, or you have gay moms.”

“Don’t Say Gay” laws date back decades, but have drawn special attention over the last year as 20 states have expressed renewed interest in passing them. The bills are often dubbed as parental rights measures. Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida argues that his state’s law allows parents to regulate what kind of material is appropriate for their children. 

Some LGBTQ+ advocates have countered that the law renders queer youth invisible. Goldberg said her research, gathered from June to September last year, found that it erased LGBTQ+ families altogether. 

  • More from The 19th
    LGBTQ+ rights supporters protest against Florida Governor Ron DeSantis outside a
  • Canceled high school play raises concerns over ripple effects of Florida’s ‘Don’t Say Gay’ law
  • Changes to AP African American Studies course set a ‘scary precedent,’ advocates say
  • ‘I realized that I don’t want to die’: LGBTQ+ people share stories of hope after suicidal ideation

“From a parent’s perspective, it may not even seem like a huge deal when we’re talking about very young children [and sexual orientation and gender],” she said. “But when you’re a parent, and your kid is 3 and they know that they have two moms, there’s no real trapdoor there to say it doesn’t matter.”

Janelle Perez, her wife and their two daughters live in Miami-Dade County. Her older daughter is 5 and attends an Episcopalian school that Perez describes as “very welcoming” to LGBTQ+ families like hers. Because the school is private, it isn’t bound by the new laws.

“It’s very much an active conversation instead of the state being like, ‘You have to do this’,” she told The 19th. 

According to Perez, the biggest change since the passage of the Parental Rights in Education Act is the behavior of other parents. 

“One parent was a little bit upset that our kids drew a rainbow in their calendars. It was for one of the months in spring. I don’t even think it was June. I don’t know if that would have happened before. That’s just where the rhetoric is in Florida. To kids, it’s just a rainbow,” she said.

Todd Delmay, his husband and their son live in Hollywood, Florida. Delmay owns a travel agency and recently became the executive director of the Southern Most HIV/AIDS Ride, the second- largest HIV/AIDS cycling fundraiser in the United States.

Delmay’s son attends public school. Books have been quietly removed from the school shelves, including “Red: A Crayon’s Story.” In the story, a blue crayon is mislabeled as red and struggles to draw red items like strawberries. 

“The law is so vague. They’re erring on the side of caution. But in doing so, they are going to an extreme,” Delmay told The 19th. 

Cindy Nobles, president of the PFLAG chapter in Jacksonville, knows queer parents in Florida — in Duval and Clay counties — that are wary of going to parent-teacher conferences together, or even worry over how they should handle joining their children on field trips. Those parents flock to the PFLAG Jacksonville Facebook account to swap stories and seek those who understand what they’re going through. PFLAG National, which advocates for LGBTQ+ families and allied parents, has chapters across the country.

“We have same-sex couples who are afraid that they can't go together to parent- teacher conferences,” Nobles said. “If your kid has an issue at school, do you both go talk to the counselor? It’s little things like that that are going to be big things down the road.” 

What she means by little things becoming big things: Nobles’ son, who’s turning 19 this year, told her in fifth grade that he didn’t want to go back to school because he was being bullied for being gay. 

“He said he was having suicidal thoughts. We brought him home. And at the end of those two years of basically virtual homeschool, now he's socially isolated and wondering what he did wrong to make this happen to him,” Nobles said. A choice like that, made by a parent to protect their child from being discriminated against because of their LGBTQ+ identity, can mushroom into unseen consequences, she said. 

“We went through that and this law wasn't even in effect yet. So the kids that are going through school now, how are they going to be feeling? Their families are under attack, they are under attack by the head of the state.” 

Jen Cousins, plaintiff in a lawsuit against the state’s “Don’t Say Gay” legislation, is familiar with the cycles of anger, disbelief, worry and horror that such legislation and other efforts against LGBTQ+ youth in Florida have caused her — so she can only imagine how much more difficult those feelings are for LGBTQ+ parents, including some of her own friends.

“It’s even harder for them because of their identities,” said Cousins, who worries about the future of her children’s lives in Florida — especially her nonbinary teenager Saffy, and her 9-year-old gay son Milo. She’s watched the toll that fighting for basic rights has taken on her friends — and she learned that her own shock at the state’s legislative efforts targeting LGBTQ+ youth did not come as a shock to her queer parent friends like it did for her. 

Sign up for more news and context delivered to your inbox, daily

You have been subscribed!

Please complete the following CAPTCHA to be confirmed. If you have any difficulty, contact community@19thnews.org for help.

Submitting...

Uh-oh! Something went wrong. Please email community@19thnews.org to subscribe.

This email address might not be capable of receiving emails (according to Bouncer). You should try again with a different email address. If you have any questions, contact us at community@19thnews.org.

Even as more parents have had to decide whether to uproot their families, they’ve continued to join protests against anti-LGBTQ+ legislation in Florida. More than one-fifth — 22 percent — of LGBTQ+ parents surveyed by the Williams Institute last year had joined a protest against the “Don’t Say Gay'' bill, and a few said that they had become intentionally more out in response to the legislation, stressing the need to “resist” by hanging up flags at home or putting stickers on their car. Recent protests have focused on policies beyond Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law — particularly on the state’s board of medicine moving to restrict gender-affirming care for transgender youth. 

Delmay says that some of his friends are considering relocating their families to more LGBTQ+ friendly states. But for him and his family, moving is out of the question. 

“This is our home. Why would we leave here? I think that’s just preposterous,” Delmay said. 

Perez also has no intention of moving. “My parents fled Cuba to be free. Now you’re telling me I have to leave Florida to be free? No. I’m going to stay here and I’m going to fight.” 

Republish this story

Share

  • Bluesky
  • Facebook
  • Email

Recommended for you

LGBTQ+ parents fear the impacts of Florida’s ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill
LGBTQ+ rights supporters protest against Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis outside a campaign event.
Florida expands classroom ‘Don’t Say Gay’ restrictions up to 12th grade
Opponents of several bills targeting transgender youth attend a rally at the Alabama State House.
More states want to restrict how LGBTQ+ people, issues are discussed in schools
‘Don’t Say Gay’ bills aren’t new. They’ve just been revived.

The 19th News(letter)

News that represents you, in your inbox every weekday.

You have been subscribed!

Please complete the following CAPTCHA to be confirmed. If you have any difficulty, contact community@19thnews.org for help.

Submitting...

Uh-oh! Something went wrong. Please email community@19thnews.org to subscribe.

This email address might not be capable of receiving emails (according to Bouncer). You should try again with a different email address. If you have any questions, contact us at community@19thnews.org.

Become a member

Explore more coverage from The 19th
Abortion Election 2024 Education LGBTQ+ Caregiving
View all topics

Support representative journalism today.

Learn more about membership.

  • Transparency
    • About
    • Team
    • Contact
    • Privacy Policy
    • Community Guidelines
  • Newsroom
    • Latest Stories
    • 19th News Network
    • Podcast
    • Events
    • Careers
    • Fellowships
  • Newsletters
    • Daily
    • Weekly
    • The Amendment
    • Event Invites
  • Support
    • Ways to Give
    • Sponsorship
    • Republishing
    • Volunteer

The 19th is a reader-supported nonprofit news organization. Our stories are free to republish with these guidelines.