A major conference on LGBTQ workplace equality is taking place this year at the Walt Disney World Resort in Florida, as the state’s Republicans continue their quest to restrict LGBTQ rights.
The annual Out & Equal Workplace Summit will bring together executives and group leaders from dozens of prominent US companies, including Apple, Amazon, Walmart and McDonald’s, to discuss how to best implement diversity and inclusion initiatives at work.
The conference will take place at the Disney resort in Orlando. from September 11 to 14said Michael Chamberlain, director of marketing for Out & Equal, according to the Miami Herald.
News of the conference comes about a month after Gov. Ron DeSantis signed legislation removing control of Disney from its home rule jurisdiction following the company’s criticism of Florida’s parental rights in education bill. , commonly known as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill. . The legislation prohibits discussions of gender identity and sexual orientation in elementary school classrooms.
The ban could soon be expanded to include older students as well, through a new rule proposed by the State Board of Education.
The proposal, which is scheduled to be voted on next month, says teachers “shall not intentionally provide classroom instruction to students in grades 4 through 12 about sexual orientation or gender identity, unless such instruction is expressly required.” by state academic standards.
Teachers who violate the rule could be suspended or have their teaching license revoked.
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“The Board of Education’s proposed rule would see more books with LGBTQ characters ripped from school shelves, more discussion of diverse families being gagged, and more character assassinations of hard-working teachers in Florida,” said Brandon Wolf, press secretary for the group. advocacy group LGBTQ Equality Florida. the Daily News in an email.
What the DeSantis administration is saying is that “it is never appropriate to acknowledge the existence of LGBTQ people, or our contributions to society, in schools,” Wolf added.
DeSantis, who has made anti-LGBTQ legislation a centerpiece of his agenda and likely presidential run, is “an existential threat to all LGBTQ+ people in Florida,” said Cathryn Oakley, state legislative director for the Human Rights Campaign.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre criticized the proposal to expand “Don’t Say Gay” as “completely wrong.”
“Make no mistake, this is part of a disturbing and dangerous trend we’re seeing across the country of legislation that is anti-LGBTQI+, anti-trans in a way we haven’t seen in a long time,” Jean-Pierre said Wednesday. . at a press conference.
“It was never, never, never, never about kindergarten through third grade,” said former state representative Carlos Guillermo Smith, Florida’s first LGBTQ Latino legislator, he tweeted Wednesday night. “It was always about demonizing us and censoring LGBTQ people so they didn’t exist in our schools.”
with cable news services
