Florida’s first openly gay state Senator on ‘Don’t Say Gay’ passing: ‘the air was taken out of the room’

In an impassioned and tearful testimony this week, Florida state Sen. Shevrin Jones pleaded with his colleagues to vote against the state legislature’s controversial Parental Rights in Education bill, known to its critics as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill.

Like other LGBTQ+ advocates, Jones, who is the state Senate’s first openly gay member, argued that the bill, which prohibits classroom instruction about sexual orientation and gender identity that is not “appropriate or developmentally appropriate” for children, would likely force LGBTQ+ students further into the closet and stigmatize the experiences of people who are not heterosexual or cisgender.