Dave Rubin Dispels Lies About Parental Rights Bill Dubbed ‘Don’t Say Gay’

Dave Rubin in his studio in Los Angeles on April 28, 2020. (The Epoch Times)

A bill dealing with parental rights in education, which limits classroom instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in public schools in Florida, has been met with relentless criticism by the left and has been dubbed by mainstream media the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, said Dave Rubin.

The measure, officially known as House Bill 1557 (pdf), has already been approved by Florida’s Legislature and is heading to Gov. Ron DeSantis’ desk.

The essence of the bill is that it prohibits discussing topics such as sexuality and gender identity in Kindergarten through third grade in public schools, Rubin said in a recent interview on EpochTV’s “Crossroads” program.

The part of the bill which sparked the most controversy among Democrats, LGBTQ advocates, and other groups reads, “Classroom instruction by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity may not occur in kindergarten through grade 3, or in a manner that is not age appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students, in accordance with state standards.”

The words “gay” and “trans” are not even mentioned in the bill, said Rubin, host of “The Rubin Report” on BlazeTV. The measure would not stop a student from bringing, for example, two mommies to school for parents’ day or for another occasion, he added.

Children in Kindergarten through third grade are usually 6, 7, or 8 years old, and “they’re not really able to cognitively think about these things in any critical sense,” Rubin said.

Rubin thinks that state educators should not discuss these topics even with a fourth grader, but said the topic should be honestly discussed in seventh grade.

“Seventh grade is roughly the right time to perhaps introduce some things,“ he said. ”As young people, their bodies are changing, they’re thinking about things a little bit differently.”

He believes that the determination of what is age appropriate should be left to individual states. For example, California—a state that embraces left-wing policies—may decide to teach these topics in third grade if its people support that, “but Florida is allowed to, at the state level, make up a curriculum that makes sense to its constituents and its parents,” Rubin said.

The measure should be called the “parental transparency bill,” Rubin said, because the bill’s important provisions ensure that educators are transparent with parents about a child’s medical records, that they cannot subject a child to medical procedures or health screenings without parental consent, and that they cannot hide information about a child from the parents.

“It’s a transparency bill, more than a sexuality bill,” he stated.

If teachers are hiding from parents that their child, a biological male, is going to school presenting himself as a girl, it seems those teachers believe that “the state owns the children,” Rubin said.

In his view, “it’s been society’s belief for thousands and thousands of years, millennia actually, that the parent is the ultimate decider of what’s right for the child, and then ultimately, the child will become an adult and figure out what is right for them.”

“Many, many people in America don’t really understand what individual rights are, they don’t really understand what responsibility is, and we’ve actually outsourced so much of that to our failing institutions, so that the school is supposed to be more responsible than the parent,“ Rubin said. ”This is a huge problem.”

If a law needs to be enacted to protect basic parental rights, it shows how far we’ve departed from where America was founded, Rubin said. “The idea that the state could do these things ... is a crazy premise and we have to be very careful where this all leads.”

Media Framed Parental Rights Bill

A teacher reads a book to her kindergarten class. (Eric Cabanis/AFP/Getty Images)

There is nothing in the bill stipulating that if a second grade student brings her two fathers to school for parents’ day, the fathers will be discriminated against or treated any different way, nor should they be, Rubin said.

The bill is, however, framed that way in all of the leftist media, and people have been made to think that if gay parents show up for parent-teacher conferences, DeSantis “is going to have them arrested,” Rubin said.

“But this is what they do with everything,” he said. “They create these very scary memes, this meme of ‘Don’t Say Gay,’ and then the media absolutely runs with it.

“This is how the left sets the cultural narrative. They get us to start saying something, we keep repeating it,” and then people, regardless of their view on the bill, start calling it “Don’t Say Gay” in everyday conversations, Rubin explained.

“Then, they’ve planted a seed in the mind that somehow this is anti-gay, and it simply is not.”

Fla. Gov. Ron DeSantis reacts to a reporter who referred to the Parental Rights in Education bill as the "Don't Say Gay" bill during a press conference in Plant City, Fla., on March 7, 2022. (WFLA News Channel 8)

Rubin praised the Florida governor for his unswerving support of the parental rights bill.

DeSantis had been called earlier in March by Disney CEO Bob Chapek, who expressed “disappointment and concern” with the bill. Chapek said Disney has opposed the bill since its inception but preferred to work “behind the scenes” with lawmakers instead of voicing its concerns publicly, reported The Hollywood Reporter.

After the conversation with Chapek, DeSantis told supporters in Boca Raton, Florida, that there is zero chance he would back down from his position on parental rights, according to a video obtained by Fox News.

Companies such as Disney that make money off catering to families and kids should understand that parents do not want this ideology injected into their children’s Kindergarten classroom, DeSantis said in the video.

“In Florida, our policies [have] got to be based on the best interest of Florida citizens, not on the musing of woke corporations,” he added.

On March 11, Chapek sent a message to Disney employees, especially to the LGBTQ community within the company, expressing his disappointment with the bill’s passage, according to a company statement.

He also announced in the statement that Disney would pause all political donations in the state of Florida and would increase its “support for advocacy groups to combat similar legislation in other states.”

Rubin said that he knows “plenty of gay people who want nothing to do with this bill or the ideas in this bill.”

He moved to Florida in December 2021 after “fleeing California” and said that during this short time period, he’s experienced firsthand what freedom really is.

“There is a zest for life here [in Florida]. People are not just surviving but thriving here,“ he said. ”The restaurants are packed, the stores are packed, people are smiling and happy. There’s traffic on the roads because people are going places.”

The woke ideology and critical race theory that spread in California “has wrecked [sic] so much havoc on good, decent people and institutions that we thought we could trust,” Rubin said.

Florida, however, has done things right and DeSantis is the model governor for this country, Rubin said.

“He has made Florida the model state, and a model needs to be modeled. And that is what needs to be exported throughout this country, so that another governor of another state is willing to stand up and that other state will start flourishing,“ he said. ”That’s a bottom-up approach.”

Jannis Falkenstern and Bill Pan contributed to this report.