Florida governor Ron DeSantis is further cementing his position as the Republican Party’s leading attack dog in their ongoing war against queer and trans people.
Earlier this week, Gov. DeSantis filed a complaint on behalf of the state against the Miami restaurant R House, which hosts regular drag shows, alleging that footage from a recent viral video depicts a violation of public indecency law. The video, spread online by anti-LGBTQ+ social media accounts, shows a drag queen at the restaurant wearing pasties and a skimpy bodysuit while leading a young child by the hand.
“Having kids involved in this is wrong,” DeSantis told reporters on Wednesday. “That is not consistent with our law and policy in the state of Florida.”
The Department of Business and Professional Regulation has already launched an official investigation, which could result in the restaurant losing its liquor license.
In a statement, R House owners said they “are hopeful that Governor DeSantis, a vociferous supporter and champion of Florida’s hospitality industry and small businesses, will see this as what it is, a misunderstanding, and that the matter will be resolved positively and promptly.”
Florida public indecency law specifically prohibits the “exposure of sexual organs,” which clearly did not occur, but DeSantis’s complaint hinges on whether the R House shows are demonstrably “lewd or lascivious,” and therefore illegal to perform for anyone 16 or younger. It’s highly doubtful anything more overtly sexual than the average hetero family visit to Hooters, as Florida state legislator Rep. Anna V. Eskamani pointed out on Twitter. (It’s worth noting that DeSantis was scandalized by an alleged “children’s menu” at R House and Hooters also has a kids’ menu.)
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But the legal precedent DeSantis actually referenced in his complaint is way weirder: Federal Amusement Co. v. State, a 1947 decision by the Florida Supreme Court that barred businesses from hosting “female impersonators who are in fact males, and any other acts [...] which are suggestive and which tend to injure the manners and morals of the people.” In citing this case, of all things, DeSantis makes it obvious what he’s angling for: reviving the idea that being trans in public is a sex crime.
Meanwhile, the governor’s plan to suppress trans expression in schools has a new face in Manny Diaz Jr., the state’s Education Commissioner. This week, Diaz sent a memo to school officials instructing them not to comply with recent executive actions from the Biden administration, specifically a proposed new rule codifying protections for trans students under Title IX.
Diaz’s memo reaffirms the state’s recent “Don’t Say Gay” law restricting speech and expression in schools, and unambiguously condemns the administration’s position, warning that schools who support trans youth “jeopardize the safety and wellbeing of Florida students and risk violating Florida law.”
“The Department will do everything in its power to protect the wellbeing of all Florida students and to vindicate the right of all parents to know what takes place in their child’s classroom,” the memo reads.
Last month, DeSantis also objected to new USDA policies that would protect trans students from discrimination in receiving school lunches, incorrectly claiming that Biden was “trying to deny school lunch programs for states that don’t do transgender ideology in the schools.”
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