Florida’s First Openly Gay State Senator Tearfully Pleaded With Law Makers Over Discriminatory Bill
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Florida’s first openly gay state senator, Shevrin Jones, tearfully pleaded to his Republican colleagues against supporting the Parental Rights in Education bill, the so called “Don’t Say Gay” bill.
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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 “age 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.
“I don’t think y’all understand how much courage it takes for these children to show up everyday,” he said, referring to the swaths of school-aged children who had gathered at the state capitol that day to protest the bill. Thousands more were staging similar demonstrations at schools across the state.
The bill passed Tuesday by a 22-17 vote after hours of grueling debate. Now, it heads to the desk of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, where it is expected to be signed into law.
“I was hurt,” Jones told Changing America this week following the bill’s passage. “But it wasn’t for me. All week there were children up here — LGBTQ children, allies, parents — who are up here crying their hearts out, begging their hearts out, pleading that we don’t do this.”
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The son of a pastor in South Florida, the freshman state senator previously served three terms in the state House of Representatives, but did not publicly come out as gay until 2018, when he was 34. He told the Miami Herald that year that he had been inspired by the early death of his brother, Kaneil, to start “living my truth just a little bit more.”
“I know what it feels like to be that young child, and you’re locked in your own closet because you feel like you can’t express yourself,” he told Changing America.
He added that part of him feels like he didn’t fight hard enough for Florida’s LGBTQ+ youth — a group he was once a part of — though a larger part of him knows that isn’t true.
On Tuesday, after the final vote had been cast, Jones said Florida Democrats together drew in a sharp breath.
“The air was taken out of the room,” he said, “as it should have been.”
