During a Tuesday debate on the “Don’t Say Gay” legislation that has already passed the Florida House of Representatives and is now before the Senate, Republican State Sen. Ileana Garcia rose to speak in favor of the bill, but what she said proved that her opinion of the issue is far from fully informed.
Speaking for over 15 minutes, Garcia expressed her support for the legislation, which would ban teachers from discussing sexual orientation and gender identity with younger students:
“Gay is not a permanent thing, LGBT is not a permanent thing. This isn’t about targeting. This is perhaps about rerouting the responsibilities back to the parents.”
Garcia also claimed that she has family and friends who are LGBT, “but I don’t pander on that.”
And then there was what the senator had to say about a transgender woman she claims who know who prefers to date women:
“A friend of mine went through the whole transition as an older man, 58-years-old, became a woman and guess what? He still likes women! He went through the whole process and we’d laugh together and I’d say, why do you want to deal with the hormones? Why do you want to worry about the extensions and the hair and boobs and the nails and he loved it.
“So he had a sexual experience. And he realized that he continued to like women.”
And while she was at it, Garcia also decided to share some completely bogus “statistics” about gender-affirming surgery:
“You know, a lot of people don’t know that I think that the statistics are that 4 out of 7 people who do the full transition end up committing suicide because it’s tough.”
Nope. Not even remotely accurate. As a matter of fact, gender-affirming surgery is actually shown to reduce the likelihood of a person committing suicide.
The bill was passed by the Florida Senate and now heads to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) who will sign it because he wants to try and create a cultural issue he can use to get a second term in office and use his reelection as a springboard to the 2024 GOP presidential nomination.