NBA legend Dwyane Wade moved his family out of Florida in 2021 and recently spoke with PEOPLE in an exclusive conversation about why they moved to California, stating “I mean, obviously, the tax [situation] is great. Having Wade County is great. But my family would not be accepted or feel comfortable there. And so that’s one of the reasons why I don’t live there.”
In 2020, Wade’s daughter Zaya came out as transgender, and both “Wade and his wife, actor Gabrielle Union, have been publicly supportive of Zaya and the transgender community.”
The Wades aren’t the only ones with such fears. Richard Denis-Carr is a resident of Pembroke Pines and “worries that Gov. Ron DeSantis’ presidential ambitions have stirred up hate against the LGBTQ+ community. He fears for the future of his 10-month-old son, Zachary, who he’s raising with husband Joseph Denis-Carr.”
Denis-Carr believes that “People like Ron DeSantis and people like the legislators…are doing it because it excites their base, and it gets their base to vote for them.”
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These reactions are all occurring after Gov. DeSantis passed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill into law last year. But that was only the beginning of Florida’s anti-LGBTQ+ campaign. This month, “Florida kicked off a legislature…where Republican super-majorities seem determined to put more anti-LGBTQ+ laws on the books.”
Here are several of the most concerning pieces of bills currently making their way through the Sunshine State’s legislation:
HB1421 / SB254
Prohibits gender clinical interventions for minors and would essentially deem as abuse any medical care and supportive parenting. This same bill “would also prohibit insurance from covering any type of gender-affirming surgery for any age,” and also disallows changing the gender on birth certificates.
HB 1223 / SB1320
Called an extension of the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, it would ban matters regarding gender orientation and sexual orientation from being discussed from pre-kindergarten to the eighth grade, and “[i]n a separate proposal, the DeSantis administration is seeking to expand the rule to all grade levels.”
The proposed bill would also prohibit using preferred pronouns for both contractors and employees working in the public school system and even goes as far as redefining the word “sex” as “the classification of a human person as being either male or female based on the organization of the body of such person for a specific reproductive role, as indicated by the person’s sex chromosomes, naturally occurring sex hormones, and internal and external genitalia present at birth.”
HB1423 / SB1438
Also referred to as the drag ban, it “would authorize the state to fine, suspend or revoke altogether the licenses for anyone with live adult entertainment that ‘depicts or simulates nudity, sexual conduct, or lewd exposure.’”
HB1521 / SB 1674
Or the bathroom bill, it would “mandate exclusive of restrooms based on gender assigned at birth, and could impose fines of $10,000 to those to willfully enter restrooms for the ‘opposite sex.’”
HB1265 / SB952
It’s been dubbed the “reverse Woke Act” and would impose requirements upon employers, regardless of how much it costs, “whose benefits cover gender reassignment surgery [to] also be required to fully cover reverse gender dysphoria treatments.”
