‘Freedom’ is little more than a hollow DeSantis campaign slogan

Matt Walsh super fans toting firearms they learned how to use on YouTube and conducting vigilante genital inspections in public restrooms.

If that visual doesn’t invoke freedom for you, that’s because it’s not. But it is the Sunshine State’s pending reality under the DeSantis regime, where “freedom” is little more than a hollow campaign slogan and the power of government is routinely weaponized against anyone who might serve as a punching bag for a Governor drunk on presidential ambition.

This year, in his desperation to outflank Donald Trump to the far right and bolster his 2024 resume, Governor DeSantis led an unprecedented legislative assault on freedom, in the most virulently anti-LGBTQ session in Florida’s history. Bills ranged from those that accelerate book bans and revoke a parent’s right to ensure their child’s pronouns are respected in school to others that target drag shows and threaten custody agreements over health care for transgender young people.

Among the policy onslaught is HB 1521, the Anti-Trans Bathroom Bill. On paper, it’s a redux of the ill-fated legislation that decimated the North Carolina economy less than a decade ago and spelled doom for the political career of then-Governor Pat McRory.

In practice, it’s a sinister invasion of privacy that bars transgender people from using the restroom in publicly-owned buildings that aligns with how they live their lives everyday and deputizes people to challenge one another’s presence in those spaces. The bill opens the door to the same abuse, mistreatment, and dehumanization that other efforts to police restroom use have precipitated.

Just last year, Noah Ruiz, a transgender man in Ohio, was brutally assaulted by a crowd of people and subsequently jailed after using the women’s restroom as instructed by staff at a campground.

Therein lies the danger of policies like these. Filed and fast tracked under the false premise of “protecting” the public, transphobic bathroom bans are fueled by dangerous disinformation about the transgender community. And their enforcement endorses grotesque invasions of privacy and dangerous accusations.

Are we prepared for escalating confrontations at convention center stalls? How will someone “prove” that they’ve selected the appropriate restroom? Will we all be expected to carry a copy of our birth certificate or will the state rely on vigilantes monitoring the external anatomy of those one toilet over?

A question arose as we began spelling out the realities of a draconian bathroom ban: who might get swept up? What about cisgender people who don’t fit someone else’s idea of how a man or woman should look? Could elected officials and appointees suddenly find themselves in handcuffs for making a necessary pitstop near their airport arrival gate?

The answer is yes. It’s conceivable that Admiral Rachel Levine, the nation’s Assistant Secretary for Health, could end up in police custody for using the restroom at Orlando International Airport or the University of Florida campus — the very same restroom she uses back home in Washington D.C..

Transgender Floridians will pay the steepest price for

BRANDON J. WOLF

is press secretary of Equality Florida, the largest statewide LGBTQ rights organization.

the Governor’s craven pandering to the most extreme faction of his base. Policies like this are little more than campaign fodder for someone like DeSantis. He craves a Fox News headline and content for his next fundraising email.

For him, transgender people are merely a rung on the ladder he must climb to reach his political destination, a stepping stone on his way to the GOP convention stage. But transgender people are not pawns or political fodder. They are our neighbors. Our family members. Our friends. They are human beings who deserve the dignity of taking care of basic needs without the prying eyes of government or someone hopped up on the latest Ben Shapiro video peering over the walls of their stall.

Ron DeSantis likes to claim that we are the “freest state in the nation.” But tell me: does a government regime telling you what you can read, what health care you can receive, who you can be, and where you can use the bathroom sound like freedom to you?