After the circulation of a video of children being subjected to a raunchy drag-queen show in Dallas, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said he was open to the idea of criminalizing such events.
State Rep. Anthony Sabatini, a Clermont-area Republican, called for such a ban on Wednesday and suggested an emergency legislative session should be considered to make it happen.
“Kids dancing with them, but also then at one point kids giving tip money like they somebody would do at a strip club, giving tip money into the clothing of the drag queens and this kid was probably seven or eight years old,” he told Spectrum News.
“If people want to do these drag shows on their own time, that’s fine, whatever, but not involving kids, not aimed at kids, not tailored for kids because we need to protect kids and it’s not normal. It’s not good to have them exposed to sexual content,” he added.
Sabatini also tweeted about the issue in highlighting a similar event planned for West Palm Beach. “Drag Sex Shows aimed at children have come to Florida. I will be proposing Legislation to charge w/a Felony & terminate the parental rights of any adult who brings a child to these perverted sex shows aimed at FL kids.”
“When will the sexualization of children stop?”
DeSantis was asked about Sabatini’s comments during a press conference in Fort Myers Beach.
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“I’ve asked my folks to look. We have child protection statutes on the books. We have laws against child endangerment,” DeSantis replied, before recapping events in Dallas, which included kids as young as 9 “putting money in the underwear” of drag queens.
“That was totally inappropriate,” the governor added. “That is not something children should be exposed to. … I think that was really, really disturbing. … Texas isn’t exactly known to be San Francisco.”
“We want to have our kids be kids. We want them to have a normal environment,” DeSantis continued, noting that his fight for the Parental Rights in Education law was intended to stop the “injecting” of gender ideology into early childhood.
That law prohibits school districts and classroom teachers from implementing lesson plans based on sexual orientation or gender identity.
DeSantis said his staff would review whether existing laws sufficiently protected children from such events.
“It used to be kids would be off-limits, used to be everybody agreed with that. Now it just seems like there’s a concerted effort to be exposing kids more and more to things that are not age-appropriate,” DeSantis said during the press conference.
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“I think our state, in Florida, we need to be a family-friendly state. We need to be a good state for people to be able to raise a family, get a high-quality education, have a lot of opportunities without having some political agenda shoved down their throats.”
Sabatini told WTSP that he had “full confidence” DeSantis would support his measure.
“Any adult who forces children into these drag sex shows should be charged with a felony,” he said. “What happened in Texas was criminal.”
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