1:29
“As a Florida educator and honestly as a parent in Florida, I'm feeling pretty helpless,” Mayer said, before telling viewers to vote with their wallets and boycott corporations that have donated to lawmakers behind the “Don’t Say Gay” bill.
The middle school reading teacher, who is considering switching to the elementary level, told “GMA” she is concerned about its real-world impact on students, some of whom have come to her asking for more information about the bill.
“It's something that definitely concerns me, making that transition from middle to elementary because I want all of my students to feel loved and to feel seen and heard and valued and it's gonna be really difficult to tell a student, ‘No, you can't talk about your family. No, we're not allowed to do that,'\" she said. \"I mean, how do you say that to a kindergartener or a first grader?”
![\"PHOTO:](\"http://a.abcnews.com/images/GMA/meghan-mayer-school-ht-rc-220314_1647289404697_hpEmbed_4x3_384.jpg\")
Mayer said she read the text of the bill and found its language “so vague.”
“I just feel like it is really going to open the door for just a lot of discrimination. I think it's going to do a lot of harm to a lot of our students,” she said.
Mayer also said it’s not just students who might be affected but her fellow teachers as well.
“When teachers have been through so much already, just like a lot of other essential workers have, a bill like this just continues to invalidate us as educators, like we don't know what's best,\" she said. \"I think that's the thing that bothers me the most is that, ‘Do you think so little of us that you really think that we don't know what's appropriate and what's not appropriate to talk about with students in our classroom?’ Once again, we’re just not respected as educators.”
“This bill worries me for educators too, who are LGBTQ,\" Mayer continued. \"Because does that mean that they can't have a picture of them and their spouse on their desk for fear that somebody might ask about it and then that's going to lead to some sort of conversation? I feel like it specifically targets LGBTQ students and teachers.”
![\"PHOTO:](\"http://a.abcnews.com/images/GMA/mayer-family-photto-ht-rc-220314_1647289730661_hpEmbed_4x3_384.jpg\")
President Biden has called the bill “hateful” and U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said his department opposes the state bill.
“Leaders in Florida are prioritizing hateful bills that hurt some of the students most in need,” he said in a statement. “The Department of Education has made clear that all schools receiving federal funding must follow federal civil rights law, including Title IX’s protections against discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. We stand with our LGBTQ+ students in Florida and across the country, and urge Florida leaders to make sure all their students are protected and supported.”
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