Florida’s ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill uses weak verbs to terrify teachers | The Grammarian

In the run-up to this month’s passage of Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” legislation — an ignorant assault on LGBTQ Floridians and their families — the bill’s proponents accused its detractors of not having actually read the text. They argued that nowhere does the bill say “don’t say gay” and that the woke mob was twisting its meaning.

They’re right. The bill doesn’t say “don’t say gay.” But it is a grammatical mess that will make its implementation even more abusive than it appears at first glance.

“Does it say that in the bill? Does it say that in the bill?” Gov. Ron DeSantis upbraided a reporter who asked about “Don’t Say Gay.” “I’m asking you to tell me what’s in the bill because you are pushing false narratives,” DeSantis said.

If you say so, guv. Let’s look at the bill, which reads in part: “Classroom instruction by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity may not occur in kindergarten through grade 3 or in a manner that is not age appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards.”

Sounds vague, right? A grammatical deep dive explains why the bill is so dangerous.

» READ MORE: Philly kindergarten teacher: Florida’s ‘don’t say gay’ legislation has me terrified | Opinion

Occur is the only verb in that 41-word mess, and it’s intransitive. If you think that sounds boring, you’re not wrong, but all you need to know is that transitive verbs transfer their action to a direct object (“she threw the ball,” “he bought dinner”), while intransitive verbs don’t (“I walked,” “you appeared”).

Occur is also one of the only intransitive verbs in the whole bill.

If there’s an action to be had, transitive verbs tend to be stronger. Just as active voice (“I wrote the book”) is more direct than passive voice (“the book was written by me”), transitive verbs (“he taught a lesson”) are more direct and clear than intransitive verbs (“a lesson occurred”).

Nearly every other verb in the bill is transitive, with a clear direct object. Why the intransitive verb for this one sentence?

The Oxford English Dictionary definition of occur provides a clue (emphasis added): “to happen, come about, take place, esp. without being arranged or expected.” In other words, it’s not just that a teacher can’t plan a lesson about sexual orientation or gender identity. If a teacher even responds to a student’s question about gender, they could be breaking the law.

The intransitive verb, in other words, makes it easier to prosecute teachers. A vaguer regulation can more easily be applied to myriad situations, and is therefore more dangerous to educators.

The vagueness doesn’t stop there. “In accordance with state standards” dangles off the end of the sentence. Limp and undefined, it modifies nothing and everything, and helps no one. No clarifying comma comes to the rescue. Those “state standards” apply to … students? Instruction? Age appropriate? Sexual orientation? This grammatical ambiguity means that the state can try to enforce this law any way it wants, and someone could later find meaning in it that wasn’t intended.

The intent is to terrify teachers. The effect, meanwhile, is to abuse and under-educate the very students whom the lawmakers claim they want to protect. DeSantis would just as soon have students think the T in LGBTQ stands for transitive verbs.

And then don’t put it past Florida to ban those too.

The Grammarian, otherwise known as Jeffrey Barg, looks at how language, grammar, and punctuation shape our world, and appears biweekly. Send comments, questions, and indirect objects to jeff@theangrygrammarian.com.

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