Monday, a Republican Florida lawmaker compared transgender people to mutants, imps, and demons during a state hearing about a bathroom bill that prevents transgender people from using bathrooms that don’t line up with their sex assigned at birth.
Florida Lawmaker Urged To Resign After Comparing Trans People To Mutant And Some Offensive Racist Vitriol (PHOTO: News 13)
Florida Lawmaker Calls Transgender People Some Racist Vitriol
A Republican Florida lawmaker Webster Barnaby, a self-described “proud Christian conservative” stated some offensive remarks to transgender people who spoke out on Monday against the bill banning them from bathrooms not aligned to their gender at birth.
Moreover, Republican Florida lawmakers said before the House Commerce Committee approved the bill “We have people that live among us today on planet Earth that are happy to display themselves as if they were mutants from another planet.” Rep. Webster Barnaby, R-Deltona added his statements that the planet Earth is created by God only for men, male and woman female.
After Barnaby’s racist vitriol comments came after transgender people testified against the bill. He named them ‘demons and imps who attend and parade before us and act that you are part of this world. So, I’m saying my righteous indignation is stirred. I am tired of this and I am not going to put up with it. You can try me but I promise you I’ll win every time.”
Furthermore, Rep. Kristen Arrington, D-Kissimmee, followed Barnaby and was taken aback by Barnaby’s statements. She addressed the transgender people who spoke, pointing to their “bravery.” Rep. Chase Tramont, a Port Orange Republican who also supported the bill, seemed as if he tried to distance himself from Barnaby’s offensive remarks.
However, the Florida lawmaker later apologized for describing transgender people as “demons” from the floor soon after the House bill passed. ‘I referred to trans people as demons I would like to apologize to the trans community for calling to you as demons,” he said.
But the British-born Barnaby’s expressed regret cut no ice with LGBTQ+ activists, who have been protesting against a slew of anti-trans proposals placed before the Republican-dominated Florida legislature this year, championed by the state’s hard-right governor, Ron DeSantis.
The bills contain restricting pronouns, drag shows, and pride flags. Criminalizing certain medical care for trans youth, and expanding the “don’t say gay” law that offenders discussion of sexual preference and gender identity in all of Florida’s classrooms.
Hence, due to Florida lawmaker remarks, the advocacy group Equality Florida called on Barnaby to resign and on the Florida House speaker, Paul Renner, to condemn “this bigoted vitriol from his caucus”.
Tuesday, the Florida lawmaker’s Twitter account has been removed from the platform after his outburst the previous day at a Florida state House commerce committee hearing in Tallahassee.
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The Controversy Came After From A Novel
The argument comes just days after conservatives elsewhere in the state forced the disposal of an illustrated novel about Anne Frank from a high school library, claiming it had inappropriate sexual material that “minimized” the Holocaust.
A Cristen Maddux spokesperson from the school district of Indian River County expressed that the principal of Vero Beach high school, Shawn O’Keefe, obeyed the protocol by removing the controversial book, a decision that can be reviewed by a district committee.
