This op-ed by Diane Roberts appeared on Colorado Newsline on March 7, 2023. It originally appeared in the Florida Phoenix.
Welcome to Florida! We’re glad to have you. If you’re white. Black people are such a lot of trouble, aren’t they? Always demanding “equal justice” and voting rights and AP classes… blaming white people for stuff like slavery and lynching and whatever.
They get a whole month to talk about Martin Luther King: What more do they want?
But they keep going on marches and demanding we talk about racism, as if we haven’t solved that.
There are actual Black quarterbacks now, so what’s the problem?
Welcome to Florida! We love families. Except ones with trans kids. If you have trans kids, slap some sense into them before you move here. If your boy thinks he’s a girl, take him hunting. Nothing like a little bloodletting to teach a young fellow how to be a man.
Anyway, your weirdo kid isn’t getting hormones and puberty-blockers or anything that gives dudes bosoms. Not in Florida. Our crack team of medical experts, hand-picked by our crack governor and led by an awesome surgeon general who knows vaccines are terrible for you, refuse to kowtow to elitist “doctors.”
Yeah, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Medical Association claim those drugs keep kids from killing themselves, and woke doctors say 40 percent of trans-type people have tried suicide, but everyone knows National Institutes of Health spews out fake news.
So much drama: The mother of one of these mixed-up kids actually said, “I don’t want this board to make me bury my daughter or force me to have to leave this state.”
Lady, please. Get your kid to enlist: The army will straighten her out.
Welcome to Florida! You have guns, don’t you? Florida loves a good gun or 50. Soon you can pack that heat in your waistband or down your bra without a permit or training! That’s liberty!
You don’t like guns? Go live in some wussy place like Australia.
Welcome to Florida! But leave the “science” back in New York or Michigan or whichever Yankee state you came from. We don’t need it here. We trust in God to fix everything from COVID to bunions.
The climate change freaks are the worst. A few little hurricanes wreck a bunch of buildings and drown some islands, and they start hollering about rising seas, warming water, eroding coastlines, and the like when we all know storms are caused by the Lord’s displeasure at the presence of homosexuals in our fair state.
And if we weren’t meant to build condos close to the water, the Lord wouldn’t have created beach renourishment.
We’re glad everyone is moving here. Except for the ones who read books. It’s a known fact that books give you ideas, and ideas will only upset you.
Some books are acceptable: ones on how to build your own church or our governor’s new memoir, “The Courage To Be Free” (only 50 bucks for an autographed copy on Amazon!) or, naturally, the Holy Bible.
Maybe not all of the Bible. Not the part about Lot and those rapey daughters of his. Or King David, who got up to no good with some other guy’s wife. Or The Song of Solomon where things get pretty racy: all that “thy breasts are like two young fawns” and all that about him getting to “the mountain of myrrh” and the “hill of frankincense.”
There must be a version of the Good Book without the hoochie-mama stuff.
Florida wants all you freedom-loving Americans to come on down. We are so, so free! Unless you’re a woman and think you should have “control” over your own body.
It’s not your body: It belongs to your future offspring. If you get pregnant and want an abortion, tough. We’ve got a 15-week ban right now, but that’ll soon going to be tightened up to damn near nothing.
Don’t think you can weasel out of having that baby just because it might kill you, either. Or because the baby’s going to die anyway. God didn’t promise Eve an easy ride.
If that bothers you, maybe don’t have sex? Like, ever?
If you have had sex and accidentally produced a kid or two, and you move to Florida, don’t expect them to have free government school. That’s the wrong kind of freedom.
We’re getting rid of public school.
We’re going to give everybody vouchers so they can go to private Jesus school, where they won’t be exposed to gayness, transness, wokeism, Marxism, feminism, multiculturalism, and all the other isms except Christianism and Americanism.
Sure, poor people won’t be able to afford private Jesus school, since they’ll have to pay the difference between the voucher and the real tuition. Not to mention the cost of those cute uniforms.
Sure, this will cost Florida taxpayers at least $600 million a year and some public schools will probably shut down, but come on: It’s worth it, just to get rid of woke teachers and their woke books making precious white children feel bad.
Speaking of children, why do you think our Legislature passed the “Don’t Say Gay” law? We know what you sickos want. As the governor’s spokesbabe said, if you’re against the bill, “you are probably a groomer.”
Stay out of Florida, you rainbow flag-waving, interior-decorating, iced coffee-drinking friends of Dorothy.
Florida wants you! But not if you’re a lib. That goes double if you’re from California. As the governor says, “There’s a class of voters who would come to Florida, and they would continue to vote the same way.”
Democrat, in other words.
People who think they’re entitled to Social Security. People who believe health care is a right. People who want to save the planet. Who think it’s OK to speak Spanish — here in Florida! Who say women should get equal pay. Who don’t think money is more important than anything else. Who tolerate gays, feminists, cross-dressers, tree-huggers, drag queens, equity, and diversity.
People who read books.
Florida is not for you.
But if you take pleasure in lib-owning, professor-kicking, trans-torturing, and forced birth, Florida welcomes you.
Come for the cruelty, stay for the wholesale oppression.