DeSantis Slams Hollywood Criticism, Invokes Harvey Weinstein After Signing Controversial LGBTQ Bill: ‘I Wear That Like A Badge of Honor’

Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) signed controversial House Bill 1557, dubbed by critics as the “Don’t Say Gay” Bill, on Monday.

In a fiery press conference after signing the bill, DeSantis blamed Hollywood and “sloganeering and fake narratives by leftist politicians, by activists and corporate media” for creating opposition to the legislation.

“Now, there’s been a lot of discussions about, uh, this particular piece of legislation,” the Republican governor noted.

“You’ve seen a lot of sloganeering, um, and fake narratives, by leftist politicians, by activists, by corporate media. And you still see it even today, after a lot of this stuff has been debunked,” he said.

USA Today noted on Monday, “The new law, which takes effect July 1, will likely face legal challenges on free speech grounds. Sexual orientation and gender identity is not taught in Florida grades K-3. But such topics could come up for discussion in some capacity — such as talk of a child’s home life or family makeup — even in these lower grades.”

DeSantis continued, tearing into the media and stoking the culture war:

Now it’s true, many of the people who helped, who whipped this up have never actually read the bill. Uh, they haven’t taken the time to do that. They would rather just further narratives. Um, but I must tell you these leftist politicians, corporate media outlets, some of these activist groups, they actually have read the bill and they’re sloganeering, because they don’t want to admit that they support a lot of the things that we’re providing protections against.

For example, they support sexualizing kids in kindergarten, They support injecting woke gender ideology into second grade classrooms. They support enabling schools to quote transition students to a quote different gender without the knowledge of the parent, much less without the parents’ consent.

“Someone told me that there’s even people in Hollywood that are, that are opposed um, you know, to, to providing protections for parents and enforcing parents’ rights,” DeSantis added.

“You know, the one thing I’ll say about that is if the people who held up degenerates like Harvey Weinstein up as exemplars and as heroes and as all that — if those are the types of people that are opposing us on parents’ rights, I wear that like a badge of honor,” he said to loud applause.

Watch the full press conference here.