FORT LAUDERDALE, FL— At a campaign speech featuring 100 pastors and faith leaders on Thursday, Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) highlights the threat today's "insane" and "woke" culture poses against the American family.
"The battle we have now is not that. This is not between the left and the right. This is not between conservatives and liberals, this is not between Republicans and Democrats, this is a fight between common sense and insanity. And insanity knows no limit. Every time you think, "oh, they've reached the limit," like they can't get any crazier than this, they get crazier. Almost as a kind of reaction," said Sen. Rubio.
Rubio focuses primarily on Gov. Ron DeSantis' (R-FL) and the Republican-led Florida legislature to protect parental rights with the Parental Rights in Education bill. "So Florida passes a law that says, "you can't teach children five to nine of age, okay, five to nine, you can't teach them stuff about like, "maybe you're not a girl," can't teach them that, five to nine."
As we have covered, the Parental Rights bill received strong criticism from Democrats, who called it the "Don't Say Gay" bill. Rep. Anna Eskamani (D-FL-47) called it "transphobic" while Rep. Carlos G. Smith (D-FL-49) similarly said the bill was "homophobic."
Rubio's speech says these accusations are nonsense, for the bill does not contain the word "gay" at all. "They say, "Don't Say Gay Bill," even though the word "gay" is not in the bill anywhere."
Rubio then asks, "but what does Illinois do in reaction to that? They pass a law that says "you MUST teach kids between five and nine to question these things." It's insanity."
He calls this "indoctrination" and says it comes at the expense of not only undermining society, but also failing to address declining proficiency in core subjects such as reading and math in children. ""And what does it come to the expense of? You know, not just undermining parents, undermining culture, undermining society, who cares if they're falling behind in English and reading and math? Who cares, right? At least they're learning this stuff. Indoctrination."
The focus shifts then to the implementation of "woke" culture into the military, such as recruitment and training videos on the usage of pronouns. "What about the military? The civilian leadership of our military? You look at the stuff they're putting out there now, you know, videos about the proper use of pronouns."
Not only is this practice harmful, says Rubio, but actively undermines our defenses against China, who have aircraft carriers equipped with weapons we cannot properly counter. "What is China focused on? Blowing up our aircraft carriers. It's insanity. You're facing a country that now has two aircraft carriers, almost three, but it has weapons that we have no defense for, and you're focused on putting-promoting videos and recruitment videos on the proper use of pronouns?"
Furthermore, this affects our ability to find new recruits. "What the harm that does just doesn't make us less safe, let me tell you the harm that's done now. The harm that's now done is that they have a recruitment problem. Has no working-class, common sense Americans whose children were the backbone of our recruitment, the ones serving our woke military."
