I’m keeping a close eye on Florida to see what sort of conservative resume Ron DeSantis is building ahead of the 2024 presidential elections. This time, DeSantis fixed his sights on the woke public school system, endorsing 30 conservative school board candidates. Out of those 30, 25 of them won – including in some heavily Democrat areas like Miami-Dade and Hillsborough.

I saw an article in the Tallahassee Democrat about this story, and they called DeSantis’ involvement in these school board elections “unprecedented”:

Gov. Ron DeSantis took unprecedented steps to influence Florida’s nonpartisan school board races this year and largely was successful, with 25 of his 30 endorsed candidates winning or advancing to a runoff.

[…]DeSantis flipped school boards in some counties that had left-leaning majorities, shifting them into solid conservative territory.

[…]DeSantis-endorsed candidates also won in Democratic counties such as Miami-Dade and Hillsborough where school boards defied the governor on issues such as mask mandates.

Instead of firing off mean tweets, or crudely insulting other conservatives, DeSantis worked hard to get other conservatives elected in Democrat-infested areas:

Both Sarasota and Duval counties will now have conservative board majorities after DeSantis weighed in heavily on those races. The governor held rallies in both Sarasota and Jacksonville on Sunday. All five of his endorsed school board candidates won in the two counties.

[…]DeSantis worked to boost GOP turnout with his aggressive campaigning in school board races, helping to counteract the fact that Republicans didn’t have any competitive statewide races to bring GOP voters out. DeSantis’ political campaign paid for campaign mailers for his endorsed candidates and he barnstormed the state Sunday, hosting a series of rallies to boost their campaigns.

DeSantis has been pushing back against critical race theory, transgender indoctrination and COVID mandates for children. He also introduced mandatory teaching about the historical record of communism. Communism has a terrible historical record.

The article also mentioned Moms for Liberty, a group that works to get conservatives elected on school boards across the USA:

Not only did DeSantis have a good night Tuesday with his school board picks, but a conservative group that launched last year in Florida to influence school politics also scored some big wins.

Moms for Liberty supported nearly 60 candidates in 24 counties with endorsements, campaign donations, or both. Many of their picks were also endorsed by DeSantis.

[…]Of the 59 candidates, 23 candidates in 14 counties won their races, 12 got enough votes to advance to runoff elections, and 24 lost, according to an analysis by the USA Today Network – Florida. That means more than half — 59% — of the candidates Moms for Liberty supported either won or advanced to the General Election.

I’ve been trying to shop at Publix more and more, now that Walmart and Amazon are increasingly far-left.

OK, that’s enough about DeSantis’ latest achievements. Let me talk about some of his previous achievements below.

DeSantis has already signed bills to:

• teach students about the historical record of communism
• ban grooming of young children
• protect wildlife
• banning biological males from women’s sports
• punishing Big Tech social media companies for censoring conservatives

Many cynical people like to say that there isn’t much difference between Republicans and Democrats on social issues. But those people aren’t following the legislation. If you watch the legislation, Republicans do a lot for social conservatives.

Keep an eye on DeSantis. He is building achievements in the teeth of opposition from leftist schools, leftist corporations, and leftist news media. My preference is to support candidates who achieve results over the opposition of their enemies. I don’t much care for how good a candidate is a snarky  insults. I want results.

I found a very interesting in my favorite site for current events – The Federalist. In it, the author (Scott Yenor) talks about whether society’s ever-increasing embrace of sexual anarchy has produced better health and safety for children. And he’s not just giving his opinion, either. He has several studies, so we will see some numbers.

It starts with this:

Sexualizing childhood in the name of harm reduction is the latest roll in our rolling sexual revolution. We are told that childhood sexual education is necessary to prevent suicide and interpersonal violence, prevent AIDS, avoid pregnancy, and build a safe environment in schools. According to what is known as “minority stress” theory, people with non-heterosexual orientations experience an endless series of microaggressions, overt rejections, invidious discrimination, or stigmatization that undermines their psychiatric and physical health.

Secular leftists are sure that the bad feelings that people who are reckless and irresponsible have are not the natural consequences of their own choices. No! Their bad feelings are the result of your lack of acceptance. It’s not that they are choosing behaviors that are dangerous for them. It’s YOUR lack of acceptance and celebration that is dangerous to them – YOU’RE forcing them to harm themselves… YOU’RE forcing them to be mentally ill.

The problem with this view is that society is MORE accepting of reckless, irresponsible behavior today, and yet the people who do these behaviors feel even worse than they did in the past.

Here’s a study from PLoS One (2021):

And indeed, the social environment has become much less stressful for sexual minorities than it was 50 years ago. The average age for coming out of the closet among Americans has decreased from 26 years old for those roughly born in the 1970s to 16.9 years old for those born in this century. The average age for same-sex sexual activity is decreased from 19.2 years old for those born in the 1970s to 16.3 for the younger cohort, driven by “marked improvements in the social and legal environments for sexual minorities,” according to UCLA epidemiologist Ilan Meyer.

[…]According to Meyer’s study, “we found little evidence that the social and legal improvements during the past 50 years … have altered the experience of sexual minorities people in terms of exposure to minority stressors and resultant adverse mental health outcomes.” Younger cohorts have higher suicide attempt rates (30 percent) than the older cohort (21 percent). The younger group reports more everyday discrimination, more psychological distress, more stigma, and more internalized homophobia. All in all, according to these scholars, “our findings are clearly inconsistent with the [minority stress] hypothesis.”

And another study from Archives of Sexual Behavior (2020):

In another study, J. Michael Bailey, an early adopter of the minority stress model in the 1990s, could find “no evidence to support” minority stress predictions and, he acknowledges, that “there is much evidence against it.”

Greater tolerance of sexual minorities has not led to better health outcomes or lower suicide rates or to decreases in neuroticism among gay men. Health and psychological results in the tolerant Netherlands, Bailey points out, are not much different from the results of the supposedly intolerant United States. Suicide rates barely budged in nations that have adopted same-sex marriage.

This is why LGBT activists in government, when they are confronted with the facts about how monkeypox is spread, are not concerned about setting boundaries on people’s behaviors. In their view, boundaries are harmful, because boundaries cause the people who are engaged in reckless, irresponsible behaviors to feel bad. And their feeling bad is WORSE than getting monkeypox. So, you are actually helping the monkeypox crowd if you lie to them about the direct consequences of their actions. Lying to them will hurt them less than warning them. Because nothing is really dangerous. The only thing people have to fear is being disapproved of.

Weighing 400 pounds isn’t bad for your health, the “compassion” crowd says. What’s dangerous is people who say that this is unhealthy. That’s what actually causes the diabetes and heart disease – the disapproval. There is absolutely nothing wrong with having a 1000 lifetime sexual partners. That is perfectly moral, and it wouldn’t cause any harm, as long as we can use the laws and the government to force everyone to approve of it as much as they approve of stable, long-lasting heterosexual marriage, and a minivan full of well-behaved homeschooled kids.

People who behave badly turn to big government to force everyone else to subsidize and approve of their bad behavior. This is where poverty and tyranny come from. And that’s why we should be battling against the secular left and their war on morality, marriage and children.