Shevrin Jones has absolutely no time for Ron “Don’t Say Gay” DeSantis’ latest B.S.

2024 presidential loser Ron “Don’t Say Gay” DeSantis has temporarily shifted his focus away from harming Florida’s LGBTQ+ population to instead go after his state’s growing homeless population. And one person who is not having any of it is out gay state Sen. Shevrin Jones.

DeSantis just signed a new bill into law that aims to crack down on homeless encampments in the Sunshine State. The “Unauthorized Public Camping and Public Sleeping” bill, HB 1365, makes it illegal for people to camp or sleep on public property.

“The lawlessness seen in ‘progressive’ cities — sprawling encampments, open-air drug markets and homeless people endangering themselves and others is totally preventable,” DeSantis said during the bill’s signing ceremony last week in Miami Beach. “We won’t stand for it in Florida and our action today is one of many steps we’re taking to keep our cities clean and safe for everyone.”

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The law is doomed to fail since you can’t simply outlaw an entire population of people from existence and hope they’ll either 1.) disappear, or 2.) find somewhere else to go. It just doesn’t work like that. Ask any dictator, past or present, and he’ll tell you.

Or ask Jones. He’s the furthest thing from a dictator and he gets it better than any of his colleagues. He said as much during the bill’s debate in the Florida legislature.

“This bill does not, and it will not address the root cause of homelessness,” he warned. “We are literally reshuffling the visibility of unhoused individuals, with no exit strategy for people who are experiencing homelessness.” 

Unfortunately, they didn’t listen to him. The bill passed earlier this month, DeSantis signed it into law on March 20, and it goes into effect October 1.

Cities and counties will have three months to clean up their homeless encampments before, in January 2025, residents, local business owners, and even the state attorney general can start filing lawsuits against them for not “keeping the riff-raff out.”

Of course, this isn’t the first time 40-year-old Jones, who was first elected to the Florida State Senate in 2020, has disagreed wholeheartedly with DeSantis.

He has been one of the most outspoken critics of DeSantis’ homophobic “Don’t Say Gay” policies, and he helped push for the recent settlement between civil rights attorneys and the Florida Board of Education to loosen restrictions on teachers and school officials.

Per AP:

Under the terms of the settlement, the Florida Board of Education will send instructions to every school district saying the Florida law doesn’t prohibit discussing LGBTQ+ people, nor prevent anti-bullying rules on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity or disallow Gay-Straight Alliance groups. The settlement also spells out that the law is neutral — meaning what applies to LGBTQ+ people also applies to heterosexual people — and that it doesn’t apply to library books not being used for instruction in the classroom.

Earlier this month, Jones criticized DeSantis’ failed “anti-woke” approach to governing, telling the Washington Post, “When his presidential race ended, I think that a lot of his influence and power died at the same time … And I think that people in Florida and across the country, including Republicans, are starting to see that the culture wars are getting us nowhere.”

Oh, and speaking of the presidential race, he’s also been taking an active role in the Biden’s reelection effort, serving as a Biden/Harris campaign surrogate and raising his own national platform in the process.

Over the weekend, Jones attended an event hosted by the Democratic Party of Milwaukee, during which he gave a powerful speech about “fighting like hell” to keep Trump out of the White House as well as encouraging more diverse and pro-LGBTQ+ candidates to run for office.

DeSantis’ reign of anti-LGBTQ+ terror ends in 2026. In recent months, there’s been a lot of chatter about who might replace him when the time comes.

Jones seems well-poised for the job and expressed interest in a possible bid for governorship in an interview with the Sun Sentinel last November. If he were to run and win, he would become the country’s first out gay Black governors.

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