Watch: Florida Students Stage Walkouts over 'Don't Say Gay' Bill

Florida students are proudly standing up for their beliefs and walking out in protest of the state's "Don't Say Gay" bill, which would criminalize classroom discussion of LGBTQ+ topics and paint a bull's eye on teachers by encouraging parents to file lawsuits.

NBC News reported that students "waving rainbow picket signs and shouting 'We say gay!'" staged "walkouts across the state – in Tampa, Orlando, Tallahassee and other cities," all in protest against the bill.

In St. Petersburg, Gibbs High School student Abbie Garretson, who is the president of the school's GSA, declared, "We as students are walking out today to say that we do not support an institution and a school system that does not support us," a report from Bay News 9 said.

"In the Orlando area, there was also a protest walkout at Seminole High School," the news channel added. "Hundreds of students reportedly gathered in the campus courtyard to show solidarity with the LGBTQ community."

The bill's broadly worded language would prohibit any classroom discussion of "sexual orientation or gender identity," a mandate that critics fear could be used to silence students with same-sex parents or who might be LGBTQ+ themselves.

The bill's adherents say that they're looking to ensure parents have greater control over what younger students hear in the classroom. The bill's sponsor in the state Senate, Dennis Baxley, stated that the bill is "about parents being in charge, and I'm trying to empower that, rather than them being socialized by the school system."

But for LGBTQ+ students and their allies, those arguments rang hollow. Instead, they indicated, what they heard was a call for their erasure. Garretson said that while the bill purports to limit classroom discussion only up through third-grade classrooms, it "affects all students because it is spreading a message from the state of Florida, from the school board, that we view queerness and gender identities as promiscuous and inappropriate...and that kind of message affects all grade levels."

In St. Petersburg, Lakewood High School junior Campbell Paquette told the Tampa Bay Times that the proposed legislation "is definitely to silence young LGBTQ kids."

Openly gay Hillsborough High School student Kevin Vondruska, 17, told the Tampa Bay Times that he worried the bill would discourage LGBTQ+ students in non-supportive homes from seeking support at school. "So if they can't have that support at school," Vondruska said, "it can lead to increased rates of suicide."

The Tampa Bay Times reported that around 250 Hillsborough High School students "waved rainbow flags...and chanted 'gay lives matter'" with the walkout lasting about 20 minutes and the students conducting themselves in an "orderly and upbeat" fashion. The school did not punish them.

It was a different story for Jack Petocz, an organizer of the walkouts and a senior at Flagler Palm Coast High School. Petocz handed out fliers and Pride flags at a protest he helped organize – and the school suspended him "indefinitely" for it.

The openly gay student, unbowed, said that the school's punishment of him "is riddled with homophobia and bigotry."

"You're silencing a queer student standing up for what he believes in, in his rights, and you're disciplining him for challenging you on the allowance of pride flags in a gay rally?" Petocz said. "It's ridiculous. It truly is."

Petocz decried the bill, telling NBC News: "The language and the supporters of the bill and the rhetoric around the bill really shows what this bill is, and it's an attempt to hurt queer people like me."

Watch the Tampa Bay Times news clip below.