> The law prohibits classroom instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity from kindergarten to grade 3 in Florida public school districts, or instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity in a manner that is not "age appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students". It also allows parents and teachers to sue any school district if they believe this policy is violated. The bill additionally prevents school districts from withholding information about a child’s "mental, emotional, or physical well-being" from their parents.
> Due to the "Don't Say Gay" nickname some commentators and social media users thought the bill banned mentioning the word "gay" in school classrooms, though the bill does not actually mention the word "gay" or explicitly prohibit its use.
Please define: "age appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students"
The point of the bill is that nobody will talk about anything because: "It also allows parents and teachers to sue any school district if they believe this policy is violated"
Teachers and school districts don't have the money to fuck around in court to learn what this means. This is basically the same strategy as the Texas abortion bill as it allows random evangelical busybody assholes to be morality police with the threat of crippling court costs.
The bill [0] does not define it, instead it leaves it up to the Florida Department of Education to come up with a framework of what is and is not appropriate for 5-8 year olds consistent with the bill by a certain deadline.
The change here is that the bill is enforcing that some kind of framework is followed in public schools when it comes to teaching 5 to 8 year olds about sexual orientation and gender identities. What the Florida Department of Education comes up with here remains to be seen, but the vagueness of the bill actually seems reasonable here as the appropriateness of such topics likely varies depending on the age of the child.
The meat of the bill is reenforcing parental rights in public schools, such as being able to access their child's mental health records, to be notified of any medical procedures with the option to opt out, access to their child's curriculum, etc.
In the US, most public schools have health class that covers these topics in 8th or 9th grade. The bill isn't touching that. Third grade is far too young.
But why do the teachers and schools have to talk about sex orientation, gay or not? I grew up from a culture where sex was never talked about by teachers and I don't think I missed anything. Of course students did talk about it among themselves. This whole idea of teachers must talk about sex in school sounds extremely stupid to me.
The title makes it was about the message on the board, while it was not. The music teacher talked about sex orientation and trans issue in the classroom.
QUOTE:
“The issue at hand is the conversations that took place during class. I firmly believe that students and their parents expect teachers to teach content about their assigned curriculum in a subject area,“ Saylor said. “Of course, there are times that conversations may vary from that day’s lesson plan, but these conversations went far beyond the music curriculum. It is my job to make sure that parents are not surprised by these types of situations.”
Saylor said he believes that all teachers have a responsibility to be supportive of their students, “but when students share difficult situations and circumstances with them, the student should be referred to a certified school counselor.”
I'm guessing maybe you were probably cis-hetero? No judgment if that's the case, the vast majority of people will be fine in that regime. However, when I was growing up we did have non typical kids in class and they were very much picked on. Non typical gender alignment wasn't talked about so the only words kids had at the time were "weird" and "funny" along with whatever stuff they picked up from the early internet porn sites and magazines. It wasn't great.
The thing we have to realize is the would is a bit different now. Before we just assumed these people didn't exist and that became a bit of a self fulfilling prophecy. Now we better understand this reality and the consequences of ignoring them as well as the options available for helping them.
When I was growing up, kids were picked on for anything and everything. I think we can decouple "teaching kids not to bully" from "teaching any particular gender/sexual ideology".
We did have kids looking weird, but nobody picked on them because of this. I think the school's responsibility is forbid bulling, for whatever reasons.
I don’t have time to cite a study but there’s a clear correlation between the lack of health education and teen pregnancy (which pipes into abortion). I would argue porn addiction is at least contributed to adolescence learn sex from porn cites instead of actual education.
I wonder how many of the male population understand periods, the cost contributed to them, and other female health issues that affect 50% of the population.
I consider myself pretty firmly in favor of LGBT+ rights. But at the same time, I can see why parents wouldn't want sexual education as a part of a curriculum for 5 to 8 year olds. Sex ed certainly wasn't being taught in elementary school when I was a kid. But this legislation goes both ways. A teacher can't teach 5-8 year olds that there are only two genders, either.
People arguing for the bill believe those against it want to give 5yo kids a lecture on sex positions but in reality there's a lot of material to cover in the window they're banning that isn't the heavy sexual content they have in mind.
This feels like a straw man. No doubt some conservatives sling "liberals just want to groom children" with varying degrees of seriousness, but I would have guessed that the primary impetus is to prevent teachers proselytizing their sexual identity beliefs on young children. At least with older children "sexuality" is an important and legitimate educational topic and it's difficult to legislate against indoctrination without imperiling legitimate education; however, I can't think of any legitimate reason to broach sexuality with first graders. I also think transparency in education is eminently desirable--I can't think of any good reason that schools should hide from parents what they're teaching children, and the tenuous arguments against this seem likely to damage Democrat credibility in the minds of swing voters--politically, this seems like a terrible hill to die on (much like how Democrats distanced themselves from "abolish the police" a couple years ago, it seems like they should distance themselves from secretly teaching very young kids).
I think the more compelling rebuttal is that the fear of indoctrination is overblown, that there aren't many cases of this happening. That said, I think it's perfectly fine to preemptively legislate against something when there's no real downside to the legislation. To this point, I would be curious to hear what legitimate material you think this legislation imperils. I would also like to hear proponents of the legislation give examples which show that this could become a problem in Florida (are there many examples of teachers proselytizing to students, especially sexual and gender identity ideologies?).
Can a teacher cover why a child might have "two dads" (either because it comes up because it applies to a student, or in a childrens book, or ...) on the same level that relationship between "mom and dad" is covered and why it's ok even though its different than most other families or is that "proselytizing sexual identity ideologies" (or at risk being a violation if a parent decides they think it is)?
The law prohibits teaching sexual orientation. If discussing families with two dads violates this law, then discussing families with one mom and one dad must necessarily also violate it. Interpretation about what is/isn't appropriate is left to the Florida Department of Education, but the law itself preserves equality. Note also that without this law, it would also be legal for teachers to teach that gay people don't exist or any manner of right-wing ideology.
That's a nice theory, but there's little reason to believe it will work like that instead of working like it does basically everywhere else that tries such laws. "Don't discuss" turns into "tacitly ignore it for the 'norm' because it's impossible to not acknowledge it, single out 'deviations'". See also things like content filters treating any LGBT content as "adult", regardless of it being explicit in any way or not.
That's the obvious concern with the law, especially if you add such a "parents can sue" mechanism and with the political environment around. Any parent that sues over discussing families with one mom and one dad will look like a nutjob and loose, but parents suing over two dads appearing in a childrens book will have very legitimate concerns that have to be taken seriously.
Time will tell if that concern is wrong, but I'm not giving that scenario much chance.
> That's a nice theory, but there's little reason to believe it will work like that instead of working like it does basically everywhere else that tries such laws. "Don't discuss" turns into "tacitly ignore it for the 'norm' because it's impossible to not acknowledge it, single out 'deviations'".
You and I seem to inhabit very different realities. Pushing boundaries (especially in the name of equality) is glorified in American culture, and has been since the 60s and 70s. "Subversiveness" is a virtue. Moreover, the left dominates cultural institutions (media, entertainment, academia, etc)--the idea that any speech is going to be quelled over this seems ridiculous. Anything that one attempts to suppress gets amplified (Streisand Effect).
If conservative parents sue to block the discussion of homosexual content, liberal parents can sue to block the discussion of normatively heterosexual content. The ACLU and other progressive organizations exist for exactly these kinds of cases.
> Any parent that sues over discussing families with one mom and one dad will look like a nutjob and loose,
1. Again, you and I seem to live in very different Americas if you think suing for equality is unpopular. Such a suit would be national news, and the plaintiffs would enjoy unfailingly favorable treatment by the national press (save for Fox News) which famously skews left on precisely these kinds of social issues.
2. IANAL, but I would think it would be relatively straightforward to point to all of the cases where the courts interpreted discussing same sex parents as "teaching sexual orientation". Seems like a slam dunk, and I wouldn't be surprised if lawyers would take the case pro bono just to make a name for themselves with all of the national press coverage.
Agreed. I was all ramped up to be vehemently opposed to the bill, but then I read it (it's only a few pages of giant, monospaced font) and it seems... eminently reasonable. It protects against right-wing indoctrination as well as left-wing indoctrination as it pertains to sexual identity, and it targets a pretty agreeable age range--it still leaves the door open for proselytizing to older students (I'm not convinced this is a good thing, but I appreciate the difficulty of legislating against proselytizing without infringing on legitimate education). I can't understand why anyone would oppose this bill unless they explicitly want to indoctrinate very young children.
> Due to the "Don't Say Gay" nickname some commentators and social media users thought the bill banned mentioning the word "gay" in school classrooms, though the bill does not actually mention the word "gay" or explicitly prohibit its use.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Florida#HB_1557...