In the event you have not noticed, the standard operational procedure among the red states is the attempt to one-up the severity of another red state’s attempts to deprive a chosen group of citizens of their Creator endowed and constitutionally protected rights.
Sadly, in the rush to win the contest, legislators make overly broad laws which affect more than the intended victims.
Florida recently passed the Don’t Say Gay law which, actually being a resurrection and reworking of the laws that used to exist to deny Gay students equal educational opportunities and inclusion in all school activities, bans classroom instruction on
“sexual orientation or gender identity in grades one through three or in a manner that is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards”.
The costs to do that would be the responsibility of the district, according.
Not to be left out of the race to the bottom, Louisiana came up with a similar bill which states that it will,
“prohibit classroom discussion about sexual orientation or gender identity in certain grade levels, prohibit teachers and others from discussing their sexual orientation or gender identity with students, and to provide for related matters.”
It goes on to say,
“ Sexual orientation, gender identity; prohibited instruction, discussion. No teacher, school employee, or other presenter shall cover the topics of sexual orientation or gender identity in any classroom discussion or instruction in kindergarten through grade eight. No teacher, school employee, or other presenter shall discuss his own sexual orientation or gender identity with students in kindergarten through grade twelve.”
Even though discussion about sexual orientation and gender identity “in certain grade levels or in a specified manner” is forbidden, neither what constitutes discussion nor what those specific manners are is not defined, parents could sue a school district if they believe there is a violation of any of these vague requirements or restrictions.
As with Florida and the other states who have entered the competition, the bill is vague and more inclusive than the red state legislators realize and reveals the ignorance that these bills are based on.
By definition, sexual orientation is
an enduring pattern of romantic or sexual attraction (or a combination) to persons of the opposite sex or gender, the same sex or gender, or to both sexes or more than one gender.
While these laws are obviously wrong because they ignore the reality that there are some first through third graders whose parents are of the same gender, yet this is to be ignored and any references to it by the teacher is banned, and it does not make clear what “age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate” means, it has a universal and school-crippling application if it is closely looked at because every kid in school has a sexual orientation as do all their parents, teachers, and other school personnel, so such discussions are unavoidable.
Sexual orientation is part of everybody and in relation to students its inclusion in policies protects all students as they all have sexual orientations. However, in their zeal to ostracize some students, teachers, students, and any other school employees cannot have wedding rings, pictures on their desks of family members, and will have to avoid references to their heteronormative family units.
In their race to out-do each other, before writing their bills, in states like these and the others proposing such bills, the sponsors never bothered to look up the definitions.
In their attempts to exercise bigotry based on religious liberty, in attempting to erase certain students, they forgot, or just do not know, that sexual orientation is not a fancy term for Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Nonbinary, but a term equally applied to Heterosexual as well.
Unless they can deny them their rights, a Heterosexual parent of a Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, or Nonbinary child could go after the teacher and the school for mentioning husbands, wives, and children on the campus during school hours while having at least one, most likely more family photos on desks, and presenting all kinds of reading materials, like literature, that speak of Heterosexual relationships (That means you, Romeo and Juliet), holding school dances, Homecoming and Prom Royalty competitions, because doing those things, grades one through twelve, as this is discussing and presenting a sexual orientation, or because elementary school dances and any other activity that would divide students into male and female couples would violate the requirements of age-appropriateness as the students are legally minors and children.
This is how out of control these politically and religiously based laws are. In their haste to hurt some, they did not realize they are hurting all.
The option exists, once they see how vague their present wording is, to make an official list of who in this country has rights and who doesn’t, which students have a full school experience and which don’t, which parents and families count and which don’t.
They do not even take the time to do the research that would define sexual orientation, and this could be because, knowing that such research would also show their assumptions and misperceptions to be wrong, they are presently comfortable in their willing ignorance.
So the choice facing these states, those that have passed the laws and those proposing them, is to devastate the educational experience of all students and their parents or make an official list of those groups of students that will be denied the education and educational experience allowed to other students.
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