It’s not just Florida. 15 other ‘Don’t Say Gay’-style bills are cropping up nationwide
Tennessee, Kansas, Indiana and Oklahoma are some of the states proposing bills to restrict how LGBTQ+ identity, issues and history are taught in schools.
Since Florida’s House committee passed the Parental Rights in Education bill – known as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill – in January, a national spotlight has turned on the state as it proposes banning school instruction on LGBTQ+ people and issues.
President Biden and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and his husband Chasten condemned the bill as hateful and dangerous; actress Kerry Washington said she was “horrified by what’s happening;” and activists say the law would effectively “erase young LGBTQ students across Florida.”
Yet Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill is one part of a nationwide trend. There are 15 similar bills moving through state legislatures that restrict how textbooks and curriculums teach LGBTQ+ topics, who can be hired and what teachers are allowed to say around gender identity and sexual orientation.
A House bill in Tennessee would ban textbook and instructional materials that “promote, normalize, support, or address lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender (LGBT) lifestyles” in K-12 schools. Another, in Kansas, seeks to amend the state’s obscenity law to make using classroom materials depicting “homosexuality” a Class B misdemeanor. Legislators in Indiana are working to bar educators from discussing in any context “sexual orientation,” “transgenderism” or “gender identity” without permission from parents.
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