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> The law prohibits classroom instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity from kindergarten to grade 3 in Florida public school districts, or instructi

> 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. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Florida#HB_1557_(2022) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Florida#HB_1557...

edrxty 5y ago
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.
- temp8964 5y ago
  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. UPDATE: I just read a news case which is somewhat related to the law: https://www.kentucky.com/news/local/education/article260106195.html https://www.kentucky.com/news/local/education/article2601061... 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.”
  - edrxty 5y ago
    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.
    - temp8964 5y ago
      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.
      - edrxty 5y ago
        I'd say given most schools track records it's better to prevent the onset bullying than it is to just forbid bullying...
    - throwaway894345 5y ago
      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".
  - Jcowell 5y ago
    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.
- seadan83 5y ago
- slibhb 5y ago
  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.
- kolanos 5y ago
  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.
  - edrxty 5y ago
    It's a political cudgel. 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.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - throwaway894345 5y ago
      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?).
- kolanos 5y ago
  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. [0]: https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2022/1557/BillText/Filed/PDF https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2022/1557/BillText/Fil...

edrxty 5y ago

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.

temp8964 5y ago
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. UPDATE: I just read a news case which is somewhat related to the law: https://www.kentucky.com/news/local/education/article260106195.html https://www.kentucky.com/news/local/education/article2601061... 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.”
- edrxty 5y ago
  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.
  - temp8964 5y ago
    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.
    - edrxty 5y ago
      I'd say given most schools track records it's better to prevent the onset bullying than it is to just forbid bullying...
  - throwaway894345 5y ago
    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".
- Jcowell 5y ago
  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.
seadan83 5y ago
slibhb 5y ago
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.
kolanos 5y ago
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.
- edrxty 5y ago
  It's a political cudgel. 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.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - throwaway894345 5y ago
    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?).
kolanos 5y ago
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. [0]: https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2022/1557/BillText/Filed/PDF https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2022/1557/BillText/Fil...