Florida has been a leader in commonsense and sanity these past few years. For example, the state did not adopt restrictive and unconstitutional Covid policies regarding wearing masks and having vaccine passports. It opposed the teaching of destructive critical race theory to its students. And now it is attempting to prevent the indoctrination of students in the LGBT agenda and restore the rights of parents.
Over the past few years, numerous left-wing states and school districts across the country have been adopting polices that are severely harming our students. First, they have been adopting policies requiring students to be indoctrinated in the radical LGBT agenda. For example, some states such as Illinois, Colorado, California, New Jersey, and Oregon, explicitly require schools to indoctrinate students as young as 3 years old in this agenda. Second, they have adopted policies squelching the right of parents to be informed about the gender transitioning of their children. For example, policies of school districts in, among other places, Wisconsin and Maryland, forbid school officials from disclosing to parents any information regarding their children’s gender transitioning and the nation’s largest teachers’ union, the National Education Association, recommends this same policy nationwide.
As a result of the harm these radical LGBT policies are having on our children and families, Florida legislators have decided to act decisively. They have just introduced a bill, HB 1577, that would prevent these insane policies from ever being adopted in the state. First, the bill bans indoctrinating primary school students in the radical LGBT agenda or providing students in any grade with inappropriate materials. The bill states:
A school district may not encourage classroom discussion about sexual orientation or gender identity in primary grade levels or in a manner that is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students.
Second, the bill ensures that parents will become aware of any gender or other serious issues affecting their child. The bill provides:
[School boards must] adopt procedures for notifying a student’s parent if there is a change in the student’s services or monitoring related to the student’s mental, emotional, or physical health or well-being and the school’s ability to provide a safe and supportive learning environment for the student. The procedure must reinforce the fundamental right of parents to make decisions regarding the upbringing and control of their children by requiring school district personnel to encourage a student to discuss issues relating to his or her well-being with his or her parent…[School boards] may not prohibit a parent from accessing any of his or her minor child’s education records created, maintained or used by the school district…School district personnel may not discourage or prohibit parental notification of and involvement in critical decisions affecting a student’s mental, emotional, or physical health or well-being.
So far the bill has passed its first hurdle by being reported favorably out of the House Education and Employment Committee on January 20, 2022. Let’s hope that the bill will continue on to become law so that sanity can be protected in the state’s education system and the radical LGBT agenda can be stopped in its tracks.