Florida “Parental Rights in Education” Bill: Read It For Yourself
The controversial “Parental Rights in Education” bill in Florida, dubbed the “don’t say gay” bill by some, has been signed into law.
Public school teachers in Florida are banned from holding classroom instruction about sexual orientation or gender identity after Florida’s Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, signed the controversial “Parental Rights in Education” bill.
The bill, which some opponents have called “Don’t Say Gay,” was signed by DeSantis on Monday. It reads, “Classroom instruction by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity may not occur in kindergarten through grade 3 or in a manner that is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards.”
Supporters of the legislation say it’s meant to allow parents to determine when and in what way to introduce LGBTQ topics to their children. It also gives parents an option to sue a school district if the policy is violated.
During a press conference ahead of signing the law, DeSantis said teaching kindergarten-aged kids that “they can be whatever they want to be” was “inappropriate” for children.
He said, “It’s not something that’s appropriate for any place, but especially not in Florida.”
DeSantis and other supporters gathered for the bill signing called this messaging “sloganeering” and referred to efforts to educate students about LGBTQ issues as part of “woke gender ideology.”
Read the controversial “Parental Rights in Education” bill for yourself here:
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It is also the position of the DeSantis administration that this “inappropriate” lesson is tantamount to sexually abusing children.
DeSantis and his crew are fundamentally wicked people, and treating them as a part of your in-group is at odds with basic decency.Report
DeSantis and his crew are fundamentally wicked people, and treating them as a part of your in-group is at odds with basic decency.
That ship sailed in 2016.Report
Also, like, I don’t believe for a second that, post-Q, it’s just a wacky coincidence that scum like DeSantis and Christopher Rufo are pushing the line that their political enemies are all secret pedos.Report
Seeing the Transcare play out across the political spectrum is fascinating but dismal. Anti-trans paranoia seems to have a broader base of support in the United Kingdom than it does in other Anglophone countries. This seems mainly because it is entirely associated with the paranoid right in the United States and other Anglophone countries while it has some home among the Left in the United Kingdom. My working theory is that a lot of people that would be deemed dangerous and not fit for mainstream consumption in other English speaking countries got treated as eccentric cranks in the United Kingdom. This primed the British public to be more open to things like TERFdom on a ecumenical level than the United States or Canada where the thing is partisan.Report
Utter bad faith bs by Desantis and all his supporters. The parents can sue bit is so transparently a way to give the haters, paranoids and straight homophobes a club to control schools. Some said the R’s would drop the hate of LBGTQ but that was always naive. All the old bigotries of the right are in full flower.Report
The idea that a group of people who are still fighting the Civil War, and who hate the New Deal and the Civil Rights Act, would somehow accept same sex marriage is…unsupported by evidence.Report
Realistically, DeSantis has got to be the odds-on favorite for the presidency now. Evangelicals may have supported Trump while he was in office, but a fighter who actually wins his fights is going to have a lot of appeal. As for the general election, Biden can’t be expected to run again, Harris would probably poll below Generic Democratic Candidate, and there’s no obvious successor.Report
How exactly did Desantis win when this’ll wind up in courts for years as he’s continually exposing himself to secular middle America as a desperate evangelical panderer?Report
The liberal voter will see him as a desperate evangelical panderer; the conservative voter will see him as a fighter. The moderate / winnable voter will see “don’t say gay” as obviously wrong and “no trans sex ed for kindergarteners” as obviously right. I thought it’d be important to point this out, as I anticipated the thread being mostly comments that opposed the law.Report
Except the defensive discourse over the past month has gone from “that’s not what the law says” to “gays are pedos.” Meanwhile, what the law’s critics warned what would happen is already happening before the law’s even taken effect.
There’s a reason why Trump didn’t touch this during his administration. Desantis will learn why while he’s still looking up at him in the polls.Report
Worth remembering that Pence was so desperate to take Trump’s VP offer because he was looking at losing his Indiana office, mostly due to backlash from anti-trans bathroom laws.
Florida’s law is even dumber, as because it was performance art they made into law — the resulting law means you can sue school districts for using pronouns at ALL, mentioning a teacher is married, or using books that use the term “boyfriend”, girlfriend”, “marriage”, “husband” and “wife” because the barrier to litigation is basically non-existent and the district can’t recover fees.
They may have meant “you can’t admit gay or trans people exist or talk about gay stuff like Timmy having two daddies” but that’ isn’t what they WROTE. What they wrote barred discussion or implication of heterosexuality as well as homosexuality (which means any mention of marriage or dating PERIOD is verboten if it upsets a parent), and the same with gender — which means gendering anyone in any form is the same way.
It’s such a bad law I’m guessing even the most conservative, anti-gay judge in the land would be “I can’t save this mess” and toss it — hence DeSantis trying to pick a fight with Disney to distract.Report
Is there even a good argument FOR teachers bringing up sexual orientation with kindergartners? Maybe I live under a rock or just fell off the onion truck, but, I have no idea why anyone thinks this would be appropriate for 5 to 7 year old kids. Could someone explain it please?Report
A student during show and tell or the like describes her two fathers, Don and Jon.
Another student is confused and asks a question.
Can the teacher answer?Report
A teacher goes away on vacation. When he returns, a student asks what he did.
He says, “I got married and went on my honey moon.”
A student asks, “What is your wife’s name?”
Can he answer, “Actually, he’s my husband, and his name is Harvey?”Report
For that matter, can he answer, “My wife’s name is Diane?”Report
Good point. Could I sue a FL school over instructional materials that depict traditional gender identity norms and sexual orientations?
“All of the fairy tales presented in this kindergarten show only cis gendered straight people and only male/female marriages. This clearly violates the language of the statute.”Report
The link to the bill doesn’t work (or the site is down). I’m trying to find the actual language to figure out how I, as an ECE teacher, would be impacted. But it’s very possible poor wording would do that.Report
I think it’s going to depend on how the courts and the FL dept of education interpret extremely vague language.
The dept of ed. there would probably think nothing of being completely inconsistent to suit an agenda, but if admitting LBGTQ+ people exist is ruled to count as ‘instruction in sexual orientation’, then logically admitting heterosexual people exist should count also.Report
This bill has the new, hot feature of being enforceable by private lawsuit, so the schools will have to accommodate the most litigious parent, or the parent backed by the most litigious pressure group.Report
Yes. That exactly. It’s not “Don’t Say Gay” , it’s “Don’t Say Gay or Moms for Liberty Will Bankrupt Your School”.Report
Absolutely correct here ^^ Although several comments alluded to it, my big takeaway is the potential for inexhaustible lawsuits from any Karen with a problem. In today’s charged climate, it’s very possible we’ll see lawsuits just for the sake of themReport
I never knew anything personal about my teachers. Students ask inappropriate questions all the time, and teachers tell them, “come on, we’re drawing circles today, did everyone draw their circle?”.Report
I generally knew if my teachers were married or single. In most of the smaller towns we lived in when I was a kid I also knew which kids were their children or grandchildren. In a few cases they also made it fairly clear what religion they practiced.Report
Applying that observation to this article, the children would also have known about the local families and probably would already have talked to their parents about anything they might have been confused by.Report
The difference is that now, going forward, when any kids learn about the local family of a teacher who is not straight and ask their parents those questions, the parents can use that as an excuse to sue the school and/or get the teacher fired.Report
I always knew if the woman teachers were married or not by Miss vs. Mrs. though sometime they’d also tell stories about “my husband”, innocuous things like “showed me the right way to saw a board”. If they had kids or grandkids, that usually came up. I don’t think religion did, though it was a clue if they took Jewish holidays off.
But the idea that there was a Chinese wall between their personal life and school seems to have been invented ten minutes ago.Report
The idea that a teacher mentioning their spouse is “inappropriate” is absolutely bizarre and you know it
Teachers have had families forever, have occasionally mentioned them forever, and no one had the slightest problem with it until human garbage like DeSantis needed a wedge issueReport
The director word in the bill is instruction.Report
Great point. I would certainly expect a teacher to be able to answer that question honestly. But is that the same thing as “instruction about sexual orientation or gender identity.”?Report
It’s not obviously not instruction about sexual orientation.
A major problem with the law is vagueness, and that’s exacerbated by the way it’s enforceable by parental lawsuit.Report
Yes, I that makes sense. There must be a lot of mistrust between teachers and parents to make something like this necessary. Or is it just being used as a political wedge issue?Report
I think given the way the rhetoric that the DeSantis admin is using to push it, and the history of the bill went down in terms of amendments, it’s much, much closer to the latterReport
The people pushing this are not people who have any idea of what actually is going on in classrooms.
They never name any existing curriculum that they want stopped, and hide behind bizarre conspiracy theories of grooming and wrap it all up with Orwellian language about parental rights.Report
Or perhaps the people (perhaps on on both sides) are pushing it for political leverage.Report
Descant is and his Republican legislators certainly are.Report
Dude, you can’t “both sides this”.Report
In terms of whether parents will sue you and school board if you answer that question honestly, apparently it is:
https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-politics-and-policy/-cannot-teach-florida-lgbtq-educators-fear-fallout-new-school-law-rcna22106Report
Great example. Thanks. After reading this my next email linked me to this article at Quillette. At the beginning they link to the other side of the story on the type of actual instruction that many people don’t want their kids getting in kindergarten. If this type of thing was taught, I can see how lots of parents would do whatever possible to stop it.
https://quillette.com/2022/03/29/gender-idoelogues-alarming-campaign-to-get-kids-while-theyre-young/Report
Lots of allegations and things in other countries. School boards have always been there for parents to complain to. Q is not the exactly the most non ideological place out there. That piece has a very strong POV so i would not trust it until i saw much more info on the cases in the US.
It’s not like kids haven’t been playing at being different for a long time. Boy’s put on mom’s high heals and clomp around in them. Cute as hell.Report
And this place isn’t the most non ideological either. It has evolved to a progressive echo chamber with a few libertarianish hanger ons. That said, a lot of conservatives truly believe that progressives are trying to force their ideology on kids. This creates an opportunity for politicians (both sides?) to exaggerate and create wedge issues, and the media (both sides?) to get ad-dollar eyeballs.
Can we both agree and understand that some conservatives don’t want teachers teaching CRT or white privilege or black victimology?. They don’t want teachers instructing kindergartners on sexuality. I assume most of them are fine with actual history without a progressive agenda, and with teachers explaining that their partner is a man.
But neither side trusts the other to handle this responsibly, and it probably isn’t. Politics is ruining America, and the pace of damage is accelerating.Report
Given the writers here it is silly to call this a prog echo chamber. Never has been. This also isnt’ a news site. I know what C’s believe. Its hard to answer something that doesn’t exist outside of fever swamps. Again nobody is teaching kindergartners sex or any of the other hot button terms you used.Report
this place is proving that old maxim about how any internet community that doesn’t make “must be conservative” part of its charter will eventually be 100% liberalReport
So, no more Christmas pageants featuring the Virgin?
Amazing how invisible the bias is.
Where “Timmy helped his mom and dad clean out the garage is “nonsexual” but “Timmy helped out his two dads” is SEXYTIME, RAUNCHY SEXXX!”
The idea is that same sex couples exist only as their sexual selves, in a sort of porn universe divorced from family and friends and all the other aspects of normal life.Report
So your concern is that instruction on gender identities and orientation is too easily confused with empirical statements of the same. I guess I see your point. I understand that parents may not want their teacher having instruction on sexual instruction, or holocaust torture or other age inappropriate topics. But I also see the negative ramifications of forcing this via an overly broad regulation.Report
There is no sexual instruction involved if Frank says he is married to a man. None. Nada. Nyet. If i tell you my wifes names is Kim i have not given you any sex instruction.Report
Agreed. None. Evading the question is silly, too. It really seems that there is a disconnect or lack of trust between some parents and some teachers that this wedge issue exists at all.Report
I’d say there are few schools where the parents know the teachers so well that culture warriors can’t prey on wedge issues to drive up distrust. Particularly with parents who spend a lot more time watching talking heads on Fox than actually talking to their child’s teacher.
Also there are parents who already assume that anyone who’s gay is a ‘sexual deviant’, so just the possibility that a teacher might be gay alarms them. Hence DeSantis talking up the ‘grooming’ idea. But secondary to that, a lot of them are also upset by the idea that if a good teacher that the children really like is discovered to be gay, the kids might begin to question the idea that all gay people are bad. (My kids are adults now, but I recall seeing something similar play out years ago with a grade school teacher who admitted being Muslim).Report
No there isn’t a “lack of trust”.
Most parents with children in schools are generally happy with their child’s instruction.
Its the outside ideologues who want to whip up a Satanic Panic to gather political power.Report
No there isn’t a “lack of trust”.
Has this tactic, like, ever worked?Report
Not that actual experience matters but i talk to a lot of parents at work and they all like their kids schools. They also meet with their kids teachers regularly. Heck some parents find PT conferences a pain a wish they didn’t have them. Politics or religion aren’t related.Report
I live in a good part of town too, Greg.
But Colorado Springs District 49 banned CRT a few months back.
Out of curiosity, do you know who Ron Gillham is?Report
Congrats. Fwiw i work with people from very conservative areas like Kenai, Mat Su Valley ( upper palinville) and Fairbanks. Most of the peeps in work with are poor and self represented or are middle class at most. I work with a lot of very religious and conservative people.
I know the name but that is it off the top of my head. He comes from a super conservative part of the state. Kenai is a heavy R area.Report
You and I must run in different circles then. A significant number of parents that I know despise their schools and many have taken their kids out. This is true on my side of the family. On my wife’s side. On people I know from work, and with friends.
Do you not have many conservative friends or family members? Those you do have, what are they saying? Do they agree with you that this is all exaggerated?Report
I live in Alaska so i work with a lot of conservative folks. I have a few conservative family members whose takes are not worth responding to. They tend to fall for every silly story out there.Report
Maybe they believe their takes are worth responding to? Some of these people I mentioned worked in the schools that they pulled their kids out of. They were all devout Christians BTW.
I am not trying to be argumentative, as I know what you mean. I know people who believe crazy things about vaccines, and yet who never even thought about the topic two years ago. On the other side though are people who believe that cops pose some kind of existential threat to young unarmed black men and that George Floyd is proof of that. IOW, people are falling for silly and exaggerated stories on both sides of the aisle, and politicians and media companies are thriving on the Fiction.Report
Of course they like their takes. Good for them. Their takes are the dumbest Facebook memes. Not really bringing any A or B game.
People thought cops were dangerous to black men far before George Floyd. Some of my relatives defended the cops. They are free to do so. I’m free to ignore anything they say about politics.Report
We are no longer in “No there isn’t a ‘lack of trust’.”
We are now in “only dumb people lack trust”.
Where will we be next?Report
We are no longer in “schools are grooming children for sex”
We are now in ‘Well, there must be some reason they are pushing this, maybe its lack of trust”.
Where will we be next?Report
Chip, I did not start from the maximalist position.
I was just noticing, once again, the opening line of “that thing that you’re talking about doesn’t exist”.Report
I started out with “No, there isn’t a lack of trust” and I backed that up.
Meanwhile, no one can seem to offer an actual curriculum that this bill would fix.
But for some strange reason, there are a lot of voices trying desperately to find some way of excusing it or minimizing it.
The idea that the Republicans are just flat out lying to gin up a Satanic Panic gets a lot of vociferous pushback.Report
You went from “no there isn’t a lack of trust” to…
Yeah, that’s a variant of “define it! define it!”
We’re going to get to “it’s good, though” next, if I had to wager.Report
I went from “No there isn’t a lack of trust” to “Hey, here’s the evidence to support that assertion!’
So I’m still at, “No, there isn’t a lack of trust.”Report
“There isn’t a lack of trust!”
I clicked on your link.
I noticed the section with the header (and I’m copy/pasting this): More Americans Dissatisfied With K-12 Education in U.S.
What the hell, Chip.
Could you please *ASSUME* that someone will read what you present them?Report
You obviously didn’t.
Read it again, slower.Report
So we’re moving from “there isn’t” to “there’s not much”?
“Sure, the numbers are moving in the wrong direction but…”?Report
Look, if both sides aren’t the same, some people would have to change their minds.
So it’s time for increasingly elaborate assumptions to prove both sides are the same!.
Florida passes this law, ergo those darn gays have to have done SOMETHING. How do we know? Because Florida passed this law.
Perfectly circular. Nobody has to change their mind, their votes, or admit they’re hanging around with bigots.Report
The usual place we end up on this topic.
A bunch of gaslighting and condemning people for caring about their kids.Report
The schools are not teaching your 8-year-old kids CRT. They are also not grooming your 8-year-old kids, or even teaching them about human sexuality.
However, Donald Trump and his administration did conspire to overturn the election, and the GOP is doing its best to distract from that.Report
The question is did the lack of trust come from something the school did to cause that lack, or did the lack come from outside. Everything I’ve seen surrounding these bills is a generalized moral panic.Report
The question is did the lack of trust come from something the school did to cause that lack, or did the lack come from outside.
Until a couple seconds ago, the question what whether there was a lack of trust at all.
Part of the problem is the effortless movement from “there isn’t a lack of trust” to “the lack of trust is not the schools’ fault” without any acknowledgment that, okay, the statement that there isn’t a lack of trust was false.Report
Who’s saying there isn’t a lack of trust? You’ve neatly sidestepped my question.Report
Who’s saying there isn’t a lack of trust?
It happened right up here.
I will copy and paste this part:
Report
OK, that was Chip. I think he and I are on the same page, mostly. Sure, there is a lack of trust now, but was there one before this ginned up controversy?Report
If my facebook is any indication (and given how conservaitve it is from my youngest cousins to my oldest relatives, former teachers, and childhood friends’ parents, it probably is), most of the lack of trust isn’t between parents and schools, but between grandparents/great grandparents and schools.Report
There have been ginned up controversies for as long as I can remember and I remember hearing stories of previous ginned up controversies from decades prior.
When it comes to the whole “lack of trust” thing, I think that there is an occasional bad action by a teacher or school district here or there and it gets blown up into a national story. When local parents hear the story and challenge local schools and ask “are we doing anything like this?”, the responses are mostly “hurray! An opportunity to tell parents that WE HAVE BEEN SENDING THEM STUFF FOR YEARS AND THEY SHOULD READ IT!” but there is the occasional circling of the wagons that presents identically to having something to hide and then that gets blown up into a national story too.
There are some schools that have introduced bad DEI into the curriculum. And this makes parents who mostly want the three ‘r’s for their kids into ones who start reading the emails from the excitable parents sharing clips of McAuliffe.Report
What I’m getting from this comment is the state should feel compelled to legislate based on the actions of a few outliers who react negatively to being accused of doing something they’re not actually doing. Honestly, if that’s what’s happening they’re stealing their paychecks.Report
I think that some of the outliers are doing stuff that even they would agree was, technically, outside of the official policy.
And the bad DEI? Well, that’s just going to end up making everybody having to defend stuff they don’t want to defend. “This is an outlier! Most schools aren’t doing this! Besides, the teacher got fired!”
Honestly, if that’s what’s happening they’re stealing their paychecks.
Yep.
And people will stand in line to give politicians even more power, for some reason.Report
Should we legislate based on the outliers on the other side?
Like, should we pass laws that say you can’t refer to slaves as ‘immigrants’?
Like, should we pass laws that outlaw corporal punishment?
Nah… let’s focus on a whole slew of laws because someone gave out rainbow bracelets.Report
Should? Probably not.
Will? If the last fifty billion times are any indicator, I believe that we will, yes.
Do you believe that we will not?Report
Well then, maybe we can expect the [checks notes] 19 states that allow corporal punishments in public schools and [checks notes again] 48 states that allow it in private schools to pass laws SOON!
And before you say, “Well, those are archaic laws that don’t impact anyone these days because no one actually does it…”
109,000 students were physically punished in schools during the 2013-14 school year.
In 2011-12, 70% of students subjected to it hailed from 5 states (Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi, Texas).
I can keep pulling out stats if you want to really think about what motivates our lawmakers. Or we can keep pretending they really care about kids and that is why they pass the laws they do and the laws they don’t.Report
I checked. Florida is among the states that legally allows corporal punishment in public schools.
So, in Florida, they trust teachers and admin to decide if, when, who, and how to physically discipline children but do not trust those same people to answer the question “How did Sammy’s two uncles marry each other?”
Think about that.Report
Well then, maybe we can expect (example)
Are you basing that expectation on the last 50 billion times?Report
50 billion times what happened exactly?
Again, Florida allows corporal punishment in schools, doesn’t allow acknowledging the existence of gays.
For the children.Report
Basically, looking at the last however many times something happened and extrapolating out from that and making a reasonable guess about what will happen next based on the previous things done.
It’s not 100% accurate, of course. It’s an inductive argument, not a deductive one.
But it’s how I concluded that politicians will pass new laws based on outliers.Report
Ron Howard voice:
This is not, in fact, why they are passing this law.Report
“This isn’t like the last 50 years of American Politics!”
Mmm hmm.Report
So then the 109K kids subjected to corporal punishment… the 70K in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi, and Texas alone… the 35K in just Mississippi and Texas!… are those not outliers? I mean, I guess there were tens of thousands of them. The laws didn’t change.
So… I look at Florida… I see that it is a state that allows teachers and school administrators to physically discipline students. This is happening. I also see that it is a state that is trying to curtail conversations about sex and sexuality and gender and gender identity based on supposed outliers… but… what are those outliers?
I mean, we probably need to define outlier, right?
A teacher spanking a student? Not an outlier! No action is needed.
A teacher giving out pride bracelets? Well, that’s the sort of behavior we just can’t tolerate. There oughta be a law!
We’re back to the Overton Window thing… and in Florida, within the Overton Window is spanking children in schools and outside of it is acknowledging the existence of gay humans.Report
I imagine that this is a law that Democrats would be able to run on.
Imagine the commercials! “Governor Bagadonuts APPROVES of Mexican students being whipped! Vote for Johnny Rigamarole.” “I’m Johnny Rigamarole and I approve this message.”
To be honest, I see that Democrats aren’t even trying to change this as a failure on their part, don’t you?Report
I consider anyone who supports corporal punishment in school to be guilty of a pretty major moral failure.
This includes yourself. Because rather than actually consider what is right or wrong, you focus on what is politically popular.
Well, you do this when you agree with what is politically popular.
Glad to know that you, Jaybird, are okay with children being spanked in school by untrustworthy teachers, teachers so untrustworthy that we should not allow them to so much as acknowledge the existence and normalcy of gay people, damaging the mental health of so many students.
Please, continue to never have children.Report
“I consider anyone who supports corporal punishment in school to be guilty of a pretty major moral failure.”
Did he say that, dickhead?
No, not “it’s just like”. Where did he say those words?
“Please, continue to never have children.”
You deserved what you got from her.Report
Strong BSDI argument. R’s do terrible things so WHATABOUTTHEDEMS.Report
I find it hard to believe that policies for dealing with this aren’t already in place.Report
Hey, as we saw in Ohio, they *ARE* in place.
But politicians only know how to pass another law.Report
Hear, hearReport
70% of parents are satisfied with their schools.
If someone wants to say that indicates a lack of trust, they just wrong.
They can’t actually point to any bad curriculum, so they have do the Creationist thing of ferociously litigating every irrelevant detail in a desperate attempt to attack the victim.Report
No, it isn’t our “circles”.
Gallup has spoken to parents:
https://news.gallup.com/poll/354083/parents-remain-largely-satisfied-child-education.aspx#:~:text=It%20was%2072%25%20in%202020,reading%20of%2082%25%20in%202019.
Parental satisfaction with their children’s schools hovers around 70% and that number hasn’t changed much in 20 years.Report
Sigh. Now i’m bitter about not saying that i try to run in straight lines. Running in circles is boring. Heavy sigh.Report
Here is one story of a teacher quiting after a complaint that he mentioned his husband. No sex orientation, just said he got married. He didn’t have to quite tbf and the school stood up for him. But what happens when a lawsuit follows just mentioning a guy having a husband. Why should he even have to discuss it??? It should be a non event.
https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-politics-and-policy/-cannot-teach-florida-lgbtq-educators-fear-fallout-new-school-law-rcna22106Report
Kids are aware families exist. They are also aware boys and girls exist.
At that young age, they are being exposed — often for the first time — to other children who have different family dynamics. So one of the things schools teach is basic socialization, which includes the (common sense to adults but NOT to 6 year olds) that “Families are different”.
Some have two parents, some have one. Some have lots of siblings, some have none. Some have a dad and a mom, or two moms, or two dads. Some live with grandparents or older siblings. They’re all families.
There you go, the thing that drove DeSantis to write a law that banned “Beauty and the Beast” from the classroom. (Because it showcases the sexual orientation of Belle, which is verboten if anyone cares to sue).Report
Good point. The bill refers to instruction.Report
Good point. The bill refers to instruction. Now if a teacher has a Private Life that’s their own business but if that teacher is telling my child homosexuality is perfectly fine that’s counter to the religious teachings and beliefs in my household. It’s up to the parents to guide that child on morality not the teacher. Where’s inclusivity for that?Report
One thing that sets apart the “Don’t Say Gay” bill from the anti-CRT bills from the last year is that it’s one single bill that’s awful (vague and with an enforcement mechanism that makes it worse).
The anti-CRT bills ran the gamut, with some being quite bad, most being kinda poor, and a couple being Good, Actually.Report
I suppose it will be the first of many such bills. The CRT thing and this really reflects a mistrust between some parents and schools. I think conservatives believe that progressives believe that control of schools, colleges, the media is essential to the transformation of minds. This is the conservatives pushing back, awkwardly.
I continue to see a rift growing between the parties that is tearing us apart. Not sure how it ends well.Report
It contributed. I think that’s what made it a good political issue for the Right.
Anyway the bills that actually were fine focused on banning stuff that schools absolutely shouldn’t teach. They wouldn’t have actually banned teaching the actual real thing that is Critical Race Theory, funnily enough, but they would have banned teaching that one race is better than another, to which a natural response is, “Isn’t that illegal already?!”Report
Well said.Report
Personally I think parents are increasingly being put in no win situations. Laws like this are IMO abhorrent. They don’t help anyone and are very likely to result in real injustices against teachers. Gay teachers just living their lives pose no threat to anyone and it’s offensive to imply otherwise.
At the same time I think there is a real class of DEI soaked people intent on bringing a set of nutty ideas into every walk of life, and who have no compunction about overstepping their bounds with other peoples’ children. Not as some sort of ‘groomer’ or whatever BS but in a sense of pushing a particular set of values beyond what is ever appropriate for a state actor. It’s a very fine line and my guess is it’s way, way fewer people than some LibsOfTikTok montage would suggest. Nevertheless they exist and as a parent it’s hard for me to express the outrage I’d feel if my son was subjected to it, even if it’s a one in a thousand. I’m not kidding when I say I’d never have anything to do with a public school again and it would become a major motivating political issue for me.
Social conservatives of course feed on that to try to backdoor undo a bunch of real and valuable progress that’s been made over the last 20 years. I hate it and I hate that there does not seem to be a clear path out of the dynamic. The most important people, students and the parents who pay for the public services, are not being well served.Report
“I hate that rightwinges are using Satanic sex cults as a wedge issue, but I just wish liberals would take the threat of Satanic sex cults seriously. I know there’s not many Satanic sex cults, but if it saves even one child…”
The clear path you are looking for is to find a real, actual curriculum that you think it inappropriate, and have it removed.
Wringing your hands and trying to see both sides of a lynch mob is not productive.Report
What makes you think it’s not already an issue where I live? It is.Report
The basis of this panic is that Awful Things are happening, happening in your schools, happening to your children and you should be afraid, very afraid.
Are there Awful Things happening in your children’s’ school?
Like, something concrete you can offer as an example, preferably one which a bill like this would fix?
Or, like all such panics, is the devil simply hiding in the shadows but you are certain he is really there, you just know it.Report
I really don’t think InMD could have been much clearer that he doesn’t think laws like the one in FL are a solution to his problem or any other.Report
I’ve said before in these debates that Ibram Kendi himself has been retained for an audit of the school system where I live and is charged with recommending a program. I can only assume that means at least some of the people in charge endorse his racism and damaging agenda. The websites for every school system in the DC area include rederences to his work and the work of similar people. I also have no reason to believe the blow ups in VA stop at the river. I don’t see why I need to wait for a specific incident when the ideology is here and being advertised.Report
What is that ideaology translating to in actual classrooms? Mr. Kendi may well be auditing things, a nd he may issue recommendations. Some will likely be adopted because, hey, they improve things. Some won’t because, hey, they make things work. Most will be unfunded and so functionally pointless.Report
I missed InMD’s previous rundowns and link sets, and I might well feel differently after reviewing them, but I’d be much more worried about the cost of high profile consultants providing dubiously useful guidance than I would about the ideological bent of those consultants.Report
Agreed.Report
Someone whose basic philosophy on how to address matters of race (or sex or whatever else) requires actions that are almost certainly illegal under existing federal and state law should not even be at the metaphorical table. That this is apparently not blindingly obvious to the powers that be is exactly where these issues of trust arise. I agree that the most likely outcome is blowing taxpayer money on nothing, not the stuff of right-wing fever dreams. But again, the fact that we even need to have the conversation is troubling, especially when avoiding it altogether is really low hanging fruit.Report
There’s nothing in Kendi’s ideaology, or his scholarship that hints at or downright suggests violating existing laws. There is a lot that pointedly says those laws are part of the problem. Its an important distinction.Report
I do not believe that is a credible distinction. Not in practice and not with respect to what the mission of the institutions in question. If you’re really concerned about laws like this, and I think there is in fact some reason to be, the best way to prevent them is to stop indulging these people who add no value to anything to begin with.Report
I’d think eliminating the threat ambiguity would be a great first step.
A lot—not all, but a lot—of resistance is coming from people on the Left who, with no small justification, believe these pushes are a part of a coherent Rightward campaign to make both homophobia and racism acceptable again.
And while I grant that there were some motte “anti-CRT” bills that really just ban teaching racism, others went full on bailey, in ways that would make it very difficult to teach about why the South started the Civil War.
In general, if you want a political coalition that welcomes people who are worried about the impact DEI is having on their school, there is no connection between those doubts and the poison Christopher Rufo is peddling.Report
I do not support the Rufo agenda and I agree with your general point that the stuff I really have an issue with is already illegal. My guess is most of the CRT laws will be either held unconstitutional or interpreted in such a way that doesn’t do anything differently than laws that were already on the book. As with this particular law it’s obvious to me that conservative politicians and activists have identified an ideological weakness in the left that really metastasized during the Trump years and are using that motte, which is a real issue, to try to retake a bunch of territory they (IMO rightly) lost over the last few decades.
So there’s my disclaimer. But just because I don’t support that agenda doesn’t mean there isn’t a real issue here. I do think a lot of school districts and corporations and other institutions are eventually going to have to be sued or embarrassed into changing course. To the extent we’re talking about larger political struggles I have no idea why anyone is interested in giving this gift to the right when great public schools should be a cornerstone of the case for the broader left. The Kendi-DiAngelo style DEI philosophy/grift amounts at heart to an attack on quality. It boggles my mind that there is anyone interested in defending that (and to be clear I am not saying you are).Report
My point is simply that the question ISN’T whether to indoctrinate or not to indoctrinate. It’s what to indoctrinate. And further, it’s how should we handle disagreements between what schools want to indoctrinate and what parents want them to.
Some of these disagreements will be minor and will likely be best handled by one side or the other just grinning-and-bearing it. Others will be much larger and will require collaboration, compromise, and/or concessions.
And we can’t pretend there is a clear and easy line between “These are the values we all more or less agree on and those are the fringe ones we don’t so stick to the former.” It’s not that simple.
Take kindness. We would probably all agree that schools should promote kindness and seek to instill this as a value, especially with young children. We wouldn’t argue about books that encourage kids to be kind to one another.. to share and to use their words to resolve disputes and all that. We would want teachers to step in if kids were calling each other jerks or buttheads or whatever.
But imagine a transgender child who feels intentional misgendering by using non-preferred pronouns is unkind… feels the same as a kid called a butthead. Well now what? Do we promote kindness and encourage kids to use their preferred pronouns? Or is that fringey ideological indoctrination?
What if a teacher has many Asian students with names the teacher struggles to pronounce so the teachers opts for Anglicized versions, against the wishes of the students? Can we sit that teacher down for a training and ask them to adjust their behavior? Or is that wokeness run amok?
I’m not defending any one particular set of values or the means to pursue them. But if you think this stuff is easy, I can tell you from being in the teaching trenches, it sure as heck isn’t.Report
I don’t think these are difficult hypos. For young children you use the names the parent registers the child with. If there is a question about it you ask the parents and respect their wishes.Report
YOU don’t think they are but can you envision a scenario where that teacher is on FNC talking about how she was threatening with firing because she didn’t want to attend an excessively woke DEI training? Or the parents of classmates of the transgender child who insist their children are being forced by the school to celebrate transgender pride?
What then? Tell all those folks to just grin and bear it because we really aren’t asking much and they’re overreacting?Report
A story from two days ago:
If *I* were a substitute teacher handing out pride bracelets to students, I would first consider “is this an election year?”Report
Which is precisely what oppression looks like and what the bill is intended to do.Report
Looks like, in this case, it happened in Ohio. A state without one of these laws.
I imagine it’ll have one of these laws shortly.Report
I wonder what the policy was.
My sons’ school gives out “Choose to be nice” bracelets. Wonder if that would violate the same policy.Report
I’m going to go out on a limb and say “no, it wouldn’t”.Report
“ Huntington Local School District Superintendent Peter Ruby released a statement on Sunday, saying Bowman violated board policies by speaking about personal beliefs, “political and religious topics, as well as distributing bracelets.”
“While we recognize there are diverse points of view on this matter, this policy exists for the purpose of ensuring all students feel comfortable in the classroom,” Ruby said in a letter to the school community.
Asked if the district considers LGBTQ topics to be religious or political, Ruby told CNN, “There were a number of topics he spoke to students about (religious and political) more than just LGBTQ+ issues.”
Could have been the bracelets. Could have been comments on LGBTQ matters. Could have been something else.
A ban on teachers discussing personal beliefs?! Nope… no potential for abuse there.Report
He said he didn’t know the rule about the bracelets. That implies that he knew about the rule against personal beliefs. So he handed out pride bracelets and then I imagine feigned surprise when the kids asked him what pride means, then pushed his agenda, then when he got fired he said is was about the bracelets. A substitute teacher with no agenda who has had nearly 40 kids come out to him over his career (because of the lifelong bonds students make with substitute teachers, I’m sure).Report
Wow… lots of assumptions there. Anyway…
Here is a link to the full statement from the Superintendent: https://abc6onyourside.com/news/local/chillicothe-area-gay-teacher-loses-job-after-he-gives-pride-bracelets-to-students
It also appears he released a video statement though I’m not able to watch/listen to it right now.
I’m not going to push back on the school district’s decision here. So if that is what you want to argue about, find someone else.
What I would push back on is a school policy that “restrict[s] staff from discussing with students certain subjects, including political, religious and personal beliefs.” My hunch is that the policy is probably laid out in more detail in either their policy/handbook and/or their CBA (if the teachers are unionized) and I’d be really curious to see what that says. But as stated here, those would be very difficult circumstances to work under.
I recognize the impact teachers can have on kids. Heck, it’s why I do what I do. So I take seriously my responsibility to create an environment that is comfortable for all. I’m fairly confident that no one who wasn’t already gay became gay because that teacher gave our bracelets. I’m also fairly confident I wouldn’t have given out bracelets, even if it wasn’t against policy. Maybe I would have had them available for students who asked for one. But I do see how giving them to everyone could be interpreted by a kid in a way that could leave them uncomfortable.
But that door needs to swing both ways. If I’m going to be mindful that some kids might be discomforted by being given a pride bracelet unsolicited, I’m also going to be mindful that some kids might be discomforted by a prohibition on acknowledging the existence of gay humans. So if I’m going to let one kid talk about his Uncle Adam and Aunt Eve’s wedding I’m also going to let another kid talk about his Uncle Adam and Uncle Steve’s wedding. And if I’m not going to allow the latter, I’m also not going to allow the former.
Which environment would you rather your kid be in? The one where any kid can share about a family wedding? Or the one where no kid can?Report
Which is the goal, that equality of rights for LGBTQ people is now a “personal belief”- Something debatable, something upon which teachers should avoid discussing.
And that teachers are supposed to be always afraid, always second guessing their curriculum for fear of implying that gay people are equal or deserving of human dignity.Report
I don’t know if you’re doing this deliberately, but you’re putting some of the debate under the category of rights that never used to be there. Strategically it makes sense, and I can understand how it could easily happen if someone is in a framework of treating all ideas and actions as equal, but it’s an extension of the idea of rights to include praise. You can’t praise something without a value judgment. This is one of those subtle, I guess, distinctions that makes a huge difference.Report
Who was praising what?Report
This argument can be used to de-legitimate any right anybody asserts ever.Report
This happened in a state that did *NOT* have this law yet, Kazzy.Report
I’m aware. But it happened within a district that “restrict[s] staff from discussing with students certain subjects, including political, religious and personal beliefs.”
I’m not sure what your comment has to do with anything I said.Report
Does your school district have such a policy?
I’m pretty sure that most school districts do.
And if they don’t yet, give it a couple of months.Report
Again… what’s that got to do with anything I wrote?Report
A ban on teachers discussing personal beliefs?! Nope… no potential for abuse there.
I think it has to do with these policies attempting to limit the potential for abuse.
Also: I suspect that your districts over by you have a similar policy.Report
So you think these policies are good? And that they won’t be abused by administrators?
My school encourages us to share about our personal selves. In fact, we just had Family Week where we all shared photos and stories about our families.Report
Compared to what? The “teachers can talk about whatever they want without any guidelines and we’ll trust their best judgment” policy?
I’m not in a “good” or “bad” camp.
I’m in a “what the heck did you expect?” camp.
And, as far as I can tell, the overreach by a few bad apples is going to result in policies, policies, and more policies all over the country.Report
If only there was a rule in between those two. Hm.
I don’t expect schools to enact policies that are harmful to kids.Report
Yes.
What can a gay man expect, in America in 2022, when he hands out pride bracelets to his class.
To be treated as a full equal in society?Report
“Laws like this are IMO abhorrent.”
Laws like this are what you get when parents say “I don’t feel good about this” and people rush from all over the country to explain to them how that means they’re the REAL problem.Report
Republican activists and politicians, as always, lack agency, much less any expectation that they conform to the bare minimum standards of human decencyReport
“I think that this should change.”
“Why don’t you try to change it?”
“Oh, so I’m the only one with any agency?”Report
GOP activists and pols decided to change things to address parent concerns?
OK sure that’s how politics works.
Wanna blame libs/Dems/whoever for being non-responsive?
Sure that happens too.
But when the actual bills they cough up are clear pretexts for discriminating against LGBT teachers and students, and the rhetoric they use to defend them is a mix of naked bigotry and barely controlled conspiricism, well, it’s both obnoxious and foolish to blame the libs for that.
Republican electeds could write better bills, and they could defend and advance them in less repugnant ways, and their failure to do either is entirely on them.Report
This seems like an opportunity to push back with a clear moral vision of your own.
I think that part of the problem is that after a long enough period of arguing “this is *NOT* up for debate”, you’re going to find out that it’s not. And coming up with weird hypotheticals to defend against outliers.
Did you hear that Ohio is voting on it’s own “Don’t Say Gay” bill shortly?Report
OK, sure, but how does a failure to do so effectively make what DeSantis and crew are doing any better?
And if you build an entire set of parallel media institutions devoted to catastrophizing and outright lying about awful stuff the libs are doing, you may find that libs simply don’t take your complaints seriously.
Sounds like a great time to scold the libs, just like the 364 other days of the year.Report
OK, sure, but how does a failure to do so effectively make what DeSantis and crew are doing any better?
It depends on how you feel about multiculturalism. If your vision of a really good society is one where everybody agrees on moral questions, well, you need to do a better job of getting other people to conform.
If you’re okay with different cultures living together, well, you’re going to have some of them that have reached different conclusions than you have when it comes to moral questions.
So “any better?” becomes “according to whose culture?”
And if you build an entire set of parallel media institutions devoted to catastrophizing and outright lying about awful stuff the libs are doing, you may find that libs simply don’t take your complaints seriously.
Libs need to figure out how to limit the extent to where democracy can extend its tendrils, then.
Sounds like a great time to scold the libs, just like the 364 other days of the year.
It’s only worth scolding if it was avoidable.
If libs don’t have any agency, this was merely inevitable.Report
The defection that DeSantis is engaged in is against the very principles that allow different cultures to live together.
The political opening for DeSantis’ response may be one where the libs could have acted differently to avoid it, though it’s actually unclear because the messaging behind the bill has been so bigoted, and the bill itself is such vaguely written trash.
But the actual quality of the political response is on DeSantis.
Back when CRT was the panic, for example, different states tried different responses. One class of response was to ignore it as a non-issue, but another class of response was to pass legislation that would just prevent the examples that were driving the panic.
Even if you believe the examples were overblown, in the process of being handled adequately, or straight-up fabricated, the policy response was superfluous at worst,
beneficial at best.
Other legislative responses were hot stinky garbage, clearly designed to sabotage any attempt to teach an accurate history of American racism.
And it’s that difference in policy responses where the agency of the Republican activists and politicians lies. Some did well, others did badly.Report
What exactly is the moral vision you are bringing to this discussion?
It certainly isn’t “This bill is abhorrent because gay people should be full and equal participants in our culture” because you haven’t said that, not even once.
Instead the only moral sentiment you seem to express is “Well those guys just overreached and got what’s coming to them”.Report
Oh, I’m not bringing one. I’m bringing a cynical “you want democracy? You got it” vision.
My attempt at trying to convince people of a moral vision crashed and burned back in 2015.
Now I’m in the “this game is iterated and you haven’t figured out what repeated defections mean yet” phase.
“Got what’s coming to them” implies an ought or a should. I’m trying to avoid implying any ought or should beyond “you ought to game this out” or “you should really game this out”.Report
If your response to a lynch mob is to declare your cynical indifference and prattle about game theory, maybe take a moment to how persuasive a message that really is.Report
Well, lemme know when you’re more interested in changing things than letting me know that you’re moral and I’m immoral.Report
Right because that’s what this is all about, isn’t it, you and your feelings.
A lynch mob is targeting innocent people and your only comment is to proudly make your cynical indifference the center of attention.
Like, we’re all supposed to turn our attention away from the teachers being fired and persecuted, and admire the cynical indifferent bystander and his sage observations about how the victim had it coming and should really have played the game better.Report
No, it’s not about my feelings at all. I think that if there are feelings involved, it’s the feelings of the people voting for this stuff.
Like, we’re all supposed to turn our attention away from the teachers being fired and persecuted, and admire the cynical indifferent bystander and his sage observations about how the victim had it coming and should really have played the game better.
Well, if your goal is your self-image, you’re doing great. Keep it up!
If your goal is changing things, you’ll probably want to try a new framing.
Lemme know.Report
Let me put it this way:
Let’s say I up and disappeared. Poof. Gone. I got hit by a bus, maybe.
Would this problem still exist?
If so, berating me into agreeing with you ain’t gonna fix it. Shaming me into at least not disagreeing with you ain’t gonna fix it.
Now, believe it or not, I know that if you up and disappeared, this problem would still exist too. So this isn’t really about your feelings either.
That said, I think that the disconnect about how to even talk about this is representative of the problem down there. I think that much of it has to do with the lack of a shared moral language and appealing to to one’s own without taking into consideration the language of another.
The attitude that one shouldn’t have to is the one that I’ve seen multiple times before. In the past, when I’ve seen that attitude, it has usually ended up being wrong.Report
So, your big insight that you’d like to share is, “they’re all stupid”?
You keep talking about how to fix things, without bothering to articulate what that might entail, as if you have some super sekrit strategery that you haven’t shared with us.
This would be a good time to tell us.Report
No, it’s that there is not a shared moral language. There’s also an inability to recognize previous defections in the iterated game.
(Personally, I see this ending in divorce or war.)
“What’s your solution?”
“Well, I think you need to change a few things.”
I imagine that that conversation will go the same way the last dozen did.Report
You don’t have an idea of what to do, but you’re pretty sure everyone else is doing it wrong.
Are you open to the idea that maybe the victims of oppression didn’t do anything wrong?
And that maybe the forces of oppression need to be forcefully opposed?
Because right now all your talk about iterations and games doesn’t seem useful.Report
I have a handful of ideas of what to do but they’re less interesting than the question of whether anything should be done at all.
If the starting baseline is “I DO NOT NEED TO CHANGE COURSE!”, my argument of “here, look at this detailed map that we need to follow” is me being a bonehead thinking that maps matter when the interesting discussion is whether we need to change at all.
Personally, I think that there need to be some changes. Perhaps even some mistakes acknowledged as being mistakes that should not have been made. And not in a “well, everybody makes mistakes” way either.
But if we can’t even get that far, I’m not seeing the point.
(Hey, as you get more and more into helping the victims of oppression, how do you see your numbers improving? Do you think that they’re going up among the victims of oppression? Is that something measurable, do you think?)Report
Your big input is that everyone needs to admit they’re wrong?
And you refuse to say what is right, but, boy those guys are all being so stubborn in not admitting how wrong they are, which of course is why you aren’t willing to share your sekrit plan?
And you’re lecturing us on How To Do Politics?Report
I have a handful of ideas of what to do but they’re less interesting than the question of whether anything should be done at all.
This is almost certainly true, but not for the reasons given.Report
Your big input is that everyone needs to admit they’re wrong?
No. My big input is that if we cannot admit that we do not want to be here, than any suggestions of changes we need to make are silly.
(Personally, I see this ending in divorce or war.)
Do we need marriage counseling in the first place?
If you don’t think we do, I’m not sure that my plan on how to make things better in the marriage will bear any fruit whatsoever.Report
“free speech culture” ????Report
At this point? I’m not sure anybody wants it.
If you’re pretty sure that you’d be the one in charge of passing the laws dictating what can and cannot be said, why in the hell would you give your opponents the benefit of free speech?Report
LOL. I love me some free speech. And i can tell which laws are gunning for it. And R’s are going after it hard which is far far different then people yammering at each other loudly.Report
As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, this debate is driven by two different dynamics: (1) elevating the imaginary rights that no one has over the actual rights of real people; (2) taking on the English Department or some silly college students is a much easier, cheaper, and lower-risk way to pose as a paladin of free speech than taking on the real powers doing the real damage.Report
We’re in “moving from a higher trust to a lower trust” situation. (I don’t want to get into the “when were we ever ‘high trust’?” argument so I phrased that the change was happening positionally rather than absolutely.)
The two main things I’d want to address involve stopping the slide in the bad direction and then, once that first one is accomplished, moving the climb in the good direction.
I imagine, like in any bad marriage, the conversation would be “X happened.” “WHAT ABOUT Y? WHAT ABOUT Z? WHAT ABOUT ALEPH? I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT X! THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT!”
(Which is sort of why I’m suspicious that this ends in divorce or war.)Report
You see divorce or war as the two options so it seems like you are fitting facts to those outcomes.
It seems easier to just be against governments infringing on free speeching. The R’s are flooring in the bad direction which seems bad.Report
Well, I see divorce or war or compromise as the three options.
I just have been told often enough that compromise is not on the table that I’ve started believing it and looking at the other two.Report
Ahh i see. I didn’t know there were three whole options and one is apparently off the table. I missed that meeting. Let me update my priors. I’m sure both sides are equally at fault for not compromising. Damn LBGTQ’s who won’t compromise on being fully accepted citizens.Report
See, that’s why I generally don’t include it.
Like, if you’re in marriage counseling, and the counselor opens with discussing compromise, starting with “MY PARTNER NEEDS TO COMPROMISE ON THE FOLLOWING THINGS!” is generally a bad sign.
“What are you willing to compromise on?” having the response of “I don’t need to compromise, they need to compromise” tells me that compromise is not on the table.
“Should it be?” might be an interesting question, I guess.
But if the answer is “not for me, only for them”, I’m back to the whole “divorce or war” thing.Report
This is the brilliant political insight I guess.
That being allowed to live as a free person is a debatable item, something that must be open to compromise.
If you refuse to compromise, well then, you have no one to blame but yourself for whatever ensues.Report
Some marriages weren’t made to last.
It’s not anybody’s fault, really.Report
Maybe throttle back on the “Allow me to school you on the mistakes you are making in politics ” kinda stuff, because, damn.Report
Um, Chip? My opening was the cynical “I don’t think that this is going to work out” place.
When pressed, I was asked to describe what needed to change. My response was “well, we have to open with that we don’t want to be *HERE*” and, from there, if we can’t even say that, I don’t think that this is going to work out.
So I’m not even schooling you on your mistakes yet.
If we want to go through the 12 Steps, first you have to admit that you have a problem.
If you don’t want to admit that you have a problem, I don’t see the benefit of coming up with a list of amends that might need made.
Why in the hell do you need to make amends? It’s everybody else who has the problem!Report
Are you the one admitting you have a problem?
Or is it the rest of us that you think need to admit we have a problem?Report
Chip, I think that both parties have a problem.
We seem to be in a place where we whipsaw between choosing the least awful of the two parties (defined as “the one not actively in power”).
This is not healthy.Report
So, both parties need to admit they have a problem, and further, both parties need to admit to making mistakes, and then and only then can they begin working on finding a compromise on basic human rights for gays.
Who of course, should accept that they overreached and should have expected what is happening to them.
Hey, this is certainly an opinion and you’re entitled to it.
I just don’t see “they both have problems” as particularly insightful or the “overreach/ compromise” aspect grounded in any sort of understanding of how people in America think or really, any grasp of liberal democracy or how politics works, at all.Report
No, Chip. I’m not saying that either party needs to do *ANYTHING*.
I’m saying that I see this ending up in divorce or war.
Now, if we see divorce and/or war as bad things that we’d want to avoid, then the question comes “what should we do to avoid them?”
And if the answer to that last question is “nothing” well, then I’m back to seeing this end up in divorce/war.
“But what do you think we should *DO*?”
“Answer the question of whether we want to avoid divorce/war?”
“BUT WHAT ABOUT THEM?”
“Fair enough.”Report
If we want to go through the 12 Steps, first you have to admit that you have a problem.
If you want to advance the argument in this direction, I think it would help a lot to characterize the problem we’re supposed to admit we have more precisely instead of just vaguely gesturing at it.
You know the thing about that first step?
It’s about admitting to a very specific sort of problem.
But if you just want me to admit I have a problem, well, sure, I have a problem:
I often have trouble stopping with the second slice of pizza even though I know I shouldn’t have a third.Report
Well, we seem to be moving in the direction from a higher trust/collaboration to a lower trust/collaboration.
Do we agree on that much?
Because, if we don’t, then we don’t even have shared facts.Report
I’m not sure we do. Because trust and collaboration don’t exist independently the people who are trusting and collaborating with each other.
So which specific relationships are becoming less trusting?Report
Well, I’m seeing stuff like laws telling teachers “Don’t talk about stuff like X” as indicators of a lack of trust.
And the more of these laws that pop up, the more of these indicators that there are.
Another indicator I use is the whole “if you had to compromise, would you?” question and see if the immediate comeback is “I WILL NOT COLLABORATE WITH THEM UNLESS THEY COMPROMISE WITH ME” (or some variant).
I can probably dig up some examples of that sort of thing if you want them.Report
OK so the argument is that there’s a lack of trust in (public school) teachers. Somehow this lack of trust in teachers leads to “divorce or war”.
Man I really wonder how we survived all those years with the DMV.Report
No.
The argument is that we seem to be moving in the direction from a higher trust/collaboration to a lower trust/collaboration.
Above I included this parenthetical: (I don’t want to get into the “when were we ever ‘high trust’?” argument so I phrased that the change was happening positionally rather than absolutely.)Report
I would say the best way to view what’s going on is the collateral damage of asymmetric war over public policy as it touches on culture. The right for a number of reasons (the big two being establishment clause and decline of religion) has lost the ability to win fights in the cultural arena and is really bad at capturing bureaucracies. But it can still metaphorically carpet bomb its targets with blunt force legislation, taking out enemy and innocent bystander alike. The left has the opposite strengths and weaknesses with respect to culture war issues. There are of course exceptions in certain states where one side has complete ascendancy but I believe that is the situation nationally.Report
This is a great comment.
I think a lot of what’s been happening politically flows from Team Red losing its ability to control bureaucracies. I don’t know if they were ever as good at it as Team Blue, but some time between the start of the W years and the end of the Obama years it had just evaporatedReport
My belief is that a critical insight into the conservative psyche is that from their view they have suffered repeated defeats in that arena. Their mechanism of capturing bureaucracy was always expressly religious, and expressly Protestant Christian, and the courts over the last 40 or 50 years have said that’s a no no. This is why it stings so hard for them. Not only have they lost, they think they are not even allowed to fight anymore.
Now I’m not saying this because I sympathize. I happen to think the courts have mostly gotten it right on that issue. I also think many of their defeats are bafflingly self-inflicted and result from a complete failure of imagination and willingness to evolve. No one is more responsible for the decline of those kinds of values than conservatives and in particular SoCons themselves. Now they’re just left with chamber of commerce ‘libertarians’ who on paper don’t even believe the bureaucracies should exist, much less have a willingness to fight over them on cultural issues. Hence the periodic reactionary populist explosions.Report
Hence the periodic reactionary populist explosions.
Seems to be getting more periodic.
More populist too, for that matter.Report
Just to clarify the term:
‘”Populist” literally means, “of the people”.
To be “of the people” one must draw a line around a group called “The People” and thereby exclude everyone else as “Not The People”.
Customarily this has been the poor declaring themselves to be The People and the rich as being defined as Not The People.
But in modern Republican thinking, white rural straight Christian males are The People, while everyone else is Not The People.Report
Depends on where you live. The big school blow ups in my region all started with east and south Asians, lots of them immigrants, before more traditional Republican constituencies entered the fray, doubtlessly because they smelled blood.Report
There really weren’t bureaucracies before the 1960’s like there are now. I don’t think conservatives ever controlled them. Generally people go into a field that they care about, and people who care about making decisions for others are attracted to bureaucracies. As for Protestant Christians controlling bureaucracies, I think it’s more that just about everyone was a Protestant Christian. But even with that, I’m not sure what you think the bureaucracy was doing that was so conservative (and I’ll admit I’m too lazy to comb through this whole thread).Report
Sure and fair point. I don’t believe there was an agenda so much as a reinforcement of reality. My understanding of history is that bureaucracy-skepticism as we would recognize it was not a political force until the late 70s. But I’m also using the word bureaucracy in a very, very broad way, to cover every functional component of the state, not just the stuff built at the federal level from the New Deal through Great Society.Report
…and is really bad at capturing bureaucracies. But it can still metaphorically carpet bomb its targets with blunt force legislation, taking out enemy and innocent bystander alike.
This may be worth revisiting around the end of June when the Supreme Court finishes up the term. Many people think — yes, I know I used that phrase — that the Court is prepared to drastically roll back the powers of the federal bureaucracy. Carpet-bomb legislation may not be necessary if the Court does that.Report
I think it is possible and maybe probable that there will be some reversals and new limits but they’re not going to undo decades of a huge variety of precedents in a single term. There is no one or even handful of decisions that could do that.Report
McMegan has a thread about what she suspects is happening.
Long story short: peer-to-peer conversations allow for organization that was not easy or cheap in previous decades and, on top of that, there is a lot of social media where the occasional outlier teacher makes a tiktok about how they’re totally going to violate any law or policy that attempts to limit them.Report
Parents have always had immense control over schools. Whether through P-T Conf’s, yelling at the Vice Principal for Listening to Screaming Parents or School Boards they have always had big say. There have been battles over school books/text books for decades.
What is new is the vileness of the charges and resurgent homophobia.Report
Yes, Greg. But what is also new is presumptive Governors saying that Parents shouldn’t. I mean, during a debate. Before an election.
And, you gotta admit, teachers saying “I’m going to talk to the kids about this stuff no matter what the policies say!” into tiktoks is a great way to go viral.Report
I think there’s some truth to what she’s saying but I also think it misses, at least with respect to schools, the way it has brought Normies into the fight. Like it’s only in a world where we accept that the personal is the political where they can be looked at as highly ideological actors. Huge numbers of people never got that memo. I think assuming that they did is at best a pretty iffy way to understand things.Report
Having a bunch of Normies wake up and say “wait, seriously?” is going to result in reactionary populist responses.
“I thought that it was just the 3 ‘R’s and day care!” is going to result in a backlash. It’ll be CRT on hormone therapy.Report
On that we agree.Report
It’s the positional aspect that is unsupported, though.
Unless your argument is specifically that we’ve seen a decline in trust in teachers relative to where we were, say, five years ago, which I’ll grant, but doesn’t obviously support the inevitability of divorce and war.Report
The moving from higher trust to lower trust doesn’t obviously support the inevitability of divorce or war.
It’s the discussions of whether this slide should be halted by changing things that gets me there.
Are there any compromises that could be met? If not, then compromise isn’t on the table.
So what’s left? My guess is that the slide continues and that the slide is not sustainable.Report
Like broadly, in the whole Culture War around public schools?
Sure, there are numerous compromises out there, some more painful than others.
My concern is that the ones that would be palatable to Team Blue don’t really address what Team Red wants, because, well, Team Red’s thought leadership here has gotten crazier and crazier.
To take an example, InMD has concerns about DEI consultants in local school districts. I haven’t really gone into the details with him, but his nutshell description is parsecs away from the brainworm stuff we’ve gotten out of the DeSantis admin on the Don’t Say Gay bill.
I think it would be easy to make compromises with him on this.
That would likely help his distrust, and bring some parents along with him. But I don’t think it would slow down the conservative activist class for a second, and InMD’s politics are such that this would be effectively an intra-Team Blue negotiation to begin with.
But can I compromise with Team Red on this?
I’m not even sure what Team Red wants here.Report
So… compromise isn’t possible?
I suspect that this will result in Republicans and Democrats trading the House and Senate for a while as if they were both in a contest to see who could lose it the fastest.
And, hey. Maybe that’s sustainable long term.
Look at the demographics!Report
You’re acting like this isn’t some purely intellectual ivory tower exercise in navel gazing.
I mean come on, it’s not like there’s real people involved, right?
it’s just internet points!
/sReport
Things change. 30 years ago the West was generally quite red and the upper Midwest blue. The causes of that reversal is one of the great under-researched and under-reported political science stories of that period.
The “partners” changed. If your theory doesn’t accommodate that, it’s wrong. Or at least incomplete.Report
Yes, absolutely.
For what it’s worth, I think that Trump winning was a symptom of that exact problem. (And why I thought Biden would beat Trump in 2020… and now I suspect that he wouldn’t beat Trump in 2024.)Report
Yeah i noted above you are just filling in your priors. Agreed. Or the entire thing could be poor analogy. Since we aren’t all married. At least that i know of.Report
So let’s get rid of the whole “marriage” thing and talk about any relationship where people have to live and cooperate.
In any discussion of “compromise”, do you see an opener of “yes, the other person needs to compromise” as an indicator that compromise is on the table?
You’ve worked with kids, right? Or couples? Or neighborhood disputes?
How did discussions of compromise where the opener was “YES THEY NEED TO COMPROMISE WITH ME!” tend to go?Report
People can and should compromise on many things. There are also things we dont’ compromise on. I never ask a DV victim to compromise on whether they can take just a bit of physical abuse to meet the abuser in the middle. Depends on the issue whether compromise is even appropriate.
Top marginal tax rate: Compromise me baby
LBGTQ people living as fully free and open lives as cis people: Cant’ see where there is a compromise there. That should be a given in a country with the aspirations of the good old US of A.Report
All this talk of compromise reminds me of the SSM wars. In the 90’s, I thought myself a hard-nosed political realist and, though I was fine with SSM, I thought that compromise was the way to go, and tried to get “marriage or bust” advocates to agree to some kind of status not called marriage that would give same-sex couples the practical equivalent of the rights married couples got “off the shelf” by virtue of being married. (This was technically harder than one might think. I remember a New York State Bar Association study in the late 90s that listed the “off the shelf” rights of married couples and showed what kind of lawyer-intensive paperwork would be required to duplicate some, though not all, of those rights. The cynical among us would think that the NYSBA would favor the Full Employment for Lawyers aspect of it, but they would have been wrong.)
Turned out, though, that there was nobody on the anti-SSM side of the table to make that deal with. So when Obergfell shoved full-blown SSM down the throats of the anti-SSM crowd, some, predictably, bewailed the unwillingness of SSM advocates to compromise on civil unions, which they themselves had rejected.
So what is supposed to be on the table here?Report
The problem here is that the Right can get and wield state power pretty effectively in the US, but they have no idea how to translate that into effectively resisting the cultural change that freaks them out, and also no idea how give up the awful ideas and values that constantly place them on the wrong end of the Culture War issues.Report
They are carefully watching Hungary and Russia for tips on how to effectively nullify cultural change using government power.
No, that’s not sarcasm.Report
Republicans were forced to attack gay people by the eastward expansion of NATO.Report
Smashes like button. I’m trying to retweet this…..arrgghh.Report
This is how Satanic Panic lynch mobs typically operate.
Where there is a small and enthusiastic core who are actually leading the way, while the much larger group mills around, muttering and wringing their hands with indecision.
“Well, I think hanging is extreme, but he must have done SOMETHING, right? They wouldn’t just grab somebody without cause, right?””
In this case, the claim being made is that Florida schools are teaching inappropriate lessons in sexuality to children.
And the bill’s supporters in the media are claiming that unknown figures are grooming the children for sex.
This is the claim on the table, the one that needs defense.
And no one here is offering any. Not the slightest bit of defense of either of those assertions.
But what we do get is the handwringing and muttering- “Well, the teachers must have done SOMETHING, right? The Republican Party wouldn’t just whip up a panic over nothing, right?”Report
Not just their supporters in the media: DeSantis’ press secretary said the same thing.
One element of these debates that actually kind of bugs the shit out of me is the role “indoctrination” plays in these debates.
For example, I grew up in a super liberal suburb of Boston in the ’90s. When I was in ninth grade, our social studies teacher mentioned that he really liked P. J. O’Rourke and I went out and checked out some books by the O’Rourke, and so did some of my classmates.
Like, I think what my teacher did was extremely obviously fine. I suspect most of the OT commentariat would agree.
But squint a little at it and I could easily see a twitchy parent blowing it up into “indoctrination”.Report
Well, one person’s “indoctrination” is another person’s “teaching.” All schools instill values. And we want that. We only call it “indoctrination” when we disagree with the values being instilled.Report
It’s not just instilling values, though that is part of it.
In our case, I suspect that the teacher was thinking, “Hey, here’s a point of view that’s popular outside of this little liberal enclave, presented in a very entertaining way, and it would do some good for kids to be exposed to it and get a broader perspective.” I never got the impression he was a particularly conservative guy even by our town’s standards; he just liked reading this one commentator who was pretty conservative and often very funny.
I think that’s a totally appropriate thing for a 9th grade social studies teacher to do. And it became more of a focus each year, as we were increasingly tracked into college prep. In AP European history, we read some Edmund Burke and some Marx, and I’m pretty sure that they weren’t presented as anything resembling indoctrination.
Unlike O’Rourke, I am dead certain some parents would have an absolute cow if they learned their student had been assigned reading from The Communist Manifesto in history class, even though I’d say it’s one of the most historically important pieces of writing from the 19th century.
And it’s extremely strange to read a lot of this stuff from people who then turn around and get extremely upset when kids graduate, go from college, and then don’t really have much ability to deal with opposing views, or views that make them uncomfortable. Like, that stuff is a skill, and where the hell are they supposed to learn it?
If it’s not high school, why are we expecting to know them to know it when they get to college?
If they don’t know it by the time they’re in college, when the hell are they going to learn it?Report
I don’t think it’s quite so pat. Yes, we can wax philosophically about how it’s probably impossible to be 100% value neutral. That doesn’t mean we just throw caution to the wind and go full bore ideological, at least as far as public schools go (private can of course do what they want). These are supposed to be services for everyone. Some level of political neutrality can and should be a guiding principle. Not the only principle of course but a major one.
I know the words ‘age appropriate’ do too much heavy lifting in all of this but it really is a critical consideration. By high school and maybe even late middle school children can and should start grappling with the concept of learning about something without necessarily endorsing it. That isn’t indoctrination and I don’t think anyone who says otherwise is being reasonable. But that’s not where elementary schoolers are. Parents have different philosophies about how and when to discuss certain topics with them. It’s completely normal and legitimate for parents to feel that way, not just some cover for being reactionary. Public schools need to respect and account for it in their behavior and curriculums.Report
As Chip keeps asking – show us where that is actually happening in schools. Show us where that is written into actual curricula. Show us any evidence. That no one has yet done so is, for us, the beginning of proof that this is not an issue, and certainly not one needing this level of “solution.”Report
I’ve shared links in previous posts to school system websites and controversies local to me. No one changes their minds and I don’t think ‘battle of the links’ is going to convince anyone here who has decided it’s an astro-turfed controversy.
The fact that some keep insisting I think these laws are a solution when I repeatedly say I don’t and in fact oppose them makes me think no one is really reading what I say anyway.Report
Sorry if it seems like I’m being overly harsh, but this is what I was referring to by people milling about and muttering.
Where the mob is dragging a teacher away accused of pedophilia, and someone mutters darkly about Ibram Kendi and their mistrust of teachers.
Why go there? Why insert a charge against teachers wholly irrelevant and unrelated to the topic at hand?
Panics are called panics because they rely on panic, and ordinary people losing their sense of reason. They also rely on the creation of a general air of doubt and suspicion, an aura of guilt where people are convinced of something nefarious even if they can’t quite articulate it.
Linking “Teachers grooming children for sex” and “Ibram Kendi teaching a stupid clsss” does this nicely, by generating doubt and suspicion about teachers.Report
Hey, Chip.
Nobody doubts teachers. Gallup had a poll!Report
My response above was meant to be here… I misthreaded on my phone.
See here if wanting to discuss further: https://ordinary-times.com/2022/04/02/florida-parental-rights-in-education-bill-read-it-for-yourself/#comment-3679215Report
The issue lies in that every amendment to clarify what is or is not “sexual instruction” or to protect the exact scenarios mentioned in this thread and elsewhere failed.
The author of the bill and supporters have made it very clear in the legislative record and in the press that the purpose of the bill is to eliminate any discussion of non-heteronormativity whatsoever in any and all contexts.
The vagueness of the bill will result in nearly incalculable harm while it is inevitably litigated.Report
It will, however, make litigation easier because legislative intent will be well recorded.Report
“The author of the bill and supporters have made it very clear in the legislative record and in the press that the purpose of the bill is to eliminate any discussion of non-heteronormativity whatsoever in any and all contexts.”
Unfortunately for them, the way it’s written, anyone who is bored can sue over discussions of heteronormativity as well.
Honestly, if I was the ACLU I’d be tempted to find a teacher willing to go along with it and sue them for, oh, reading some variant of Snow White, the Little Mermaid, or Cinderella.
Which all, of course, promote both teaching gender, sexual orientation, AND sex. With all their “shes” and “hes” and “princesses wanting to marry princes” and even “married hetero couples and parents”
The fun would be watching the Florida Supreme Court twist themselves into knots to explain that’s different, despite the actual letter of the law NOT specifying which sexual orientations and genders you were allowed and disallowed from even so much as alluding to by poor Timmy mentioning he has two dads.Report
Here’s an example of the mindset at work here.
https://twitter.com/Maladroithe/status/1510753756580786178
Summary:
A Jewish family is asked to participate in a blockwide Easter egg hunt for children.
They politely excuse themselves, explaining that they don’t celebrate Easter.
The neighbors become offended and try to argue that Easter is a secular event, yadda yadda.
The central idea here is that the things that Christians do like Easter, are just the normal things that people do.
Things that Jewish people do are some exotic oddity that can be tolerated but certainly isn’t the norm and in no way should ever alter what Christian people do. Non-Christian traditions should always just be off in the corner, out of the way.
So it is with the Republicans. Gay and trans people can be tolerated but should always step aside for the norms of hetero couples and cis identity.
So any symbol like a Pride flag or bracelet is an offense- it moves what should be off in the corner to main stage, takes what should be a lesser thing and places it alongside what should be superior.
The “Grooming” charge is meant to be taken seriously but not literally. Very few actually think that adults are preparing children for sex, but they do believe, correctly, that children are being groomed to accept the equality of things the adults prefer to be inferior.Report
Replying to @InMD:
When I was in elementary school in the ’80s, we learned about Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights movement in terms that were unambiguous–King was good, the Civil Rights movement was good, and segregation was bad. This started pretty much as soon as school started. We weren’t doing it in kindergarten, but by second grade it was in the curriculum.
This was, obviously, the right thing to teach kids. I mean if someone wants to argue otherwise I can’t really stop them, but it was still correct.
I think, along the way, they mentioned that interracial marriage had once been illegal but went away during the Civil Rights movement.[1] If you look at polling from the ’80s, less than half of Americans approved of it. It was much less popular than gay marriage is now. Loving v. Virginia was less than 20 years old, more recent than Lawrence v. Texas is now.
Hell, the national holiday for MLK had just been adopted, with a sitting Senator arguing that King should not be honored because of his “Marxism”, with 17 other Senators voting alongside him.
We were elementary schoolers. We were being taught a number of things that were still controversial at the time. Our education on such matters was in no way “value neutral”: we were actually being instilled, or indoctrinated, with values.
It’s just those values were good, and it was good we were indoctrinated with them.
[1] Contemporary Rightwards will object to this on the grounds that it mentions marriage to kids younger than 10, and thus is “grooming” them by exposing them to the existence of a social institution that is inextricably entangled with human sexuality, sexual orientation, and gender identity.Report
This is lame, anodyne teaching of beliefs and moral philosophy (and when people do show up to “peacefully protest” you see Trudeau declaring Martial Law to steal their money and homes without recourse).
It’s not teaching a scotch bit of history. People who want to actually learn about morals and ethics would be wise to actually study the history, as it’s quite a bit more fascinating than you have been led to believe.
Rosa Parks was an entirely made-up figure.
Nayirah lied to congress, and Amnesty International cosigned her lies.
Is it any wonder that Zelensky sends cameramen rather than soldiers? Puts a gun in every citizen’s hand that will take one?
You are being lied to — it is the nature of indoctrination.Report
Yes it was aimed at second gradersReport
And for families that religious beliefs are homosexuality is wrong?Report
So I read the 7-pages. There’s literally nothing in there that should be objectionable by any standard.
Basically it is a policy statement on education that reorients various health/education matters back to parents in ways that everyone already assumes schools function. If schools have appropriated these things to themselves in a way in which it *doesn’t* meet all of our expected standards, then that’s clearly on the schools and possible overreach that merits correction. If it’s not happening at all, like some like to profess, then the policy re-statement of what we all agree is correct is moot.
The meatiest portion has to do with providing Health and Mental health services; which merely asserts that Parents are responsible for the primary care giving of their children and the schools/state may not abrogate that unless they have specific cause. So the edge cases of abuse or neglect are accounted for as per below.
88 School district personnel may not discourage or
89 prohibit parental notification of and involvement in critical
90 decisions affecting a student’s mental, emotional, or physical
91 health or well-being. This subparagraph does not prohibit a
92 school district from adopting procedures that permit school
93 personnel to withhold such information from a parent if a
94 reasonably prudent person would believe that disclosure would
95 result in abuse, abandonment, or neglect, as those terms are
96 defined in s. 39.01.
The next section causing all the uproar also seems reasonable to me… frankly, I’d go further and make the law broader to be explicit that no sexual education is taught below grade 3, including sexual orientation and gender identity. There’s no reason for it at those ages. Not at school.
97 3. Classroom instruction by school personnel or third
98 parties on sexual orientation or gender identity may not occur
99 in kindergarten through grade 3 or in a manner that is not age
100 appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in
101 accordance with state standards.
Finally, the law seems to spend a fair bit of time allowing for Special Magistrates to review Parental issues; seems to me typical bureaucratic/regulatory rules-making… but then Public Schools are bureaucratic entities and if you’re a parent dealing with them, then you need bureaucratic tools to manage the bureaucratic rules and inertia.
Is there a sub-text of gender ideology driving this? Sure, but that’s what policy/laws respond to: agenda which violate the ‘truce’ that is supposed to be the American public sphere. As far as I can tell, the law *doesn’t* end certain ‘services’ or counseling or programs or what not; it ends them from happening without parental consent and oversight.
I understand the attempted rhetoric against it, but this is a political winner that will end up putting Democratic politicians in a spot where they will publicly state that parents have no business being the primary care givers of their children… and the drubbings will be unfathomable.Report
Could a teacher, under this law, read a book in which a child has two parents of the same gender to 2nd graders, say? Like, just like any book about families, but the parents are both men, or both women? It doesn’t seem like it could, but the law remains vague enough that it’s unclear, even though I’m not sure what the objection to that book is aside from simple prejudice against same-sex couples.Report
The only practical answer is — no one knows, or could know in advance. That’s how it works and how it was designed to work. The practical consequences are, I should think, obvious.Report
Possibly yes, possibly no… is the book first of all ‘in accordance with state standards’ if yes, then is the instruction itself about sexuality and/or gender identity? If yes, then no. If no, then if it is incidental to other instructional purposes then under the great truce it would pass muster. It appears to me that the question being begged is that the purpose of selecting certain works isn’t because they incidentally have certain situations, but precisely because they do. That’s the circle your side has to square.Report
I can imagine, were I a teacher, wanting to make sure that all my kids families (or potential families) are represented in the books that I read to them. Doesn’t seem that far-fetched at all, then, that I’d want to keep a book with two moms or two dads handy.
What’s more, even if I don’t have any kids with two parents of the same gender, in 2022, they’re going to encounter such couples, so I see nothing wrong with making sure such couples are represented in the books I read to them.Report
You haven’t added anything that isn’t already addressed in my comment.
But I still find it interesting that the beefier portion of the law has to do with health-care and counselling services.
All education texts and subjects require navigation of cultural and age appropriateness – teachers really shouldn’t be in charge of navigating that, but rather of executing that. Especially K-12.
I appreciate the craft of teaching, but I’m not at all in favor of teachers making curriculum decisions. In case I need to make that explicit.Report
Well, I’ve given you a motivation: representation. I’ve given you the basic content (a book in which there is a same sex couple). Does the law allow this? If it’s possibly yes, possibly no, then it sounds like the law is too ambiguous. If it’s no, I’d want to know what it is about same sex parents that is a problem. If it’s yes, then meh, the bill seems pointless.Report
Why the hell not? That’s half their training (the other being instructional pedigogy). My mom was a classroom teacher for 25 years, many of those with and Ed.D. in Curriculum development. Do you really believe she was unqualified to make curriculum decisions for her students? Really?
The seething contempt for professional teachers in your statement is stunning.Report
Heh, my wife has a Masters in Education and I’ve personally taught 7-12 and had to help build a curriculum within the standards set by the school I was working at. There’s no seething contempt.
Teachers make execution level decisions based on a curriculum designed by the schools for precisely these reasons. If your mother’s Ed.D. put her on those committees then that seems to be working as intended.
But individual classroom curricula built wholecloth by teachers according to their personal pedagogical notions? No. That’s not community education in any model; especially not public education.Report
You mean the person qualified to teach little kids how to read and do multiplication tables may not be competent (to say nothing of authorization) to counsel them on long term matters of psychological and sexual health? You’ve got to be kidding me.Report
They might not, but I think they should be able to mention that some kids have two mommies or two daddies, should the subject come up, and the bill at question is (AFAICT deliberately) obscuring the difference between the two.Report
This is why I said I feel like parents are being put in an impossible place. I do not think any gay teacher should feel like they have to hide the mundane details of their lives lest they be sued. You know ‘Who was that man whose car you got into yesterday Mr. Jones? That was my husband.’ No one should be afraid of getting in trouble for that.
To the extent I have concerns, it’s in the implication that there should be no boundaries, or that matters of sex and sexuality should be features of elementary ed, or that parental concerns need not be taken seriously.Report
Yeah. I think the problem here, and in a number of related places, is that the state government is deliberately degrading the trust for malicious ends.
They don’t have to do that. They could make things better.
This isn’t even a wacky hypothetical, and as much as I detest Republican governance, other Red State governments have addressed comparable problems in ways that will make things better, rather than worse, and should be acceptable regardless of whether you believe the underlying problem is real or just something from the Fox News Extended Universe.Report
“To the extent I have concerns, it’s in the implication that there should be no boundaries, or that matters of sex and sexuality should be features of elementary ed, or that parental concerns need not be taken seriously.”
Who is implying this?
Today I read a book to my students called “Rainbow Boy.” The book is about a boy who bristles at being asked what his favorite color is because he has a different favorite color for every day of the week. On Sunday he likes pink. On Monday he likes red. On Tuesday he likes orange. Etc.
Associated with each color are different activities he likes to do. He likes to wear a pink tutu and dance on Sunday. On Monday he likes to draw pictures for his mom and dad with a red crayon. On Tuesday he likes to play with his orange basketball. Etc.
The boy likes all these colors and doesn’t like adults telling him he has to choose just one.
The book doesn’t discuss sex or sexuality. It doesn’t discuss gender or gender identity. It talks about a boy who likes lots of different colors and likes to do lots of different things. There is undoubtedly a broader message that seeks to challenge certain gender norms (namely around color associations) and affirms childrens’ right to self-identify and not feel boxed in by adult rules about who they can be.
What would your thoughts be on that. book being read in a pre-school class?
And, if I read that in a Florida classroom, what are the odds I or my school would find ourselves on the wrong side of a lawsuit because some kid said, “We read a book about a rainbow boy who wears dresses!” to his hyper conservative parents? So if I was in Florida, I wouldn’t touch that book. And that’s a damn shame.
Believe me, I feel there SHOULD be lines on what is discussed with young children. Holy crap do their need to be! And not just around stuff related to sex and sexuality. But where these new laws are trying to draw these lines is so far from where they ought to be, it is going to do active harm to children.Report
Remember Shark Tale, a cartoon film from the early 2000s about a vegetarian shark? The other sharks made fun of him at first, but eventually learned to accept him.
The American Family Association, a Christian conservative organization, raised concerns about Shark Tale, suggesting that it was designed to promote the acceptance of gay rights by children.Report
I mean, right?Report
I’m not aware of any public school system in which that happens. Or private schools for that matter. State departments of education generally take a dim view of such things.Report
Right, and State departments of education are guided by laws and policies set by the elected officials such as the matter at hand.Report
You, and the laws defenders, keep exhibiting the bias I referred to above.
That husband and wife is just normal, but two husbands is “about sexuality”. That cis is normal, but trans is “about gender identity “.
Like if we declared that we can’t teach religion.
Sure we will still have Christmas pageants and Easter egg hunts, but a Purim festival is “about religion”.Report
You know the state standards the bill refers to do not exist, right?Report
So the law needs broadening?Report
The problems are the vagueness and the novel enforcement mechanism through private litigating.
This also makes statements from the bill’s architects much more important when it comes to assessing how the bill will play out.Report
Possibly yes, possibly no, to be settled by lawsuit. Do you start to see a problem?Report
It’s funny how an amendment to make it about sexual education before grade 3 failed then, didn’t it?Report
I have no idea; I’m commenting on the 7-pages posted; I’d be happy to read the proposed addendum and maybe comment on why it would have been a good addendum or why it was written in such a way that it was a poison pill or bad addendum. But saying that an addendum didn’t pass doesn’t give me context or pause – in my line of work proposed addenda do all sorts of tricksy things that can both make a deal better or derail it. Depends on the addendum and what it adds or subtracts.Report
Headline from the Babylon Bee: ‘We Need To Protect Our Kids From Inappropriate Teaching On Sex,’ Say Parents Who Let Their Kid Have A Smartphone
Their best stuff is when they target their audience.Report
As I brought up on a separate thread, Florida is among 18 states that legally allow corporal punishment in public schools.
So, in Florida, teachers and school administrators are allowed to spank students for disciplinary reasons but they cannot discuss that gay people exist.
This is very clearly all for the children.Report
DeSantis signs bill drastically limiting free speech. Just your basic tuesday.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2022/03/10/florida-law-diversity-crt-work/6991516001/Report
Learn one weird trick that sidesteps the Constitution!
If signed by DeSantis, workers could sue their employers.Report
I don’t know if it’s about side-stepping the Constitution, especially in this case because it’s not obviously unconstitutional. Employers can be sued for creating hostile environments for their workers through speech, and I’m not sure defining “hostile environment” in a bizarre and tendentious way is an approach that won’t work Constitutionally.
I think the enforcement by private suit in the Don’t Say Gay bill, and this anti-DEI bill, are intended to address one of the problems for Team Red that InMD described: it’s inability to control bureaucracies.
Because it can’t control bureaucracies, it wants to outsource enforcement to individuals who can bring suit, because then the bureaucracy is much less relevant.Report
Teacher certainly shouldn’t say anything nice about Judge Jackson, because …
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