Joe.My.God. LGBT News
The Associated Press reports:
Two years after Arizona lawmakers repealed a ban on any HIV/AIDS instruction that “promotes a homosexual lifestyle” as they faced a lawsuit, they have approved revamping the state’s sex education laws to make them some of the strictest in the nation when it comes to teaching about LGBTQ issues.
The measure pushed by a powerful social conservative group is framed as a parental rights issue and would require schools to get parents’ permission for discussions about gender identity, sexual orientation or HIV/AIDS in sex education classes.
Schools also would need parents to sign off on their children learning about historical events involving sexual orientation, such as a discussion of the modern gay rights movement that sprang from the 1969 Stonewall riots in New York.
Phoenix’s ABC News affiliate reports:
Arizona Democrats, including the state’s schools chief, are urging Republican Gov. Doug Ducey to veto a bill that would require schools to get parents’ permission for discussions about gender identity, sexual orientation or HIV/AIDS in sex education classes.
Arizona is one of five states already requiring parents’ permission before a child can attend sex education classes, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, and the bill would make the state’s sex education laws some of the strictest in the nation when it comes to teaching about LGBTQ issues.
The new proposal essentially requires a double opt-in for HIV/AIDS instruction that addresses sexual orientation or gender identity and additional permission would be needed for LGBTQ discussions in any other class.
Photo: Cathi Herrod, of the anti-LGBT Center for Arizona Policy, which was behind a successful 2010 bill that banned same-sex marriage. A similar anti-LGBT education bill advanced last week in Tennessee.