Arizona Republican Governor Doug Ducey vetoed a sex-education bill this week, which he criticized as too vague and ripe for unintended consequences, placing him at odds with Republican legislators in the state who supported the bill.
Senate Bill 1456 would have allowed parents to opt in to specific sex-education instruction for their children. Conservative supporters touted the legislation as a means to afford parents greater control of their children’s sex education, while opponents said it was an attack on LGBTQ students, the Daily Wire reported.
Under SB 1457, parents could have enrolled their kids in learning related to HIV, AIDS, sexual orientation, and gender identity, and also included parental-assent requirements to non-sex education lessons that addressed the same topics. It also would have banned sex-education classes before the fifth grade, the Washington Examiner reported.
Governor Ducey took particular issue with the fifth-grade provision of the bill, which he claimed would place children at risk by not providing them sexual-abuse-prevention education.
Instead, Ducey offered up his own executive order “to provide parents with a meaningful opportunity to participate, review, and provide input on any proposed sex education course of study before it is adopted.”
According to the Arizona Daily Independent, the executive order requires schools to post sex-education curriculum online for parental review. It requires all meetings pertaining to the review and selection of sex-education courses to be made available to the public. It also demands at least two public hearings within a 60-day period before any course curriculum is approved by the governing body.
The order requires the State Board of Education to adopt the requirements by June 30.
“Arizona is and will remain a national leader in parental rights,” the governor said when he issued the order. “Too often, parents are left out of this process, and the importance is even greater when it comes to educating students about deeply personal matters like sex education. This Executive Order ensures that parents are in the driver’s seat when it comes to overseeing the education of their children.”
Ducey claimed he vetoed SB 1456 because it did not mandate that sex-education materials be made available online, KTAR News wrote.
But according to State Senator Nancy Barto (R), who sponsored the bill, the order he offered in place of the measure fails to adequately “substitute for parental rights grounded in law.” Barto went on to state:
The bill created workable transparency solutions for parents and stopped Sex Ed for younger school age children — something an overwhelming majority of Arizona supports,” Barto opined. “The veto undermines every single elected Republican Legislature who voted to defend parents and address the frustrations they face with the current status quo that provides opt out for some sexual materials and opt in for others. Arizona is one of the best states to raise a family, but this decision is inconsistent with that reputation. While I am extremely disappointed, my commitment to parents’ fundamental rights remains unchanged. I will continue to work with my colleagues to protect Arizona parents.”
Meanwhile, Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction Kathy Hoffman applauded Governor Ducey’s veto, claiming it was an opportunity for him to stand up against discrimination, 12 News reported.
“Gov. @dougducey made the right decision by vetoing SB 1456 and I want to thank him for standing up to bigotry and intolerance. All students are welcome in Arizona’s public schools and today’s veto reaffirms that,” she tweeted.
CatholicVote.org also reported César Chávez, chair of the Arizona LGBTQ Legislative Caucus, seized on Ducey’s veto as evidence it represented his alignment with the LGBTQ community.
“Appreciative of [Governor Ducey’s] veto, and for listening compassionately to the woes that affect the #LGBT+ community,” he tweeted.
But pro-family political advocacy group American Principles Project expressed its disappointment with Ducey’s decision, calling it “weak.”
“We are very disappointed in AZ Gov. @dougducey over his veto of SB 1456, an important parental rights bill,” the group tweeted. “Instead of siding with parents, Ducey allied himself with woke ideologues hellbent on teaching kindergartners they can ‘change’ their sex.”
