The school board in Miami-Dade County, Florida, this week shot down two sex-education textbooks, flagging them as likely violations of the state’s DeSantis-signed parental rights bill — a decision that critics say could leave students without books for months.
The decision was 5-4 to reject the textbooks and was, in part, a response to pushback from parents who cited the books’ addressing of subjects such as contraceptives and abortion as concerns.
With no textbooks approved for the upcoming school year, which begins in less than one month, students of Miami-Dade may find themselves without a sex-education program.
Mari Tere Rojas, a member of the school board who voted against the books, told Politico: “Some of the chapters are extremely troublesome. I do not consider them to be age appropriate. In my opinion, they go beyond what the state standards are.”
The vote took place on Wednesday and followed three hours of public comment. The “Comprehensive Health Skills” books, intended for middle- and high-school students, had been debated for months.
A public hearing was held on June 8 to review 278 petitions against the books. Following the hearing, officials with the school district recommended approving the textbooks.
Politico reported on the parental response to the textbooks:
Some parents argued the lessons extend beyond what schools should be educating students on sex education while others contested that rejecting the books would allow a vocal group to drive the decision for a school district serving some 340,000 students. The outcry in Miami against the sex education books included the local chapter of County Citizens Defending Freedom, a conservative group that aims to “defend their freedoms and liberties at the local level.”
Steve Gallon III, the school board’s vice chair who voted in favor of the textbooks, told the outlet, “Our current … process defends parents and their children who do not want to be exposed to this. But we cannot deny parents who want to have access for their children to this critically important information.”
The decision from Miami-Dade’s school board shows that Florida’s Parental Rights in Education Bill, signed earlier this year by Republican Governor Ron DeSantis, is already influencing local education policies.
Under the law, teachers may not lead children in kindergarten through third grade in discussions related to topics such as sexual orientation or gender identity while also prohibiting such instruction for older students unless done in a way that is “age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate.”
The law’s opponents have pejoratively labeled it “Don’t Say Gay,” claiming such restrictions will do harm to LGBT individuals and even lead to bullying. The legislation famously resulted in tensions between the state and Disney after the entertainment company, which runs Disney World in the state, publicly advocated against it.
Parents who opposed the textbooks shared sections that dealt with unplanned pregnancies, abortion, and the “Plan B” pill.
“I would argue that plan B pills, how they work and how they’re accessible over the counter … is not an age appropriate information for an 11 year-old,” Alex Serrano, the county director for County Citizens Defending Freedom, told Local 10.
The board’s decision on Wednesday will likely cause the adoption process for school materials to start over — a process that could take from four to eight months for a new set of books to be approved.
While the Left calls the parental rights bill “Don’t Say Gay,” a more apt nickname would be “Don’t Groom.” What social-justice warriors are really upset about is that it’s now harder for them to legally groom the young into the LGBT lifestyle.
Research indicates that transgenderism is largely not innate, but the result of programming from the adults in children’s lives. One study compared a group of mothers of gender-confused boys with mothers of normal boys. It found “that mothers of boys with GID [Gender Identity Disorder] had more symptoms of depression and more often met the criteria for Borderline Personality Disorder than the controls. Fifty-three percent of the mothers of boys with GID compared with only 6% of controls met the diagnosis for Borderline Personality Disorder.”
This could explain why transgenderism has seen such an explosion among the nation’s youth. Be it in entertainment, the classrooms, or on social media, young people today are constantly being bombarded by transgender and other LGBT propaganda, leading them to believe that any insecurity they have with their bodies (something that was once considered a natural phase in growing up) is the result of having been “mis-gendered” at birth.
Cut off the propaganda, and the “gender confusion” generally dissipates. This is why Florida’s Parental Rights in Education Act is a huge win for families.
