The crackdown on gay grooming of the youngest children in U.S. public schools has spread to another state, this one in the Midwest.
Republican lawmakers in Ohio have introduced a bill resembling Florida’s new law that critics dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, setting up another intense yet necessary battle over how sex and gender issues should be handled in schools, or even if they should be handled there at all, reports The Columbus Dispatch.
Introduced April 4, Ohio’s HB 616 would forbid classroom instruction on sexual orientation and “gender identity” in kindergarten through third grade, just like the Florida law being condemned as “discrimination” by LGBTQ advocates who want freer access to other people’s children, and have convinced the media and large parts of the population that this would be a good thing.
Republican state Rep. Mike Loychik, a Republican and one of the bill’s two sponsors, tweeted: “Curriculum about gender identity and sexuality has no place in K-3 classrooms, period.” The bill’s other sponsor, GOP Rep. Jean Schmidt of Loveland, said in a statement: “The classroom is a place that seeks answers for our children without political activism.”
Schmidt added: “Parents deserve and should be provided a say in what is taught to their children in schools. The intent of this bill is to provide them with the tools to be able to see what their child is being taught.”
Florida’s new law drew enough fury and lawsuits – including embroiling the massive Walt Disney Company in a no-win standoff between its own gay employees and state – but the Ohio bill goes even further, requiring that any instructional materials on sex orientation or gender in grades four through 12 must be “age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards.”
It also tackles the separate issue of teaching anti-American “critical race theory,” “intersectional theory” and “the 1619 Project,” banning all of it.
The bans would affect all public schools, as well as private schools that accept taxpayer-funded vouchers, and would allow members of the public to file complaints against school employees who violate the bans.
