Tennessee public-school teachers must now give a 30-day notice if they want to talk to their students about sexual orientation or gender identity.
On Monday, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee quietly signed a new law that one lawmaker called “troubling” and an LGBTQ advocacy group said was pushed by “national extremist groups.” But Republican lawmakers in Nashville said the law gives parents control of what children “see in their minds” because they are “young and impressionable.”
The law says parents must be notified at least 30 days before a teacher can commence any “sexual orientation curriculum or gender identity curriculum, regardless of whether the curriculum is offered as part of a family life program, sex education program, or other program.” The bill cleared its final legislative hurdle last month with a House vote. Lee signed the bill Monday.
Rep. Bob Freeman (D-Nashville) said the bill would further stigmatize LGBTQ students and they could face bullying or even attempt suicide. He gave several statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) about LGBTQ students. He said 47 percent of Tennessee’s LGBTQ student have contemplated suicide int he last year; 68 percent of them reported feeling hopeless, according to the CDC data Freeman quoted.
“We continue to stigmatize LGBTQ students and people in our state to the detriment of these students,” Freeman said before the House floor vote last month. “This is going to be troubling and it will be bad for those students.”
Rep. Debra Moody (R-Collierville) said an opt-out for parents already exists for family life curriculum (a.k.a. sexual education). With that, Moody said no one “should be burdened” by this legislation.
Rep. Terri Lynn Weaver (R-Lancaster) applauded the legislation.
“Parents are in charge of their children, not government entities,” she said. “I think this is a great piece of legislation that allows parents to remain in charge. … This is in no way a piece of legislation to cause harm to anyone but to put the focus back on parents. The government does not own our children.”
The national Human Rights Campaign (HRC) said the new law joins Lee’s anti-transgender sports law in Tennessee’s 2021 “Slate of Hate,” legislation aimed to discriminate against the LGBTQ community. The anti-LGBTQ curriculum bill will allow parents to opt their children out of learning about subjects like the AIDS epidemic, the Stonewall riots, and U.S. Supreme Court cases, the HRC said.
“Governor Bill Lee and the Tennessee state legislature’s ‘Slate of Hate’ bills are nothing more than a politically motivated effort to drum up fear and sow division and [the curriculum law] is a discriminatory piece of legislation that would put the health and safety of LGBTQ students at risk,” HRC president Alphonso David said in a statement. “All students deserve access to a quality academic experience, including the opportunity to learn about themselves and critically important health information as they develop.”
The HRC said Tennessee is one of 30 states to pass such legislation that it calls “discriminatory” and “anti-LGBTQ.” These pieces of legislation “are being pushed by national extremist groups and peddled by lawmakers in Tennessee in an effort to sow fear and division,” the HRC said in a statement.
