Over 60% of Americans are against “Don’t Say Gay” bills that seek to limit or ban conversations about LGBTQ identities in elementary school classrooms.
A poll from ABC News and Ipsos has revealed that 62% of Americans oppose this kind of legislation, and only 37% support it.
Related: Idaho passes bill that would send loving parents of trans kids to prison for life
The poll also demonstrates how these bills have become a tenet of Republicanism, with 61% of Republicans supporting them, compared to 20% of Democrats and 35% of independents.
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87% of LGBTQ people said they oppose these bills, and 59% of non-LGBTQ do so as well.
Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill, otherwise known as the Parental Rights in Education Bill, has become the most well-known across the country. It says teachers cannot “encourage classroom discussion about sexual orientation or gender identity in primary grade levels or in a manner that is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students.” It also says parents can sue their children’s schools for failing to adhere to these rules.
It has passed the state legislature and is awaiting Gov. DeSantis’s (R) signature. He is expected to sign it.
Similar bills have been introduced in Tennessee and Georgia.
The teaching of LGBTQ issues in classrooms is not all that’s at stake. The availability of LGBTQ content in school libraries is also being compromised. Republican politicians and conservative parents continue to lobby school boards to remove books from the shelves, claiming they are inappropriate or even pornographic.
Some legislatures are even trying to pass laws to prevent the distribution of these books. In Oklahoma, for example, SB 1142 would criminalize any school official or librarian that has any books that “make as their primary subject the study of sex, sexual preferences, sexual activity, sexual perversion, sex-based classifications, sexual identity, or gender identity or books that are of a sexual nature.”
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