The outrage meter is pinging as legislators in The Volunteer State debate a bill prohibiting teaching LGBTQ lifestyles in public schools.
The bill, HB800, would ban “public charter schools from adopting or using textbooks and instructional materials or supplemental instructional materials that promote, normalize, support, or address lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, or transgender issues or lifestyles.”
The defense for this is that “The State of Tennessee is not allowed to teach my daughters Christian values that I think are important and they should learn, so I teach those at home.” Why not apply that logic to this.
Why not apply that logic to all sex and gender-related material?
The Public Schools have been “teaching” sex-ed for five decades, and look where we are as a result? Unwanted pregnancy, single-parent families, sexually transmitted disease (STD), rape culture, mental health, the sexual assault of children, and suicide tied to sexual-related dysphoria.
Complete failure would be my diagnosis unless that was the plan, and plenty of folks would say yes, that was the plan.
Was the plan to make sure that 20% of Americans had or experienced some sort of STD on any given day (CDC)? That this would cost 16 billion in direct medical costs.
Millions of babies are aborted, and nearly half of all children grow up in single-parent households, many without fathers. The data on the social cost of that is numerous and staggering. The price in real terms is just as staggering.
My point, if you missed it, is that the government schools have done such a terrible job that we should prohibit them from addressing any sex or sexuality at all.
Their failure is systemic, and a blanket prohibition is a matter of equality by design. If you’re not talking about or promoting anyone’s sexuality, it should not give credence to accusations of discrimination.
We’d have more time for the basics, which have fallen by the wayside.
Here in New Hampshire, we’re supposed to cherish the public obligation to teach future generations. But nowhere does it say the government has a right to a monopoly or that it cannot be denied the right to anything more than the role of observer.
The Public Education experiment has failed on so many levels. It is time we try something else. And not just on the matter of keeping our “government” schools out of the bedroom.
