California votes to overhaul sex ed guidelines for public schools to include LGBT issues
Sacramento — California has overhauled its guidance for teaching sex education in public schools, encouraging teachers to talk about gender identity with kindergartners and give advice to help LGBT teens navigate relationships and practice safe sex. LGBT advocates praised the new recommendations for giving such attention to a community that often is left out of sex education policies.
The proposal the California State Board of Education approved Wednesday also offers advice on teaching health topics including nutrition, injury prevention and alcohol and tobacco use.
But it was the part about sex that had angered some parents and conservative groups.
A few hundred people gathered on the state Capitol grounds Wednesday morning, carrying signs that read "stop sexualizing my kids" and "respect parental rights." The crowd soon filled the lobby of the California Department of Education, with parents busily handing out snacks to occupy their children Those who could not get inside circled the building holding signs.
Patricia Reyes traveled more than 400 miles from her home in Anaheim Hills to bring her six children, who attend or have attended public schools, to Wednesday's board meeting. They included her 4-year-old daughter, Angelie, who carried a sign that read: "Protect my innocence and childhood."
"It's just scary what they are going to be teaching. It's pornography," the 45-year-old mother said. "If this continues, I'm not sending them to school."
Michele McNutt, 49, focused on the framework's attention to healthy relationships and consent, something she said is never too soon to teach her two daughters in public school, ages 11 and 9.
"Withholding medically accurate, scientific information from them actually causes more harm and does not actually protect innocence," she said while wearing a purple T-shirt that read "protect trans students." ″If you don't give kids accurate information about their own body ... how are they able to make good choices?"
The more-than-700-page document compiled over three years does not require schools to teach anything, but it is designed to expose teachers to current research about health education and give guidance about how to teach it. It's also influenced by a 2015 state law that made California one of the first states to address LGBT issues as part of sex education.
The framework tells teachers that students in kindergarten can identify as transgender and offers tips for how to talk about that, adding "the goal is not to cause confusion about the gender of the child but to develop an awareness that other expressions exist."
"I think that people hear the word 'transgender' or 'gender identity' in guidance for kindergarten through grade three and they think the worst," said Stephanie Gregson, director of the Curriculum Frameworks and Instructional Resources Division at the California Department of Education. "It's really about civil rights issues."
The framework gives tips for discussing masturbation with middle-schoolers, including telling them it is not physically harmful, and for discussing puberty with transgender teens that creates "an environment that is inclusive and challenges binary concepts about gender."
Much of the pushback has focused not on the framework itself, but on the books it recommends students read. One suggested book for high schoolers is "S.E.X.: The All-You-Need-to-Know Sexuality Guide to Get You Through Your Teens and Twenties." It includes descriptions of anal sex, bondage and other sexual activity — depictions California Family Council President Jonathan Keller described as "obscene."
On Wednesday, State Board of Education member Feliza I. Ortiz-Licon asked the board to remove that book, and a few others, from the guidance. She said the books had "created panic" and distracted from the framework's goals, including teaching students about consent and sex trafficking.
"It's important to know the board is not trying to ban books. We're not staying that the books are bad," she said. "But the removal will help avoid the misunderstanding that California is mandating the use of these books."
As CBSN reports in its "Sex. Consent. Education" documentary, only 24 states and Washington, D.C., have laws on the books mandating sex ed be taught in public schools. Communities in the rest of the country have varying degrees of regulations.