Ron DeSantis is right and Samra Brouk is wrong.
One is the governor of Florida, the other is a state senator from New York.
One says kids younger than the fourth-grade shouldn’t be taught about homosexuality in school, the other says every teacher from kindergarten on up should be mandated to teach every student about homosexuality from a state-written curriculum.
This is about that latter proposal.
Simply put, it is wrong.
Whether or not kindergartners learn about transgenderism and homosexuality is a decision for parents and, possibly, school boards. There is no room for a state mandate or a state curriculum for the youngest of students.
But that’s not the way Sen. Samra Brouk sees it. Her Senate bill “requires comprehensive sexuality instruction for students in grades K-12.”
That’s according to the Senate website.
And it’s nonsense.
“Sexuality instruction” isn’t about learning the names of the parts and where babies come from, it’s about that nebulous world of sexual expression, where gender is fluid and orientation is a chip on the shoulder. And many suspect it’s really about propagandizing a political agenda and possibly even about recruiting.
Expressing that thought – like any thought contrary to progressive orthodoxy – is condemned as bigotry by the woke enforcers. But a free society should be wary of those who seek to silence the opinions of others.
Or subvert the decisions and prerogatives of parents.
Because children belong to families, not schools.
And some subjects, at some ages, must be completely within the purview of parents.
Like anal sex. And whether Jimmy is a boy or a girl or whether or not there is any such thing as a boy or a girl.
Certainly, these are important issues, particularly to some, and they can be handled at home, according to the needs, values and priorities of the family. What progressives like Samra Brouk don’t like is that some families’ values might not comport with woke priorities.
Tough luck for them. School kids don’t belong to them. They belong to their families.
And schools are not re-education camps, or acculturation centers. They are about providing basic education, not purging the cultures and traditions of a student’s family or heritage.
A state law mandating every student in every class be taught what New York’s one-party legislature dictates is also offensive on democratic grounds. It not only ignores the rights of parents, it supersedes the powers of local school boards.
Different communities are different, being comprised of different people with varying perspectives and priorities. Some communities, for example, may have values or circumstances that lead them to want sexuality discussed in the earliest grades. With input from parents, that can certainly be a choice a school board makes.
Choices are good, mandates are bad.
And the more that is mandated, the worse that mandate is.
Samra Brouk’s sexuality-education bill not only dictates who shall be taught, but what they shall be taught. That is another overreach, which disrespects not only parents and school boards, but teachers.
To be a teacher in New York, you have to have a bachelor’s and master’s degree. It’s not an undertaking for amateurs. It is the craft of professionals, who know their students, the subject matter and the parents. It is a difficult job typically done very well.
And there is no reason to believe that teachers need a statewide curriculum for this very sensitive subject.
And that’s the bottom line on this – it is a very sensitive subject. Which is why Samra Brouk and her authoritarian Democratic Party want sexuality education to be a statewide mandate instead of a local and family decision.
They want that because this isn’t about education, it’s about indoctrination, and they want to make sure that they get to pick the cultural perspective on these matters that gets put into the heads of New York’s 2.7 million public school students.
And that’s not right. That’s not their place.
Choice is about more than just abortion. And parents should have a choice about what their youngest children are taught. If a special situation arises in a classroom, teachers and local administrators can address it. But one size doesn’t fit all, and a sexual-orientation and gender-fluidity mandate that starts in kindergarten is wrong.
And New York’s Democratic Party should recognize that.