I wrote yesterday about anti-LGBTQ discrimination in schools — and was happy to learn later about a new campaign to address “no promo homo” laws that forbid discussion of LGBT issues in classrooms.
The campaign, “Don’t Erase Us,” was launched by Lambda Legal, which explains, “Some of these laws actually require schools to portray LGBT people in a negative light. Others prohibit schools from portraying LGBT people in a positive light.” At least eight states currently have such laws: Alabama, Arizona, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, and Utah.
Lambda Staff Attorney Peter Renn explains that “most of these laws were passed in the late ’80s and early ’90s, following the AIDS panic that gripped this country. Arizona’s law, for example, outlaws teachers from ‘suggest[ing] that some methods of sex are safe methods of homosexual sex’ in instruction on HIV/AIDS. It also prohibits portraying gay people in a positive light.”
That’s right. Same-sex couples can now marry in Arizona (and Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Utah), but LGBTQ kids and kids of LGBTQ parents there are forbidden from getting accurate (if any) information about their health and their families.
Mostly, says Lambda, these laws apply only to curriculum related to sexual health education, and “should not usually bar the adoption of LGBTQ-inclusive curriculum in history, social science and English classes.” Eliminating discussion of LGBTQ topics in health curriculum is bad enough — but it’s not even as simple as that, as “schools and teachers may misapply these laws, in practice, as barring more than they actually do.”
Lambda believes these laws are unconstitutional, as do I. They ask us to do a little thought exercise: “Imagine if there were laws that barred classroom discussion of people of a particular ethnic descent in a positive light, or required schools to teach students that having a particular religious background is ‘not acceptable to the general public.’ These laws would treat students in those groups differently and violate their constitutional rights to equal protection.”
If you’re a student, teacher, or community member in a state with anti-LGBTQ curriculum laws, Lambda invites you to contact them about your experience with these laws, since speaking out “can be a powerful tool for change.”