Alabama bill would expand ban on sex and gender topics in schools, despite lack of complaints

Alabama is working to broaden a 2022 law that limits school discussions about LGBTQ issues – and is considering targeting a one-week space camp visited by children all over the world, too.

Rep. Mack Butler, R-Rainbow City, has sponsored HB130, dubbed by critics as a “Don’t Say Gay” bill. It would expand a current ban on K-5 classroom discussion and instruction of sexual orientation and gender identity to all 12 grades.

However, it’s a solution looking for a problem, several state education leaders say. And it may impact content offered in some high schools, such as AP biology.

“We have to be really cautious that we don’t create an inadvertent problem for teachers in high schools,” said state superintendent Eric Mackey, who said he has not received “any complaints whatsoever” about inappropriate content in middle and high school classes.

Butler said he thinks more restrictions are needed to protect children’s innocence and that teachers should focus on the basics and not veer off into topics like sexual orientation and gender identity.

“[Teachers] are infringing on the parents’ space,” Butler said, when they teach about sexual orientation or gender identity.

A similar law in Florida has already been dramatically rolled back after a lawsuit, but Butler said he isn’t worried.

The Alabama Transgender Rights Action Coalition, or ALTRAC, said bills like HB130 create a hostile environment for students, particularly LGBTQ youth, by teaching children prejudice.

“It contributes to the isolation of queer youth at a vulnerable time in their lives,” the organization wrote in a statement to AL.com, “and it sets an example for all youth that some people’s genders and orientations — basic parts of everyone’s humanity — are inappropriate topics of discussion.”

“If HB130 passes, it will rid classrooms and students in the state of Alabama of inclusive discussion that is essential at all stages of life,” the ACLU added in a statement to AL.com.

The House Education Policy committee is scheduled to vote on the bill Wednesday, and Butler expects two amendments that could broaden the bill’s impact even further.

The first, which he will offer, would add Space Camp as an entity that cannot instruct children in either topic. He expects Rep. Mark Gidley, R-Hokes Bluff, to offer an amendment that would prohibit teachers from displaying Pride flags in a classroom.

“Students can wear what they want,” Butler said, “without the school promoting it.”

Comments about gender dysphoria, transgender people

Butler claimed in an interview with AL.com that all people who are transgender have a mental illness called gender dysphoria. Experts say Butler is incorrect.

“We need to love and embrace them,” Butler said of people who are transgender. “We need to help them. But playing along with them in this make believe can’t be healthy.”

Alabama psychologist Josh Klapow said Butler has it wrong. Someone’s transgender identity is separate and distinct from a possible diagnosis of gender dysphoria.

“The psychiatric diagnostic system does not recognize transgender as a psychiatric disorder,” Klapow said. “It recognizes gender dysphoria as a psychiatric disorder just the way it recognizes depression or anxiety.”

Butler’s motivation for the bill, he said, comes in part from his 10 years serving on the Etowah County school board. He said he has seen a lot of things that adults do in school that gets swept under the rug.

At AL.com’s request, he shared a reading assignment sent to him by a ninth-grade student in 2019. The student told Butler he felt the teacher was trying to push an agenda on him.

The assignment is a short story about parents whose son discovered he liked playing with dolls and how the writer, the boy’s mother, hadn’t thought about how uncomfortable seeing him play with dolls would make her. She goes on to say that the parents accepted their creative son, and that he isn’t blue or pink, but rather a rainbow.

The assignment then asks students questions about how they feel about their identity and how the author handled examining her thoughts about gender identity.

The superintendent at the time handled it appropriately, Butler said, and the assignment was not given again. Butler updated his Facebook post with that information: “I have notified the administration and am proud to tell you this agenda indoctrination has been taken care of very quickly and satisfactory. Proof that a single citizen can make a difference when working with great people.”

Psychologist Klapow said there is no factual basis to the idea that being transgender can be pushed as an agenda.

“This is not an agenda,” Klapow said. “Transgender is not an agenda. Equality for transgender can be seen as an agenda.”

“Nobody makes your kids gay, straight, bi, or transgender.”

What is taught in Alabama schools?

But are teachers actually teaching about sexual orientation or gender identity in Alabama classrooms? If so, it’s in very limited, age appropriate manner, education officials said.

“Teachers are not teaching these topics,” Alabama Association of School Boards Executive Director Sally Smith said. “Our members have not indicated this is an issue.”

Alabama’s education standards do not specifically mention sexual orientation or gender identity. Homosexuality is briefly mentioned in a discussion about “applicable laws,” while sexual activity is mentioned briefly in high school standards, along with “risky behavior.”

“And it’s a solution that could create problems and lead to confusion about what can and cannot be discussed,” Smith added, about the bill.

That confusion is already happening in classrooms nationwide, where teachers feel it’s harder to discuss important historical topics or civil rights figures.

Teachers nationwide, even those not teaching in one of the 18 states that have enacted restrictions, are already self-censoring what they teach about political and social issues, according to a recent survey from RAND. In national results from the 2023 State of the American Teacher survey, released in February, 65% of teachers said they limit discussion on those topics.

Half of the teachers surveyed teach where either state or local restrictions exist. Of those teachers, eight in 10 said they have limited classroom discussion about political and social issues.

Mackey told AL.com that he thinks Butler’s proposed changes will make it harder for teachers to use their professional judgment if the topics arise.

“I’m okay with giving teachers some discretion about deciding what’s appropriate in their class,” he said.

The impact on students

Butler said his bill is “born of love” and he doesn’t want any student to not feel welcome at school.

But it likely will have the opposite effect if passed, experts say.

Klapow said he’s concerned Butler’s bill singles out a small group of students - those who identify as LGBTQ+.

“If you’re a child in sixth through 12th [grade], and we are banning talking about your orientation,” Klapow said, “then we are saying ‘you are not right,’ ‘you are not normal.’”

Gabby Doyle of The Trevor Project, which works to end suicide among LGBTQ+ young people, said the expansion will have a negative impact on LGBTQ students.

“The Trevor Project’s research found that nearly two in three LGBTQ+ young people said that hearing about laws like this one — that ban discussion of LGBTQ+ people at school — made their mental health a lot worse,” Doyle wrote in a statement to AL.com.

“We urge lawmakers to reject this bill and, instead, prioritize legislation that makes school safer and more inclusive for all students, regardless of how they identify.”

There are about 275,000 public school students in Alabama between the ages of 13 and 17.

An estimated 29,000 young people in the state identify as LGBTQ, according to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law, and about 1,300 of those also identify as transgender. Another 1,200 youth in that age range identify as trans but not as LGBTQ.

Even prior to the spate of laws targeting LGBTQ students, schools were not safe places for them, according to a 2019 survey from GLSEN.

And that hasn’t changed. If anything, it’s gotten worse. The Washington Post analyzed FBI crime data and found that hate crimes at schools targeting LGBTQ students quadrupled in recent years in states with anti-LGBTQ laws.

Other findings in The Trevor Project’s research show LGBTQ+ students face big challenges at school:

• More than half of LGBTQ young people said they were harassed at school because people thought they were LGBTQ
• Roughly a third said they weren’t allowed to dress in a way that fit their gender identity or expression,
• A quarter of LGBTQ young people were disciplined at school for fighting back against bullies,
• One in 10 LGBTQ youth left a school because the mistreatment was so bad.

Klapow said banning the discussion in classrooms won’t keep young people from learning about sexual orientation or gender identity. Nor is it always an option for a child to talk through questions about sex and sexuality with their parents.

“Developmentally, we know that the number one influence on children approximately age 10 to 11 onwards are their peers,” he said.

“The vast majority of pre-adolescents and adolescents,” Klapow continued, “are getting their information about sexual practices, gender identity and sexual orientation either from the internet, social media, or peers.”

Klapow said it is naive to think a bill like Butler’s will keep children from learning about sexual orientation and gender identity. “Keeping [the discussion] out of the school is not going to bring it into the house.”