Florida’s “Don’t say gay” law

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He is biracial.



https://edition.cnn.com/2022/03/05/us/f ... index.html

Did you force the concept of "gay" onto your daughter?

No, the reality around us did.
Come on, it's part of culture, part of public dispute. Hard not to hear the word and hard not to be curious about it.

The ones most forcing the concept on children here are anti-gay propaganda vans spewing really gross aspersions on LGBT communities using mobile loudspeakers.
Explaining their claims to my children was way harder than "men who fall in love with other men".

Is your daughter (children) under 5 years of age?
Would you prefer a teacher or yourself to explain luv between two men, if they were?

Now she isn't 5. She was when we first talked about it.

I wouldn't mind it at school, within age-appropriate boundaries. I actually very officially declared at my kids' school that I agree for my children to take part in anti-discrimination initiatives, provided the contents were age-appropriate - the context were exactly local LGBT rights controversies.

I think the discussion on weather to have such classes or not should happen on the school or even class level, not state legislation level.

And would you be happy if the skool "educated" your child about political subjects/concepts you disagree with?

I'd like to have a discussion on it in class parents' community, not the state telling me what to do and what not to do.
I'd like to have a right to opt out my child from controversial classes but not to have them banned.

So you don't want teachers to force an ideology onto 4 year olds?
Are there situations you know of where you aren't given the choice?
Are you always advised about what non-skooling subject matter is introduced to your children?

What is "forcing an ideology"?
I'm not religious myself but there was a lot of religion-related stuff in my kids' preschool - and I think it's acceptable, that's a part of the local culture.

Explaining sexual orientations in age-appropriate, neutral terms is not ideology, it's knowledge. Just like sex ed. If some find it controversial, I'm okay with a possibility of opting out but, man, not ban.
Silencing the topic is forcing an ideology in my book.

Irony:
At the extreme, some of the books listed for kindergarten have graphics that would go against the t&c's of this forum.

Oh, you are still here. lol

Well, when I was in kindergarten, I was taught about the alphabet and numbers, started to learn how to read and write, played with toys, ran around outside and had half an hour's sleep at lunchtime.
I wasn't "educated" about sex education or how the republicans are evil because a lot of them don't believe in climate catastrophisation that defied logic and allowed the biggest emitters of CO2 to continue to do so for decades to come.

Regarding religious teaching:
If a religious teacher were to "educate" your 4 year old child that if gay men put their "dickyboy" in another man's tushy, they would go to hell for eternity. Would you be happy with that or would you think it ideologically offensive and age-inappropriate?

I think forced sex education is appropriate for older ages, not for children in kindergarten, and that is what Desantis is saying, also.

Letting a child approach the parents with questions is the better way to go, imo.
Isn't it the responsibility of parents to educate their kids about these sorts of things rather than children be ambushed in a classroom with concepts that may simply confuse children who haven't even formed a question about the subject?

Past 12am here.
Off to bed.

I think what you present here is a very dishonest caricature of what I say.

I exactly told you what level of details I found appropriate when talking about gays to a 5yo.
Up to third grade is much more than just kindergarten. Technical details should be spared but explaining meaning of a word present in language and discourse is just knowledge. Knowledge shouldn't be banned at school.

In real life, these sorts of things are not taught in lower-grades classrooms.

Teachers don't talk about "climate change" except maybe in very general terms---and, very definitely, they don't talk about what gay people do in their sexual lives. Nor even about what straight people do in their sexual lives.

Pre-schoolers here don't get sold climate scare but they do have talks about how important it is to care for the environment in general and in examples. They do talk about safety rules when using internet. They are trained in evacuation and fire safety. There are classes on first aid and on healthy eating. They have people invited who teach them not to accept food or drinks from strangers and how not to be an easy target for possible abductors. They have lessons about hygiene, including intimate hygiene. They even learned about drugs from a policeman invited to the kintergarten.

A lot of topics can be presented in ways appropriate for preschoolers: without unnecessary details but informatively.

^That's exactly the way it should be.

We must teach in age-appropriate ways----but we must not withhold information.

If we withhold information, kids tend to learn (say, about sexual matters) from older kids who learn from less than savory people who don't have the best intentions. This happened, frequently, in the United States up to about the 1970s.

^ This is why I find banning the topic a completely wrong approach.
There should be boundaries and guidelines on how not to talk but not on what not to talk about.