14 Reader Views on Sexuality and Gender in the Classroom

This is an edition of Up for Debate, a newsletter by Conor Friedersdorf. On Wednesdays, he rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Soon after, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.

Amid debate over a new law in Florida that prohibits instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity prior to fourth grade, that declares an intention to limit “classroom discussion” of those topics in its preamble, and that bans all instruction that is “age inappropriate” (whatever that means) in any grade, I asked readers, “What, if anything, should minors be taught or told about sexual orientation and gender identity before puberty?”

Today’s roundup concludes with an unusually long reader response that I very much enjoyed––and begins with Stephen, who sympathizes with people on both sides of this polarizing debate:

It is reasonable for parents to want to manage their children’s first introduction to sexual orientation and gender identity. Those on the left who oppose the bill overlook that the legislation’s K-3 “no fly zone” can also be protective of their interests, and even a tool to protect their right to control how their children are exposed to these issues. If a conservative teacher is teaching that the only acceptable form of sexual orientation and gender identity is one based on biological birth, parents who disagree and want their children to understand a fuller range of views can object, and even have legal recourse to enforce their rights. The legislation’s ban on subsequent education that is not “age appropriate,” however, is hopelessly vague and not amenable to neutral application. It wouldn’t be surprising if a court struck down that portion of the legislation for vagueness.  

Phil argues that we obscure a critical distinction when we talk about “sexual orientation and gender identity” because the compromise America reached on gay issues won’t work for trans issues:

The existence of same-sex sexual attraction is almost never disputed as a point of fact; our debates about when and how to introduce that phenomenon to children largely center around what moral judgments should accompany those conversations. Transgenderism, on the other hand, is hotly disputed as a pure factual matter, which renders any subsequent moral debates mutually unintelligible because they begin from opposite premises. The immutability of sex (and the inseparability of sex from gender) is a binary choice; it either is or isn’t and all else proceeds from that foundational assumption.

Unfortunately, I believe this mutual antagonism is irreconcilable, which means we won’t be able to reach a cultural entente