13-02-2025
Republicans, Democrats debate right age to teach gender, sexual orientation in schools
BALTIMORE — State Republican lawmakers pushed Wednesday to give parents a bigger say in sex education curriculum in their children's schools, but their efforts were defeated along party lines.
At the heart of the conflict are questions: what is the right age to teach students about gender and sexual orientation, and do parents have a right to restrict their kids from that curriculum?
'Overall, honoring what parents would like to do, I think, is extremely important,' Del. April Rose, a Republican representing Carroll and Frederick counties, said.
Republicans want to remove a measure from a bill that would require public schools to teach age-appropriate gender and sexual orientation health education without the ability for parents to opt out.
Rose offered an amendment to allow parents to opt out of gender and sexual orientation courses, saying it would offer local and parental control over their children's education.
Her amendment was defeated along party lines. The lone Democrat to vote in its favor was Del. Sheree Sample-Hughes. She is the only member of the majority party that represents the Eastern Shore.
The legislation will likely be passed out of the House chamber in the next few days. It will then be debated in the Senate.
Sponsored by House Ways and Means Committee Chair Vanessa Atterbeary of Howard County and Del. Kris Fair of Frederick County, both Democrats, House Bill 161 would require each of Maryland's 24 local school boards to create age-appropriate health education curriculum that meets the standards set by Maryland's education and health departments, including lessons on gender and sexual orientation.
Curricula must also include sections on how to live a healthy lifestyle, mental and emotional health, substance abuse prevention, family life, violence prevention, safe social media and internet usage, healthy eating, disease prevention and human sexuality.
Parents would maintain the ability to opt their child out of the family life and human sexuality courses. Under the bill, sections on gender and sexual orientation would be mandatory.
Each school board would be required to establish committees of health and education experts and members of the community to develop the curriculum.
Currently, all local jurisdictions are required to teach public school children about the majority of these topics based on standards set by Maryland's education and health departments in December 2019, including age-appropriate courses on family life and human sexuality for children in pre-kindergarten through eighth grade.
'The purpose of that framework is to make sure that all of our children feel included when they attend school. To make sure that they feel represented,' Atterbeary said of the existing standards. 'Quite frankly, everyone's doing a good job except … Carroll County.'
The family life and human sexuality curriculum in Carroll County excludes gender identity, even though educators are supposed to teach it under the existing health education framework. Instead, the county offers options for students to either learn the state curriculum, study the curriculum passed by the county's Family Life Advisory Board, or completely opt out of the family life curriculum.
Atterbeary said on the floor Tuesday that 35% of Carroll County elementary school parents opted for the statewide curriculum, 42% chose the county framework, 8% did not have their children learn the curriculum and 15% did not respond.
Rose said that, because of the number of those who responded that they chose the state curriculum — and the unknown number of those who may have opted for it but did not say — she found it difficult to believe that the problem is so large that Carroll County should not be allowed to continue offering the curriculum that its Family Life Advisory Board approves.
Republican Del. Joshua Stonko, who is also a Carroll County representative, said that not having the option to opt out will likely lead to parents keeping their children home from school on days those lessons are taught, which could leave students missing other core classes like math.
Del. Latoya Nkongolo, an Anne Arundel County Republican, said that not allowing the ability to opt out of the gender and sexual orientation classes would dismiss the religious and cultural beliefs of parents not just in Carroll County but around the state.
'Parents should always have the autonomy to opt out of any and every lesson — especially that's in this comprehensive framework,' she said.
According to Del. Anne Kaiser, an openly gay Democrat from Montgomery County, 57% of LGBTQ+ children experience parental rejection, and nearly half feel unsafe at school. She said that the amendment ignores the lived experience of those students and expresses the notion that they will be 'merely tolerated.'
'I'd like to … just say to the LGBTQ kids in the state of Maryland — and, specifically, in Carroll County — that the amendment that's being offered today to erase, ignore and tolerate you will fail,' Kaiser said. 'And that is because the majority of this House of Delegates value you. We don't merely tolerate you. We love you.'
In her request for her colleagues to reject Rose's amendment, Atterbeary said that the inability to opt out of gender and sexual orientation classes is about making sure that children are learning scientifically and medically proper material.
'This is in the health education article because this is how we keep kids safe,' she said. 'We keep kids safe by teaching them what is medically and scientifically correct, what is appropriate. We don't want our kids learning these things on social media, on Snapchat, or whatever else.'
Fair, the bill's cosponsor, is also openly gay. He told his colleagues on the House floor that he did not come out when he was younger because he watched an openly gay peer in high school suffer from bullying to the point he attempted suicide. Fair said that both closeted and openly gay children also deserve to have safe and accurate information about things they're experiencing.
'By splitting out this information and not offering the opt-out provision, we acknowledge that different sexual orientations and identities exist in our school system, and if somebody still wants to opt out of the entire family life and human sexuality curriculum, they can,' he said. 'What school systems can't do is erase — erase — people like me. They do not get to act like we don't exist.'
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