Connecticut Is Not Immune.

We see it in states like Virginia, Tennessee, Florida, and Texas but it is also here in Connecticut, the banning of LGBTQ+ books. Pogrom has moved here to ban anything about trans children by the right-wing fanatics.

Gender and Sexuality Spark Emotional Debate in Haddam-Killingworth Schools
CT Examiner
By Emilia Otte
February 2, 2022


HADDAM/KILLINGWORTH — About 70 parents, students and community members dressed in rainbow colors filled the auditorium at the middle school on Tuesday in support of LGBTQ students and school staff teaching a curriculum that includes gender identity and sexual orientation.

The showing comes in response to a recent petition and parent complaints taking aim at the new state-mandated health curriculum which includes a lesson about sexual orientation and gender identity in eighth grade. Parents also voiced concerns about a school club supportive of LGBTQ students.

The local debate is part of broader national struggle regarding appropriate school curricula and school library books, on a variety of topics including history, gender, race and sexuality.

Question. Is feeling uncomfortable grounds for discrimination?

Some people think so…

One parent, Andrea Gaines, said her daughter felt extremely uncomfortable being asked about sexual orientation and gender. She told board members that her child was given forms to fill out asking about her sexual preference and gender.

I would like to know what forms that they were required to fill out. Was it questions about preferred pronouns?

Superintendent Jeffrey Wihbey told CT Examiner that the parental concerns involved an 8th grade lesson given in October. Wihbey said that, as part of the state of Connecticut’s new health curriculum, which was implemented in June, schools are expected to teach one lesson regarding gender identity and sexual orientation to students in the 8th grade.

I call this the Sergeant Schultz syndrome, "I see nothing! I hear nothing! I know nothing!" or the ostrich malady, stick your head in the sand and shut out the world.

Their other target at at the meeting was the GSA (Gay Straight Alliance) and just about every school district in Connecticut has a GSA. There is the Equal Access Act of 1984* that guarantees access to clubs like the GSAs. 

A Gay-Straight Alliance – a club in the middle school supportive of LGBTQ students – also raised the ire of some parents, who question its place in the school, and student participation without parental consent.

Shannon Johnson, a parent in the district and candidate in the last election for the Board of Education, said at the January meeting of the board that she did not believe there should be an LGBTQ+ club on campus, and called on the district to fire the counselors who led the club. She also called for the removal of books addressing sexual orientation from the school library. 

“If you refuse to remove the filthy books and wicked staff who allow this to happen on this campus, you are child abusers in effect by being complicit. Lack of action makes you complicit with child abuse,” said Johnson.

[…]

Board secretary Joel D’Angelo said on Tuesday that the board had received an additional 35 letters from community members, one expressing “concern” about the LGBTQ+ portion of the curriculum, and 32 in support.

It is a very vocal minority that is against anything LGBTQ+.

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* The Equal Access Act of 1984 stipulates how public schools the receive federal funding allow student groups to meet.

The Equal Access Act of 1984 applies only to schools that allow students to form groups not specifically linked to the curriculum (a chess club, for example). Moreover, the act applies only to groups that meet during noninstructional times and under the same terms that existing noncurricular clubs function.

The act also stipulates that meetings must be voluntary, initiated by the students, and of no specified numerical size. School employees, such as faculty advisers, may attend, but not participate, in meetings with religious content. Persons not connected with the school may not direct or regularly attend the meetings.

Also, students may not interfere with the educational purpose of the school. School authorities cannot specify the content of prayer, and no student or school employee can be compelled to attend religious activities; public funding for these religious activities is limited to the incidental cost of providing space.

Note: The law also allows religious groups to meet, as long as it is is voluntary.

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Addendum update 12:00. noon:

After  I wrote the post I came across this article about an interview with the Emily Knox, an associate professor in the School of Information Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Expert: Here's what's behind the recent surge in book censorship attempts

Yahho News

Christopher Wilson·Senior Writer

February 2, 2022

In schools across the country, hundreds of books are being targeted in a wave of attempted censorship that experts say has no precedent in the 21st century.

According to tracking from the American Library Association, there were nearly as many “challenges” — the ALA’s term for requests to remove books — between Sept. 1 and Dec. 1, 2021, as it normally tracks in an entire year. Republican-controlled legislatures in a number of states are considering or have already passed laws that will make it easier to pull books deemed to be divisive from school curricula and libraries. Conservative activists are spearheading many of the challenges, with the majority of the targeted books focusing on race, sexuality and gender.

[...]

Emily Knox: If you look at the ALA's list, you'll see that over the past five years, the list of most challenged books has [included] mostly what we call “diverse books.”

I really think what's happening now is that this is a response to several things: the protests after the George Floyd murder; just where we are with the pandemic; the backlash election of Donald Trump; and I think people are moving from federal elections and looking to see what they can do on their local level.

[…]

Are there any trends you see as you look at the challenges to these books that tend to pop up more often than not?

The reasons are not always clear. So with diverse books at the moment, [challengers] are saying things like, “Well, the book is racist," right? But what do they mean by that? What are they actually saying about the world as they wish it to be that this book is not reflecting? And often that is something like, “This book centers on people who are different from what I'm used to seeing,” “This book actually shows how my community is maybe not as welcoming as I thought it was,” or sometimes it's even like, “I just don't believe that these things happen to people.” I heard that most recently about [the Jerry Craft children’s book] “New Kid.”

That’s usually with books that are about BIPOC [Black, Indigenous, people of color] people. Books about LGBTQ people are a little different. Those are often coded as sexual.

Once again this is about racist or pornographic books, it is about votes!

Their faux outrage is about defining the party as a champion of the righteous and the Democrats as miscreants and lacking moral fiber.