A Florida Republican lawmaker’s bill would require schools to teach the “benefits of monogamous heterosexual marriage,” effectively teach that transgender people don’t exist, ban young women from discussing menstrual cycles and menstruation, and would require students be falsely taught that HIV can only be contracted through sex.
State Rep. Stan McClain’s legislation, HB 1069 says “instruction in acquired immune deficiency syndrome, sexually transmitted diseases, or health education, when such instruction and course material contains instruction in human sexuality, such instruction may only occur in grades 6 through 12.”
According to Rep. McClain, that would ban a fifth grade girl from discussing her period, as he stated when asked by Democratic state Rep. Ashley Gantt.
McCalin also conflates HIV, human immunodeficiency virus, with AIDS. According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), HIV “is transmitted sexually, via blood transfusions, sharing intravenous needles, and from the mother to a child during the birth process and breastfeeding.”
But according to Rep. McClain, students must be taught that “abstinence from sexual activity is a certain way to avoid out-of-wedlock pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, including acquired immune deficiency syndrome, and other associated health problems.”
McClain’s bill also requires students to be taught “abstinence from sexual activity outside of marriage as the expected standard for all school-age students while teaching the benefits of monogamous heterosexual marriage,” and that “sex is determined by biology and reproductive function at birth …and that these reproductive roles are binary, stable, and unchangeable.”
The bill also requires methods to strengthen banning books.
Watch Reps. McClain and Gantt above or at this link.