The College Board today announced that the education authorities in Florida would no longer permit Florida high schools to offer the AP Psychology course. In a press release, the 124-year-old organization — famous for AP courses and the SAT — explained:
We are sad to have learned that today the Florida Department of Education has effectively banned AP Psychology in the state by instructing Florida superintendents that teaching foundational content on sexual orientation and gender identity is illegal under state law. The state has said districts are free to teach AP Psychology only if it excludes any mention of these essential topics.
The AP course asks students to “describe how sex and gender influence socialization and other aspects of development.” This element of the framework is not new: gender and sexual orientation have been part of AP Psychology since the course launched 30 years ago.
(Bolding mine)
Florida is not Saudi Arabia — but they are kindred spirits. While US civil rights do not permit as much discrimination against LGBTQ as fundamentalist Islamic countries — in the US, gay marriage is legal, and there are some work and housing protections for the non-bigender/heteronormative community — there are conservative crusaders across America who look enviously at the Saudis and pine for the same sort of bullying sadism here.
Florida, led by the odds-on worst presidential candidate in recent memory, Ron DeSantis, has taken another step toward homophobic totalitarianism with a slew of legislation designed to segregate its LGBTQ population into an academic gulag.
Like many aspiring tyrannies, the state started small. They promised only to ban disfavored topics for third graders and younger. This age restriction was the bigot’s Trojan Horse. All of us feel protective of the very young. And even some broadminded parents thought that sexual orientation and gender identification conversations could wait unto the little cuties were a few years more mature.
But the anti-social crusaders had bigger dreams, and soon what the state promised they would restrict to primary school was forced upon the near adult — the very students who desperately needed education on navigating the pubescent and post-puberty realities of their situation. It was a promotion of ignorance that was both fatuous and dangerous.
We eat, and how many people object to the young learning to cook? We have sex, but heaven forbid we should give the next generation the information to navigate that fundamental human urge/need. And good luck if you could not check the gender box assigned to you.
Educational historians — including the inimitable George Carlin — have long known that the authorities, both religious and temporal, have seen education as a tool to produce economically productive citizens but have done all they can to prevent students thinking. And worse, questioning. Carlin railed against corporations, but were he still alive today, he would have eviscerated the religious role in dumbing down America.
The power of conservatism to hurt the innocent cannot be overestimated. Vaccination is pro-life. But the pro-life crowd lectures people not to use it. Unwanted pregnancy is an economic disaster for many parents — mostly single mothers. But the right dreams of banning contraception, comprehensive sex ed, and reproductive self-autonomy.
They even want to make it harder for Americans to get health insurance for chrissakes. This fiscal irresponsibility leads to the American healthcare paradox. We spend more money per capita on medicine than any other country, and yet Americans die younger than the citizens of other developed countries.
Banning discussions of sex and gender does nothing to reduce the number of gays, trans, and other non-conforming citizens. All it does is stigmatize the inherently natural, drive up suicides, and leave millions of Americans with psychological damage no compassionate person would ever wish on another human being who had done them no harm.
To conservative politicians and parents, I say this. Your children’s sexuality and gender identity are theirs. You can hope and pray that your genetic legacy conforms to your beliefs, no matter how prejudiced. But that is not how nature works. If you believe in God, celebrate His creation in all its diversity - do not question His judgement.
Note to those conservatives: I honor your pronoun and gender identification for the Divine — show the same respect for others.