You can always tell when it’s election season because many politicians start reaching for the hot buttons in order to rally their base.
Such seems the case when Attorney General Ken Paxton recently sent a letter to the Fort Worth school district demanding that it hand over its sixth-grade human sexuality curriculum, which includes lessons around gender identity and sexual orientation.
No doubt the curriculum was a local controversy before Paxton got involved. Some adults have complained that the district should have directly involved parents before launching the class and even suggested that they were denied access to the lessons.
Certainly all parents should have access to what their children are being taught, but we urge Paxton not to turn this issue into another referendum on transgender kids.
Two years ago, Paxton and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick got involved with the Fort Worth district’s bathroom policy, which allowed transgender kids to use the bathroom of their choice. Patrick went so far as to call on Superintendent Kent Scribner to resign, although this newspaper applauded Scribner for what struck us as sensitive leadership.
Controversy raged for months during the last legislative session over the so-call bathroom bill. Patrick aggressively sought —but failed to get — a law that would have restricted transgender people to bathrooms that matched the gender on their birth certificates, something he said was needed to protect women and girls.
Hundreds of others felt otherwise, calling the bill mean, discriminatory and unnecessary. Opponents included not just this newspaper but police chiefs, parents, CEOs, religious leaders and the LGBTQ community.
Now Paxton, who is running for a second term as the state’s top lawyer, is taking issue with Fort Worth’s health-class curriculum.
The parental rights group Stand for Fort Worth has circulated an online petition to “stop hiding transgender curriculum from parents” and complained that children could not take their textbooks home or take photos of the curriculum.
The district says parents have always had access to the course workbook through the schools’ principals and the district’s curriculum office. A spokesman told the Texas Tribune that the workbooks had to remain at school because of the sensitivity of their content.
Count us in the camp of giving some information to students at a relatively early age, especially when you consider statistics like those in a recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that revealed 28 percent of gay, lesbian and bisexual Texas high schoolers said they attempted suicide in the last year.
The Texas Tribune noted that state curriculum standards do not require sixth-graders to learn about sexual orientation or gender identity, but districts have the discretion to add such material.
The provisions that Fort Worth ISD has put in place, including an opt-out provision, strike us as reasonable. Whatever the outcome of this controversy, this is an issue to be sorted out in Fort Worth, not Austin. Paxton should stay out of it.
Article by Dallas News Morning Editorial • View on Dallas News
