Urge South Carolina Lawmakers to Reject Curriculum Censorship Bills

All students deserve the freedom to learn.

Every young person in South Carolina – including those who are LGBTQ+ – deserves an equal opportunity to learn and to thrive. But some provisions of these bills allow parents to opt their child out of instruction related to sexuality or lessons concerning HIV/AIDS. Sexual education should be comprehensive, age appropriate, and medically accurate – as well as LGBTQ-inclusive – to ensure that students have access to information that can address potential ‘risk factors’ and help them make health decisions.

All students should feel safe at school.

Children should be focused on learning while in school. Feeling unsafe and unable to live authentically impairs a child’s ability to learn. 

The curriculum censorship provisions will have a chilling effect on any discussion of LGBTQ+ identity and stigmatize some students.

As a result of its broad and vague terminology, many provisions in these bills open up a can of worms, presenting more questions than solutions. For example, since the bills prohibit discussion of sexuality, can a student with two gay parents talk about their parents’ marriage during a class discussion about family? What is a teacher allowed to say to a class if a student is being bullied because of their sexual orientation or gender identity? Do school librarians have to remove any book with LGBTQ+ characters or references – or, for that matter, any story where two people of any sexual orientation fall in love? If a kindergarten student draws a picture of their family for class, including same-sex parents or a family member who is transgender, must the teacher interfere? These provisions in the bills amount to a broad anti-LGBTQ+ overreach and have no place in South Carolina. 

Background on Anti-LGBTQ+ Youth Policy in South Carolina Schools 

In recent years anti-LGBTQ+ forces have made schools a battleground for anti-LGBTQ+ campaigns, using political tactics to silence students, sow division, and infringe on the safety and dignity of young people.

For many years South Carolina statute prohibited public school health education from including any discussion of same-sex relationships, except in the context of sexually transmitted diseases. It was one of just a few states with laws on the books restricting the discussion of LGBTQ+ people in public schools – until it was struck down as unconstitutional and barred from enforcement in March of 2020, in Gender and Sexuality Alliance v. Spearman.

Now that this statute is no longer in effect, anti-LGBTQ+ activists are grasping at new discrimination attempts, including excluding transgender students from school sports, banning LGBTQ-themed books from school libraries, and altogether chilling speech about LGBTQ+ identity and history.