Thinking About The 2024 Presidential Election and Sexual Health Education
Thinking About The 2024 Presidential Election and Sexual Health Education
Warning: Project 2025 Will Decimate Human Freedoms
Politicians are trying to get and hold onto power by taking away our right to be free in our own bodies, and our children will suffer if they ban education. We see this in the overturning of Roe and deadly abortion bans.1 Politicians have laid out a clear plan of attack on sexual health and wellness education.
Project 2025 is a 920-page document outlining action steps to over hall the government if the Republican nominee were to win the presidential election (I don’t like to say his name🤮).
If you haven’t considered what the 2024 presidential race outcome will mean for children, education, and sexual health, then please take a moment to click through some links:
Project 2025: Devastating for Sexual Health
From Educate Us, an outline of Sexuality Education and Project 2025
Congresswoman Grace Meng Outlines the devastating impact on sexual and reproductive rights around the world.
Project 2025 on International Sexual and Reproductive Health & Rights
Here’s one (wordy) direct quote from Project 2025 to give you a little taste:
“The next conservative Administration should rename the USAID Office of Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment (GEWE) as the USAID Office of Women, Children, and Families; refocus and realign resources that currently support programs in GEWE to the Office of Women, Children, and Families; redesignates the Senior Gender Coordinator as an unapologetically pro-life politically appointed Senior Coordinator of the Office of Women, Children, and Families; and eliminate the “more than 180 gender advisors and points of contact…embedded in Missions and Operating Units throughout the Agency.” [Project2025“Mandate for Leadership,” pp.259]
Please allow me to paraphrase: So, the current Office of Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment will be renamed and its resources realigned to the Office of Women, Children, and Families, which will be led by an “unapologetically pro-life, politically appointed” boss. This sounds like a puffy way to say the government will allow women to choose family and children, not equality or empowerment.
Florida Offers a Foreshadow of Conservative Politicians Who Ban Education Rights
Florida Just Banned Sex Ed In Schools, which could be considered a potential foreshadowing for our nation.
Florida has a comprehensive sexual health education ban on teaching gender identity or sexual orientation that goes into effect in 30 days. If a teacher is found to have violated this new rule, they could face suspension or have their teaching license revoked.
The new ruling states:
“Shall not intentionally provide classroom instruction to students in grades 4 through 12 on sexual orientation or gender identity unless such instruction is either expressly required by state academic standards as adopted in Rule 6A-1.09401, F.A.C., or is part of a reproductive health course or health lesson for which a student’s parent has the option to have his or her student not attend.”
For the record, this ban has been in place for grades pre-K through 3rd grade, but Florida has now extended it through 12th grade.
Some conservative politicians are openly planning to punish and even imprison anyone - librarians, teachers, and maybe even parents - who share essential sexual health information with young people.
Really? Prison for teaching about sexual health. What are people so afraid of? I don’t get it.
Just in case this is new news: teaching about gender identity and sexual orientation does not make a person gay, or transgender, or whatever. It DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY. Educating about diversity makes the world a more complex, knowledgeable, evolved, and connected place.
To the LGTBQ community in Florida, this ruling is wrong. The world needs to learn your perspectives; please keep being you. You are loved and needed, and children have the right to understand that all people are valuable, with a right to be here. Please put me in jail; I’ll keep introducing students to A.J. Sass’ writing.2
To all my fellow teachers in Florida, I’m sorry you have to teach in fear. Fearful that if you share a read-aloud book with an illustration that depicts two mothers or perhaps mention to your 12th-grade literature class that some argue Walt Whitman may have been gay, then you could face heart-wrenching consequences. Being forced to censor education is not a good feeling.
Another bill, Florida House Bill 1069, proposes further bans on sexual health education.
It creates a specific definition of "sex" for use in Florida's education system from early learning through college.
It prohibits particular title and pronoun usage by teachers or students.
It calls for systemic book banning in classrooms and libraries.
It invites objections to any material an individual may qualify as ‘inappropriate.’
It gives school principals, school districts, and school boards the power to define what a person learns or does not learn about their sexual health - at school.
A select group of people should not have this much power over how sex, gender, and sexuality are discussed.
Project 2025, in its entirety, is linked here. It’s a 920-page, step-by-step plan for enacting systemic oppression and putting extreme power into the hands of a few. The Republican nominee’s main goal is power and attention, and he will look to the Project 2025 advisors for advice on how to get it.
Please vote.
I’ll be voting by mail as soon as I can. Let's do this!!
xo
Tara
If you don’t read Abortion Every Day, please sign up for Jessica Valenti’s Substack. She and her team are next-level rockstars who help us see through the rhetoric bullsh*t.
I can write that statement. But, what if?! Seriously, it’s scary to think of having freedoms taken away.