Teachers couldn’t mention Buttigieg is gay before alerting parents under Iowa proposal
Pete Buttigieg won the Iowa caucuses last week — but if a new state proposal becomes law, teachers might be constrained in talking about his and others’ sexuality and gender identity.
“Parents have the right to know when it comes to a controversial issue what their children are being taught in schools they’re paying for,” said Brad Cranston, a pastor from Burlington, WHO reports.
Republican Iowa lawmakers introduced the measure and advanced it this week, according to the Des Moines Register, which reported that under the legislation “Iowa school districts would have to notify parents when curriculum or classroom activities include content that relates to sexual orientation or gender identity.”
Buttigieg, the 37-year-old former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, is the first openly gay candidate to lead in the caucus delegate count ever. The Iowa race was the first 2020 Democratic presidential nomination contest in the country.
That fact led Emily Piper of the Iowa Association of School Boards — which opposes the bill — to ask about how it would impact classroom discussions of Buttigieg.
“What if we’re having a discussion on current events and there’s a presidential candidate — somebody who’s running for the nomination — who’s gay?” Piper said, per the Des Moines Register. “Can we not have that conversation in a government class, then, without first notifying the parents and allowing them to withdraw their child from the class?”
WHO reported that Rep. Sandy Salmon, a Janesville Republican and bill co-sponsor, explained that “just talking about him in class wouldn’t trigger notifying parents but discussing his sexual orientation might.”
The bill doesn’t target Buttigieg in particular, but rather discussions and curriculum around gender identity and sexual orientation more broadly.
The text of the legislation explains it like this: “This bill requires school districts to provide notification and information relating to, and allows pupils to be excused from, any program, curriculum, material, test, survey, questionnaire, activity, announcement, promotion, or instruction of any kind relating to sexual orientation or gender identity.”
But Lorilei Baker, an Urbandale mental health professional, said the bill is problematic because “it assumes children can turn gay by suggestion,” according to WHO.
Buttigieg has said that he doesn’t see himself as running to just be the first gay president, but he still sees the historical significance of his candidacy, according to the Los Angeles Times.
“We’ve got a long way to go when it comes to LGBTQ equality right now,” he said said at a CNN town hall, according to the Times. “But I think the fact that I’m standing here, the fact that my husband is in the audience watching right now, is just an amazing example of that belief that, yes, yes — you belong. And this country has a place for you.”
A January 2020 Gallup poll found that 78 percent of Americans said they would vote for a “well-qualified” candidate who happened to be gay — a 23 percent increase since the question was asked in 2007. In 1983, only 29 percent of voters said they’d cast a ballot for a qualified gay candidate, according to Gallup.
This story was originally published February 13, 2020 at 2:19 PM with the headline "Teachers couldn’t mention Buttigieg is gay before alerting parents under Iowa proposal."
