A recent letter from the US Administration for Children and Families alerted 40 US states they may lose funding unless they remove “gender ideology” from their sex education instruction. In Connecticut, this would include a loss of $1.56 million from a state sex-ed program (a program they did not even include in last year’s curriculum).
Reports the Norwalk Hour:
At issue is the Personal Responsibility Education Program, a federally funded sex education program addressing “both abstinence and contraception for the prevention of pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections, along with federally mandated adulthood preparation topics such as healthy relationships, financial literacy, and educational/career success,” the state Department of Health said.
A letter received last week from Andrew Gradison, acting assistant secretary for the federal Administration for Children and Families, threatened to pull that grant funding if specific language wasn’t removed from the PREP facilitator manual.
For example, page 15 of that manual instructs facilitators to, “Demonstrate acceptance and respect for all participants, regardless of personal characteristics, including race, cultural background, religion, social class, sexual orientation or gender identity.”
Page 36 says, “Asking participants to tell you their pronouns is a way of creating a safe space for transgender or gender nonconforming youth. Reinforce that sharing pronouns is optional; some youth may not feel comfortable sharing their pronouns and thus ‘outing’ themselves.”
Gradison’s letter, sent to the state DPH, which administers the program, says that “gender ideology” is “both irrelevant to teaching abstinence and contraception.” Gender ideology is a phrase sometimes used by opponents of LGBTQ rights that suggests gender is a social construct.
Read the complete Norwalk Mirror story here.
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