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  • 2018-04-30 (xsd:date)
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  • Are California Parents Barred from Withdrawing Their Children from Sex Education? (en)
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  • In 2015, the California legislature signed off on the Healthy Youth Act, a new sexual education curriculum for children in kindergarten and first through twelfth grade. In April 2018, web sites reported on the parental consent provisions in the law. For example, in an article with the headline California School District Says Parents Can't Pull Kids From New LGBT Sex Ed, LifeSite News wrote: The first thing to note here is that California is not about to implement the Healthy Youth Act. The new sexual education curriculum has been in place since 1 January 2016. Secondly, as the article suggests (but does not make clear), parents do have the right to specifically opt out of some parts of the curriculum for their children, but not others. They can also opt out of all sexual education, as an entire curriculum. The text of the law, which was passed in 2015 as Assembly Bill (A.B.) 329, has been a source of misunderstandings both sincere and insincere and varying interpretations. It states the primary goals of the curriculum. The first two are: In brief, the law specifies that parents or guardians can withdraw their children from sex education under the Healthy Youth Act: But another section of the law stipulates that the Healthy Youth Act doesn't relate to classroom materials or instruction about relationships, sexual orientation, or gender identity: This is what has given rise to confusion over the level of control a parent in California has over the sex education their child will or will not receive under the new law. In an e-mail, a spokesperson for the California Department of Education confirmed that the Healthy Youth Act has the following effect on parental consent: If they allowed a parent to specifically target instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity, a school or school district could fall foul of non-discrimination laws. The department of education spokesperson told us it would violate EC 220, a part of California's Education Code, which states: So it is wrong to claim that parents in California will be forced to allow their children to receive sex education: they can withdraw consent for the whole curriculum, or for instruction on HIV and STI prevention. What they cannot do is specifically withdraw their consent for classroom instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity. (en)
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