Last week, Gov. Jerry Brown signed the FAIR Education Act into law. It amends existing state law, which required public school social science instruction to include “a study of the role and contributions of both men and women to the development of California and the United States.” Beyond just men and women, the amended law now includes Native, African, Mexican and Asian Americans, Pacific Islanders, persons with disabilities, as well as lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans.
It’s the last four groups, the LGBT Americans, that have fur flying, in case you were wondering.
The amended law also prohibits educators from promoting “a discriminatory bias on the basis of race or ethnicity, gender, religion, disability, nationality, [or] sexual orientation.” And it makes it illegal for public schools to adopt textbooks and instructional materials “that contain any matter reflecting adversely upon persons on the basis of race or ethnicity, gender, religion, disability, nationality, [or] sexual orientation.”
These latter two regulations should go without saying. I see nothing wrong with prohibiting from the educational system the negative, discriminatory portrayal of any group of people. Frankly, I’m surprised this wasn’t law sooner.
But the legal requirement to include notable figures into social science curricula based simply upon their sexual orientation smacks of political correctness gone one step too far.
My opposition to just this part of the new law is not based upon “traditional” or “family” or conservative values. Nor is it based upon my religious faith. I’ve used my weekly 800 words here in the past to support the rights of those seeking same-sex marriage and to denounce what I see as so much un-Christian rhetoric and hate speech from my brethren in the faith.
