Judd Legum of Popular Information tells the sad story of what happened to sex education in Florida. Responding to Ron DeSantis, the legislature passed a bill declaring what must be taught and what cannot be taught, in accord with the ideology of rightwing Republicans, not science. The law requires districts to have their sex Ed curriculum approved by the state. Large numbers of students are getting no sex education at all. That may be what DeSanths wants.
Legum writes:
In May 2023, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) signed Florida House Bill 1069, a law that requires sex education classes in the state to conform to right-wing ideology. Specifically, the law requires all sex education classes to teach students that sex is binary, “either male or female,” even though that is inaccurate. It also mandates that students are instructed that sex is defined exclusively by “internal and external genitalia present at birth,” and these sex roles are “binary, stable, and unchangeable.” This requirement erases the existence of trans and nonbinary people. Schools also must “teach abstinence from sexual activity outside of marriage as the expected standard for all school-age students” and “the benefits of monogamous heterosexual marriage.”
To enforce these new rules and other aspects of the DeSantis administration’s political agenda, HB 1069 also requires “all materials used to teach reproductive health” to be approved in advance by the Florida Department of Education (FDE) or use textbooks pre-approved by the state. Previously, sex education curricula were approved by district school boards. Florida parents can opt-out of sex education lessons on behalf of their children.
The FDE instructed school districts to submit their materials for sex education by September 30, 2023. The school districts met the deadline, but the FDE never responded. Florida counties were placed in a no-win situation as not teaching sex education, a mandatory course, at all is a violation of state law.
Several Florida school districts — including Hillsborough, Orange and Polk Counties, three of Florida’s largest — decided not to teach sex education at all during the 2023-24 school year, the Orlando Sentinel reported. Other counties, including Broward and Seminole Counties, taught sex education classes without getting the legally required approval.
Legum reviewed a copy of the training materials for reviewers of district plans. Among other things, it requires these “experts” to watch for the following criteria:
The “experts” are directed to evaluate all materials on 11 separate criteria, some inscrutable. For example, all materials must be evaluated on the criteria of “Male and Female Reproductive Roles,” “Principles of Individual Freedom,” “Critical Race Theory,” and “Social Justice.”
Please open the link to learn more about how the Florida Department of Education trains reviewers of district plans.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The irony of all this is that sexual activity is in decline among teens. I have not read any analysis as to why, but I suspect that it relates to teens feeling confident in who they are and not wanting to be defined by someone else’s perception of their sexuality.
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“The irony of all this is that sexual activity is in decline among teens.”
Really? And we know that…how?
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A bunch of recent studies show that sexual activities and, correspondingly, STDs and pregnancies, are WAY DOWN among teens AND young adults. I suspect that the explanation with regard to teens is that they are more aware now than they were.
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Not buying it for one second.
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Well, you clearly have not paid attention to the studies. Steady declines in percentage of teens having sex and in teenage pregnancies and in STDs among teens and increases in age of first intercourse and use of birth control by teens who are sexually active have been attested by numerous studies over the past ten years.
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I know it from reading the studies and talking with my daughter.
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You gotta lot of faith.
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I may be naïve, but I get the impression that my daughter’s friends are militant when it comes to control of their own body. Is the drop in sexual activity equal to the number of young women who are not excited to live in a society where women are told to act a certain way? Or is George Soros lacing the cornflakes with saltpeter?
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It has been my experience that whenever the media (of any kind, really) tells us what “students” or “youth” are doing in, well, almost anything, it bears absolutely no resemblance to reality.
I first realized this when I was 12. Nothing in the intervening decades has refuted this.
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DeSantis and his Nazis mob can/maybe try to force schools what can or cannot be taught to students concerning human sexuality but there is no way on this third rock from the sun will DeSantis or his minions be telling what students can and will learn on their own.
Over many centuries children have been able to learn rightly or wrongly all about sex. It is a natural genetic drive within all humans to figure out what sex is all about and it all starts at a young age. No law passed by any legislators and any level of government and signed by any president/governor will ever stop children to finding out what sex is all about. They can read on their own and they will experiment on their own. That is just a fact of life. Students will, rightly so, tell DeSantis to put his law where is sun don’t shine.
I guess the next step for DeSantis is to try to pass legislation that tells parents what they can and cannot teach their children about sex. I believe, although it is not always done, that parents should be the first teachers of sex education to their children. Not the schools. The schools need to focus on the three “Rs”. But, again, we know not enough parents do their jobs when educating and raising their children properly, which includes sex education.
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as for parents being the appropriate teachers about sexuality to their children, then many children are not going to have any informed, healthy idea of human sexuality and its role in their lives.
My late mother and father were good people who were profoundly uncomfortable discussing sexuality with my siblings and I. Thankfully we did re eive some education in school, as well as well written books.
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DeSantis is a deeply delusional extremist who is only interested in repression and control. Why does the state of Florida feel the need to define people sexually? All they are accomplishing is showing the world how ignorant and misinformed they are. Scientists know that the brain is the driver of sexual interest, not just genitalia. The belief in “praying away the gay” along with “conversion therapy” is a lot more harmful than helpful. As for abstinence, the facts show that it does not work. Information about sex does not lead to promiscuity, but it may lead to unwanted pregnancies. Perhaps all this misinformation and repression leads to so many in the GOP getting caught in inappropriate sexual scandals.https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/08/23/545289168/abstinence-education-is-ineffective-and-unethical-report-argues
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cx: but lack of information may lead to unwanted pregnancies.
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And STDs. Both STDs and teen pregnancies are commonplace in red states that do little or no sex education.
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A few more hurricanes and there may be no Florida to govern.
“Florida Gov. DeSantis signs bill that deletes climate change from state law”
Florida Gov. DeSantis signs bill that deletes climate change from state law : NPR
With more than 22 million people, where will Florida’s population go when the people can’t afford to rebuild again?
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More dictums from delusional dictator, DeSantis.
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It is astonishing that the governor of Florida denies the reality of climate change.
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I have recently met two separate (unrelated) adult Floridians who believe a) that vaccines are a vast conspiracy among doctors and pharmaceutical execs to kill off large percentages of the population and b) that the sky is a solid dome with stars stuck in it and because of this, the moon landing had to have been fake.I am not making this up. I wish I were.
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Laws like this are the last gasp of a dying set of ideologies. And, ofc, it’s the red states, run by morons like these, that have the over-the-top numbers for teen STDs and pregnancies. There’s a reason for that, and it can be stated in one word: ignorance.
BTW, repress all you want to. This just creates a foil against which teens can rebel as they forge their own identities. These morons think that changing curricula is going to make a difference when the real cause is to be found in a dramatic CULTURAL shift. The only way to enforce what they want to enforce is to apply such laws TO ALL OF CULTURE–music, television, movies, memes, web sites, etc. You know, following the model of THE FREAKING TALIBAN MORALITY POLICE, which these Flor-uh-duh politicos resemble to a large degree.
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These changes in Flor-uh-duh law will be quite effective
at increasing the amount of teen sex, the number of teen STDs, and the number of teen pregnancies.
Helluva Job, Ronnie.
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