Pennsylvanian Republican Senators Scott Martin and Ryan Aument recently announced plans to introduce a bill called "The Empowering Families in Education Act," which would address discussions about gender identity and sexual orientation within schools.

This act, which would ban classroom introduction to gender identity and sexual orientation from grades pre-kindergarten to fifth grade, is all too similar to Florida's "Don't Say Gay" bill. This bill would also require schools to adhere to existing state legislations surrounding sexual orientation and gender identity for grades 6-12. It would also make public schools create a policy that states that schools must notify parents or guardians if there is a change to their child's services and monitoring, and schools cannot withhold information from a parent or guardian within accordance to existing state and federal laws. The only exception to this is if the school thinks giving a parent this information could subject the child to abuse or abandonment.

The senators claim that this bill will not outright ban all classroom discussions about sexual orientation and gender identity, however the Pennsylvania State Education Association say that when there is a limit on educators and what they are allowed to teach, there is no telling where it will stop.

This bill was proposed as a response to complains the senators received from parents about "age-inappropriate" discussions within classrooms. "Parents have a fundamental right to decide the educational, moral, ideological and religious upbringing of their children without unreasonable government interference in the classroom undermining that right," the senators claimed. However, education that children receive in schools is NOT for each parent to decide. This bill would mainly affect public schools, where religious teachings do not occur. Parents should not be allowed to incorporate religious beliefs into the teachings of each student, many of whom are not the same religion. Teachers, schools, and school boards are the ones who decide what goes in the curriculum, otherwise many things we learn today would simply be outdated teachings because that is what many parents want their children to learn.

The senators also claim that it would not bar any student-initiated discussions, however these discussions are too rare to properly educate anyone. A lack of education would lead to misunderstanding, which would --and does already-- lead to homophobia. This would likely make young LGBTQ+ students afraid to speak up in class about LGBTQ+ subjects.

Overall, the result of this bill's passage will be devastating. It could lead in an uptick in suicide and put the progress the LGBTQ+ community and Pennsylvania schools have made in the past 50 years.

"Once politicians start censoring what teachers say and how they do their jobs, there is no telling how far that censorship will extend or what they will want to censor next. It is a very slippery slope,” says PSEA spokesman Chris Lilienthal. 

“But the thing is LGBTQ people exist,” says Preston Heidlibridle, executive director of the Pennsylvania Youth Congress. “When these kids grow up, they’re going to be their friends and their classmates and their neighbors and their teachers. There’s no reason why simple information about us, age-appropriate information, should be deemed as dangerous or inherently sexual. That’s just very dehumanizing.”