Morrison: New sex ed curriculum bill 'passed with a bare minimum of yes votes'
With the school year starting, State Rep. Tom Morrison reminded voters and parents of the new sex education curriculum Illinois is implementing, a bill that drew just enough support to pass.
“Despite bipartisan opposition, this bill passed with a bare minimum of yes votes and Gov. (J.B.) Pritzker's signature,” Morrison (R-Palatine) said in a Facebook post. “They’re not ‘national standards’ produced by legislative or executive branch agencies. They were created by national sex positive activist groups like amaze.org and include books like 'It's Perfectly Normal,’ which is a graphic sex ed textbook targeted to age 10 and up.”
Pritzker signed SB 818 into law a year ago. It requires all K-12 schools that teach sexual education to align their curriculum with certain standards.
"Modernizing our sex education standards will help keep our children safe and ensure important lessons like consent and internet safety are taught in classrooms," Pritzker said in a release about the legislation.
The new sex education curriculum will be based on the National Sex Education Standards (NSES). It calls for teaching children in kindergarten through second grade to define gender and gender identify, as well as gender-role stereotypes, and teaching the students the medically accurate names for body parts, including genitals, according to a report from Breakthrough Ideas.
Children in grades three through five are to be taught about masturbation; hormonal development and the role of hormone blockers; the differences between cisgender, transgender and gender nonbinary; and the difference between sexual orientation and gender identity.
Children in grades six through eight will be taught to define oral sex, anal sex and vaginal sex, and instructed to identify at least four methods of contraception that are available without a prescription, such as condoms and emergency contraception.
High school students will be taught about "reproductive justice," as well as how to differentiate between sex assigned at birth, gender identity and gender expression.
The Catholic Conference of Illinois has issued a statement opposing the bill.
"SB 818 mandates adding considerable course material and instruction regarding sex education in public schools,” it said. “We support efforts that help students learn about sex education, but we feel compelled to speak about this bill because it recommends a significant change to the content of what students are being taught in our public schools.”
While the Catholic Conference admits that the legislation provides an opt‐out, many parents might not be aware of that option. By the same token, teachers who have moral objections to teaching to the requirements are not given a choice to opt out, it said.
The Catholic Conference also objects to the fact that the curriculum was driven by advocates for social change.
“These standards developed by SEICUS – Sex Ed for Social Change — are the minimal standards for grades K‐12 and we are concerned that these standards developed by a private organization can change without proper input from parents,” the group said. “SEICUS is an organization that, according to its website believes that sex education has the power to spark large‐scale social change. It is interesting to note that these standards were selected when there are standards put forth by the Center for Disease Control (CDC).”