I wouldn't be surprised if there was some sort of legislated PC terminology for government workers somewhere (but, ironically, what first comes to mind is the banning of "Latinx" by Sanders). What about NYC protecting fat workers from being fired? Body-positivity and similar things tend to be "left" in the US.

> banning of "Latinx" by Sanders

Was there legislation? If not, how was it "banned"?

Oh I totally misunderstood and looked for a different "Sanders", thanks for sharing.

>I wouldn't be surprised

No, this is absurd. You don't get to imagine injustices by "the left" just because you don't like them. Right now the right is actively censoring teachers as private individuals. Where is this happening from left wing politicians?

That was about introducing sex ed to third graders. Have third graders put down their toy cars, dolls and blocks yet? And then you have a Cal governor suinf a school dist demanding they teach the curriculum he believes is correct. So you have an example of two governors, one on each side, tellig districts what to teach

But, the thing is, liberals _used_ _to_ espouse free speech as long as it was legal and defended it to the death, so to speak. Conservatives, well, they were conservative and were more on the "decency" argument but today that is reversed and the liberals are tending more autocratic than the conservatives.

I think that's (grade 3 -> 9yo) an ok age to start talking about sexuality. Lots of age appropriate topics there. Not sure why this is such a big deal.

I agree, but there are too many reports of teachers teaching some pretty extreme gender ideology to young kids. Things like "you can be any gender you feel like." Most people don't agree with that, and in fact there is no scientific evidence for the existence of gender at all. Sex ed is fine, but I don't think school is a place for ideological indoctrination. States are addressing this in many ham-fisted ways.

> too many reports of teachers teaching some pretty extreme gender ideology to young kids

Interesting, what's a good source on that?

That may have been the intent (which I seriously doubt) but in practice it means teachers cannot even mention their same sex partners or even that gay/trans people exist because that could be considered “sex ex” by a parent who doesn’t want their children to know gay people exist (and for the record it is not sex ed)

Hence the use of the phrase “don’t say gay”

I would government employees to not talk about sex, their partners, their bedrooms, and all manner of topics to 5-9 year old kids.

That bill would penalize the teacher if their gay significant other brought their forgotten lunch to school, the kids asked "who was that", and the teacher attempted any answer.

It has nothing to do with sex. Republicans in florida have quite clearly criminalized same sex couples doing normal things.

That's a very specific hypothetical. How based in reality is it?

So you don’t want female teachers to mention their husbands? Or their partner is male? Or that marriage even exists?

Because that would be the equivalent.

YES. I don't any teachers to mention anything that isn't part of my child's direct education. How is this so difficult to understand? Go talk to an adult.

The children are not the teachers friends. Leave them alone.

I don't care who their partner is, neither does my child. No one cares. Maybe we should ask why government employees aren't keeping stronger boundries when around children?

Also... Seriously? You aren't fooling anyone with these absolutely convoluted hypotheticals. No one is going to jail for saying "that's my <whatever>". It's an weak case when you need to reach outside of reality.

you do realize what you are saying right? and how dumb of suggestion it is or were your teachers growing up robot automatons who were not people?

and you do realize that marriage and relationships ARE part of education? history english etc. at what age do kids learn about what a husbands or wife is and what is marriage? because that is the same age they should learn about same sex relationships.

> I don't care who their partner is, neither does my child

lots of people do. lots of parents want their kids to not be exposed to the fact same sex couples exist, hence the don't say gay bill. and afterwards schools pulling all library books because the mere mention of a same sex couple in one is enough for them to be sued under the bill.

you are correct no one will go to jail. but school districts can be sued, which means they will not hire gay teachers because of the simple risk one parent gets upset and racks up a legal bill for them

THAT is why its so bad, how is that so difficult to understand for you?

Do you know what the content of sex ed when taught to younger classes is, and why the curriculum was adopted?

Because, the core of it was to ensure that said 3rd graders knew two things: 1. What the correct anatomical names for their genitals - parts of their bodies - are, and 2. What is appropriate and inappropriate touching.

Now, the reason you want to teach these things to children, really as young as possible, is because it turns out there's been quite a lot of child abuse cases where the defense case has rested on the fact that the victims don't actually know the anatomical names of body parts. And as a result when you go to prosecute, you can't conclusively prove from their testimony what was taking place, which it turns out has a habit of not convincing juries.

A child who only will sort of gesture to the lower part of their body, because they don't know to volunteer the correct name of the body part, again, it turns out, leads to a court system which fails to apply justice properly, and also increases the general risk of abusers being able to operate because they convince their victims that everything that's happening is "okay".

Oh, and as it turns out, it's also very hard to teach children how to identify this sort of thing without touching on the idea of their being multiple sexualities, because of course to teach something like appropriate and inappropriate touching you are quite likely (a) having to service questions from children who'll ask why it's not inappropriate for mommy and daddy, or (b) have to ask what about daddy and daddy or mommy and mommy and (c) who might struggle with the notion if it's not correctly identified that the inappropriate thing will apply regardless of gender, and yet can also be appropriate for adults regardless of gender.

There's a reason no one targeting primary school level physical education classes wants to say anything more then "sex ed" because, if they had to actually cover the content of what they were opposing, they'd rather look they were basically defending child predators. Which, though not directly, they are.

Oh, and you can't base this on "well parents should be in charge of what their kids learn" because a significant amount of the time, the abusers ARE the parents.

I've gone through sex ed in third grade. All I learnt was what the name of the body parts are, that I shouldn't let other people touch them in inappropriate ways, and that boys and girls have different things going on there. I don't see why it isn't appropriate and why a 9 year old shouldn't know this.

Because rich conservatives don't want the poor class to have a decent education… too dangerous.

Sex education is just part of the trend.

Why is this discussion always so nationalistic? It can seem miraculous that other countries can even function. How hasn't countries with working sex ed collapsed long ago, given all the severely dysfunctional things people attribute to it?

> ... demanding they teach the curriculum he believes is correct.

I mean, there's objective truth here; "he believes is correct" is a distortion of the facts. LGBTQ people actually do exist. Suing a school district and opposing the legislation of a state that's trying to erase classes of people from existence seems like a reasonable thing to do.

The Temecula school district in question decided they wanted to remove gay-rights activist Harvey Milk from the state-approved curriculum. Are we going to be willfully naive (or just flat-out bigoted) and suggest that they wanted to do that for any reason other than not wanting their kids to know homosexuality exists?

In the case of Florida, if teachers are allowed to discuss heterosexual relationships (even just simply talking about "mom and dad") in the classroom (which of course they are), legally requiring that they pretend homosexual relationships don't exist seems a bit absurd, no?

I'm not buying any of this as liberals trying to restrict free speech. If anything, it's the opposite: what if teachers wanted to teach the material the Temecula school board decided they wanted removed? What if teachers in Florida don't want to be afraid that they just might say something about a homosexual relationship and get fired?

Don't say gay is now law for high schoolers in Florida too. The "third graders" rhetoric was always a falsehood, the law was designed to be used for all ages of students.

I’ll just say I have no idea what you’re talking about, but I have heard about misinformation. That term is suddenly pretty much ubiquitous.

Mitigations are now everywhere. I can’t watch a video of Elon Musk explaining how new Tesla cars will start up by recognizing specific patterns in the driver’s testicles without a big warning telling me that the video is AI-generated.

Funnily enough, the absolute best content tends to be the stuff with fact checker warnings.

Sylvia Garcia is a Democratic senator from Texas and she sponsored the EARN IT Act two of the times they tried to shove it down our throats. That would have forced sites to backdoor any encryption.

There has always been a (small) bipartisan coalition in favor of law enforcement-sponsored anti-encryption legislation, unfortunately. Senator Lindsey Graham has been a vocal sponsor of several bills recently, but he had no problem finding Democrats to co-sponsor them. We have not seen these bills go completely mainstream and get the full partisan treatment. https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/press/rep/releases/graham-c...

I see, thank you. I wouldn't say this counts as censorship the sense we're talking about though right?

I wouldn't put it in the same category as book burning, but if the law had passed it would certainly have resulted in censorship.

> Although the content the EARN IT Act seeks to regulate is abhorrent and the government’s interest in stopping the creation and distribution of that content is compelling, the First Amendment still requires that the law be narrowly tailored to address those weighty concerns. Yet, given the bill’s broad scope, it will inevitably force online platforms to censor the constitutionally protected speech of their users. (https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/03/earn-it-act-violates-c...)

The Eliminating Abusive and Rampant Neglect of Interactive Technologies Act of 2020 (EARN IT Act) amends an existing federal law to force online platforms into changing how they moderate content online by scanning and censoring more of their users’ communications. (https://www.aclu.org/news/free-speech/the-earn-it-act-is-a-d...)

If it’s hard for a provider to tell what’s unlawful, but it’ll face legal liability if it gets it wrong, then the obvious incentive is for the provider to avoid the danger zone and censor lots of lawful content along with the unlawful content, just in case. This is exactly why Section 230 immunity is so important, because without it, platforms would constantly censor a lot of legal speech by their American users – maybe your speech – as a byproduct of trying to censor illegal speech, for fear that if they didn’t cast a wide net, some illegal speech would slip through and they’d get sued for it. (https://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blog/2020/03/earn-it-act-uncon...)

There's no need for legislation when you have the right businesses and institutes on your side

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/government-...