WASHINGTON — The Woodhull Freedom Foundation has released a statement condemning a new bill proposed by House Republicans, which the organization says “threatens to deny schools, libraries and museums federal funding for discussing LGBTQ+ issues or providing even basic sex education to children.”
The bill, sensationally titled the “Stop Sexualization of Children Act of 2022,” was introduced by Rep. Mike Johnson of Louisiana and co-sponsored by over 30 Republican representatives.
“While it’s tempting to draw a comparison to Florida’s noxious Don’t Say Gay bill, this is much worse,” the Woodhull statement opines.
Woodhull, the leading U.S. nonprofit advocating for sexual freedom as a fundamental human right, explains that the Republican bill would effectively ban “any material that so much as describes human sexual activity, or any topic that touches on gender identity or sexuality,” massively expanding the state’s definition of “sexually oriented material.”
The language of the bill, the Woodhull statement continues, “is rife with outlandish claims such as accusing state and federal agencies, including the Department of Defense, of using federal funds “to promote and host ‘sexually-oriented events’ like drag queen story hours or burlesque shows for children and families.”
Under the proposal unveiled yesterday by a group of House Republicans, among them vocal extremists such as Reps. Lauren Boebert of Colorado and Louis Gohmert of Texas, ‘‘sexually-oriented material’’ would be redefined as “any depiction, description, or simulation of sexual activity, any lewd or lascivious depiction or description of human genitals, or any topic involving gender identity, gender dysphoria, transgenderism, sexual orientation or related subjects.”
GOP Bill an ‘Assault on Children’
Woodhull notes that were the bill to pass, “libraries would be forced to remove books on human reproduction, teachers banned from talking about consent and museum directors forced to shutter Pride exhibits. School therapists would not be able to provide resources on child sexual abuse. Any school that violates these rules can be sued by a parent and lose federal funding.”
Woodhull condemns the bill as “an assault on children” driven by Rep. Johnson and his colleagues’ desire to “demonize the LGBTQ+ community as a pedophile threat.
“In the name of ‘parental rights’ and ‘religious liberty,’” the statement continues, the new bill “erases the very existence of LGBTQ+ people — not to mention students. Perhaps that’s the ultimate goal. The censors are using a dystopian fantasia of lunchroom strippers to remove books from classrooms and topics from lesson plans, but they’re hoping that they can remove sex from the public square all together — and with it, any discussion of feminism, bodily autonomy, reproductive rights, sexual self-determination and other roadblocks to a theocratic state.”
Main Image: Anti-trans legislator Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.) (Photo: U.S. House of Representatives)
