(LifeSiteNews) – The Trump administration is putting the state of California on notice to remove material on “gender identity” from its sex-education curriculum or risk losing more than $12.3 million in federal education grants.
A June 20 letter from the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services’ (HHS’s) Administration for Children & Families (ACF) to Sydney Armendariz of the California State Personal Responsibility Education Program’s Maternal Child, and Adolescent Health Division identifies “content in the curricula and other program materials that fall outside of the scope of PREP’s authorizing statute at 42 U.S.C. § 713. Specifically, the following subjects and language are outside the scope of the authorizing statute.”
Among the materials highlighted by the letter are a middle-school lesson that “there are also people who don’t identify as boys or girls, but rather as transgender or gender queer, high-school “teen talk” lessons that “some men are born with female anatomy, some women are born with male anatomy,” and associated affirmations of terminology such as “cisgender” and that “gender identity” is a matter of inner feelings rather than objective reality.
“The ‘purpose’ of a PREP grant award is for states to ‘carry out personal responsibility education programs consistent with this subsection,’” the letter continues. “The statute defines PREP as ‘a program that is designed to educate adolescents on — (i) both abstinence and contraception for the prevention of pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections, including HIV/AIDS,’” and “includes no mention of gender ideology, which is both irrelevant to teaching abstinence and contraception and unrelated to any of the adult preparation subjects described in section 713(b)(2)(C). The statute neither requires, supports nor authorizes teaching students that gender identity is distinct from biological sex or that boys can identify as girls and vice versa; thus, gender ideology is outside the scope of the authorizing statute and any expenditures associated with gender ideology are not allowable, reasonable, or allocable to the PREP grant.”
Ultimately, ACF Acting Assistant Secretary Andrew Gradison gave California 60 days to remove the offending material “and all similar language throughout their curricula and program materials” in order to keep the grant money flowing.
The LA Times reports that California, which so far has defied similar ultimatums from the Trump administration on other gender-related policies, has not yet spelled out what it will do, but maintains its material is “medically accurate, comprehensive, and age-appropriate,” and had been approved by the left-wing, pro-LGBT Biden administration.
The indoctrination of children with radical sexual ideologies and other left-wing agenda items has long been a major concern in American public schools, from libraries to athletic and restroom policy to drag events to classroom materials to even socially “transitioning” troubled children without parental knowledge or consent. Many schools have also displayed hostility to the rights and employment of individual teachers who refuse to go along with such agendas, regardless of their treatment of or rapport with gender-confused students.
Early this month, the Trump administration also threatened to pull Title IX funds from California if it persists in allowing biological males to compete against girls in sex-specific school athletic programs.
