Miami-Dade School Board Votes Against Recognizing LGBTQ+ History Month

The vote took place Wednesday, amid appeals from pro and anti-LGBTQ+ groups. In the end, the board voted 8-1 against the measure.

The Miami-Dade School Board has voted against recognizing LGBTQ+ History Month.

The vote took place Wednesday, amid appeals from pro and anti-LGBTQ+ groups. In the end, the board voted 8-1 against the measure.

In addition to recognizing LGBTQ+ History Month, the measure would have added the teaching of two landmark Supreme Court cases into the twelfth-grade curriculum: Obergefell v. Hodges, which secured marriage rights, and Bostock v. Clayton County, which protects LGBTQ+ individuals from employment discrimination. 

Opponents and proponents of LGBTQ+ rights spoke for three hours prior to the vote, the Miami Herald reports. A contingent of Proud Boys had also gathered outside the meeting place, and got into an exchange with a person holding a transgender pride flag. 

“There is an election year and the anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric is a tool used by some to spread misinformation,” Lucia Baez Geller, who proposed the measure and who was the one board member to vote for it, told the Herald. “This is just plain disinformation.”

While opponents of the measure claimed that it would violate the recently passed Parental Rights in Education bill – known as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, which took effect over the summer – Baez Geller argued that it would not, as the law restricts the teaching of LGBTQ+ content through the third grade. She also said that parents would have the right to opt their child out of the twelfth-grade lessons under the proposed measure.

Governor DeSantis signed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill into law in March. Proponents of the law argued that it would protect parents’ rights, while opponents alleged that it would further stigmatize LGBTQ+ youth and lead to additional restrictions on teaching content

 


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