[remarkEon]

>Why is it inappropriate for young children to be present for educational discussions about gender identity and sexual orientation?

Because it's creepy and weird for adults, who are supposed to be teaching math and so on, to have conversations with young children about sex. What I don't get is how this became controversial. Probably because of the internet, again, amplifying the worst takes and the worst interpretations of any given event.

>Kids live in modern families! Banning discussions like this is to ban the reality of lived experiences of millions of people.

The overwhelming majority of kids do not, but that's besides the point and saying "we should wait to discuss sex and sexual orientation until kids are old enough" doesn't "ban reality" in any way. It's instructive that you assume the teacher was "clueless or bigoted" and not, ya know, trying to sidestep an awkward conversation about sex in front of five year olds.

[PeterisP]

I strongly believe that even if we'd accept the notion that this awkward conversation needs to be sidestepped, it's completely inappropriate to do it by invalidating the reality of that child's family and requesting them to agree to a ridiculous lie ("no, you have a mama and a papa") which insults their family. Arguing about this topic is entirely opposite to sidestepping the issue, it's the teacher explicitly starting the awkward conversation and failing at it.

Furthermore, while that indeed is not the lived reality for the majority of the individual kids, it's IMHO relevant for very many classrooms or teachers which will have at least one family like that; with 20-30 kids in a classroom, a 1% "rare case" will be represented in 20-30% classes and in almost every school.

Also, it's my understanding that the traditional family model is not even the majority in quite a few places where less than 50% of kids are raised in a marriage with both their parents, due to divorces, remarriages, deaths in family and simply single parents; so a kid may have a "mom and two dads" (i.e. the biological dad and mom's husband) or many other family structures; I recall hearing an (tragic?) joke about a particular class observing that there the majority kids were raised by two-woman family, namely, their mother and grandmother; etc. So it is important for teachers to acknowledge the diversity of actual parenting, you can't assume that "a mom and a dad" families are universal because so many families are not like that, those are not rare edge cases or exceptions, and they can't even be treated as deviation from the norm because in current society the nuclear two-parent family is not that dominant to be considered a true norm.

[adriand]

> Because it's creepy and weird for adults, who are supposed to be teaching math and so on, to have conversations with young children about sex.

> It's instructive that you assume the teacher was "clueless or bigoted" and not, ya know, trying to sidestep an awkward conversation about sex in front of five year olds.

That's a strawman argument. Sexual orientation and gender identity != sex. Nothing about this conversation needs to be awkward. "Oh, interesting, NAME, you have two moms? Well, everybody, that's true, you can have a mom and a dad, or two moms, or two dads. Some people have one parent, and some are raised by their grandpa or grandma or someone else. Does anyone else here have two moms? Does anyone have two dads? Or a single parent?" Blah blah blah. It's not awkward, it's not sexual, and it normalizes the experience for the great many children who live in "non-traditional" families.

[magicalist]

> It's instructive that you assume the teacher was "clueless or bigoted" and not, ya know, trying to sidestep an awkward conversation about sex in front of five year olds.

This is exactly what people are talking about, by the way.

"I have a mama and a mami" is a potential awkward conversation about sex that needs to be sidestepped. "You have a mama and a papa" is no problem.

If we accept that as a premise, don't you see the issue with the law?

[remarkEon]

No.

Are we going to pretend that LGBT parents are somehow completely incapable of explaining to their kid(s) that their parenting situation is somewhat unique, and that this must be offloaded to teachers?

[morelisp]

> Because it's creepy and weird for adults, who are supposed to be teaching math and so on, to have conversations with young children about sex.

If kids don't learn about it from the good adults in their life, they're going to learn about it from the dangerous adults in their life. CSA thrives on the culture of silence imposed by those who think any discussion even obliquely related to sexual relations (and you're the one saying having two moms is "about sex"!) is inherently "creepy and weird".

Kids have a need to learn words to describe things which might be happening to them, and a right to see their self-image, family structure, and any proto-romantic/sexual feelings acknowledged.