Rep. Patricia Todd, the first and only openly gay state legislator in Alabama, has introduced a bill that would end a state mandate that public school sex education classes teach students that homosexuality is socially unacceptable and a criminal offense.
Todd’s bill would take away the power for legislators to mandate sex education curricula and hand it over to the Department of Education. “We need to make sure there is evidence-based education being done in the schools,” Todd told AL.com.
According to AL.com report:
The bill would have no effect on the state’s sexual-misconduct law, which makes homosexual acts a Class A misdemeanor, punishable by up to one year imprisonment. But it would strike requirements that teachers emphasize “homosexuality is not a lifestyle acceptable to the general public and that homosexual conduct is a criminal offense.”
Todd, who is Alabama’s first openly gay legislator, said she is not targeting the sexual-misconduct law because a 2003 Supreme Court ruling made it unenforceable.
That language and other state laws ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court could be cleared out by the state’s Constitution Revision Commission, which meets next on Jan. 11, she said.