Reps. Click, Williams introduce a bill to oppose LGBT ideology
Ohio Republicans have introduced legislation that would push back against the LGBT ideology on the state and local government levels, prompting pro-LGBT activists, including those in the education field, to criticize the lawmakers and the bill.
“State institutions, government institutions cannot promote that woke ideology,” state Rep. Gary Click, R-Vickery, said in an interview with News 5 Cleveland on Tuesday.
To combat the pro-LGBT activists in government whose ideology hurts parents, Click and state Rep. Josh Williams, R-Sylvania Township, introduced a 55-page bill that aims to change how agencies can interact with children who identify as “transgender.”
“We’re going to say in Ohio, it is not a danger to treat your child normally and to affirm your son is your son and your daughter is your daughter,” Click said.
House Bill 693, which was only recently introduced in the House, would allegedly prevent the government from penalizing parents via losing custody, for example, for not supporting the identification of their child as a member of the LGBT “community,” and limit the government officials’ ability to provide related services to children.
“We see a growing trend by the woke left to push an ideology on our children and unlawfully remove a parent’s constitutionally protected fundamental right to control how the children are raised,” Williams said during a news conference, Cleveland.com reported.
The bill would also prohibit the government from barring child placement with foster couples who don’t support “transgender” ideology.
Additionally, the bill would overturn a dozen conversion therapy bans across Ohio by making sure that counseling to “reverse” someone from being “transgender” would not be classified as a conversion therapy.
“It is not conversion therapy to help children discover their identity and who they are biologically,” Click said.
Specifically, at the educational level, the bill would protect conservative teachers by ensuring they are not punished for not using a student’s preferred pronouns and prevent leftist teachers from using a student’s preferred pronouns.
The bill would also allow the state to withdraw state funding from any state or local government that doesn’t comply.
Many pro-LGBT activists criticized the bill, with TransOhio Executive Director Dara Adkison, for example, calling it “blatantly transphobic,” according to The Columbus Dispatch. Ohio Federation of Teachers’ Melissa Cropper also criticized the bill, lawmakers, and Republicans, in general, for putting Ohio schools and children in the middle of a culture war, according to News 5 Cleveland.
“It’s an absolute travesty that we have politicians who are attacking some of our most vulnerable students, who are using our teachers as as ways to attack these students and are using this to advance their own political agenda and their own political careers, instead of thinking about what’s best for our students, what’s best for our public education system, what’s best for our communities, what’s best for us as humans,” she told the outlet.
