Balint discusses LGBTQ and women’s history education bill
U.S. Rep. Becca Balint (D-Vt.) talked with the Washington Blade on Saturday about the LGBTQ and women’s history education bill that she and U.S.
Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.) reintroduced last week. The legislation, just like actions recently announced by the White House, responds to book bans and curriculum restrictions that have increasingly cropped up in conservative states and school districts, which disproportionately target educational materials inclusive of LGBTQ subjects and histories.
Balint and Torres’s LGBTQI+ and Women’s History Education Act of 2023 would authorize the director of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History to develop and distribute resources for educators to “teach LGBTQI+ and women’s history education in a more inclusive and intersectional manner.” On June 8, meanwhile, the White House debuted plans to address attacks on the safety and rights of LGBTQ Americans.
Among these were instructions to the U.S. Department of Education to appoint a coordinator who will “address the growing threat that book bans pose for the civil rights of students,” such as by providing “new trainings for schools nationwide on how book bans that target specific communities and create a hostile school environment may violate federal civil rights laws.” Balint told the Blade the education bill and these moves by the White House “complement each other,” but her efforts with Torres were “not coordinated as much” with the Biden-Harris administration as they were a product of the lawmakers’ shared understanding of “this moment that we’re in — as we’re both queer Americans trying to live our lives and not have our histories erased.” “And I also come to this,” Balint said, “as a longtime social
