This past week, President Donald Trump’s administration called for 40 states to remove LGBTQ+ content from federal sexual education materials. According to Denver Post, these materials are a part of the federal initiative, the Personal Responsibility Education Program, or PREP. This program uses grants to encourage state agencies to inform young people about safe sex practices and abstinence, totaling over $81 million dollars in funds. Officials were told that they have 60 days to eliminate any LGBTQ+ focused lessons, or they would lose their grants.
This directive is only one of several moves the Trump administration has been making against the trans community. Just a few months ago, in a statement for National Child Abuse Prevention month, Donald Trump proclaimed that “one of the most prevalent forms of child abuse facing our country today is the sinister threat of gender ideology.” Combined with acting Assistant Health and Human Service Secretary Andrew Gradison’s statement, “Federal funds will not be used to poison the minds of the next generation of advance dangerous ideological agendas,” it’s even clearer that this administration has made queer people their scapegoats.
According to The Trevor Project‘s 2024 survey, 39% of LGBTQ+ youths seriously considered committing suicide, with 46% being transgender and nonbinary kids. Many queer kids find solace in their teachers and cherish any environment that talks candidly about queerness, so removing school as one of their safe spaces is a recipe for disaster.
If these kids can’t learn about LGBTQ+ sex at school, and they aren’t in a safe home environment, they are going to have unsafe sex and risk contracting STIs. Even if they are learning about heterosexual safe sex in school, the mechanisms don’t apply to queer sex. Who is supposed to use a condom if they’re both girls? And if they’re AMAB, they won’t need to use protection because neither of them can get pregnant, right?
These are questions that queer kids should be able to ask in school without risk of reprimanding, or getting their teachers in legal trouble.
