Title: States That Require Schools to Teach LGBT History | Best States | US News
Headings: These States Require Schools to Teach LGBT History
These States Require Schools to Teach LGBT History
The 10 Best U.S. States for Education

Content: It states that "the teaching of history in the United States shall include a study of the roles and contributions of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people in the history of this country." The 10 Best U.S. States for Education
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California became the first state to pass a law requiring schools to teach LGBT history in 2011, followed by Colorado and New Jersey in 2019. Civil rights and advocacy groups have praised these states for expanding their definitions of American history in the classroom. "Our youth deserve to see how diverse Amerian history truly is — and how they can be a part of it one day, too," said Christian Fuscarino, executive director of the advocacy group Garden State Equality. But the laws also have their fair share of critics, including Barnegat, New Jersey, Mayor Alfonso Cirulli, also a former assistant principal, who said "the government has no right to teach our kids morality," according to the Asbury Park Press. Pushback from state officials, conservative groups and parents is one of the reasons why the law's implementation has been so slow in California, which didn't approve its first LGBT-inclusive textbooks for K-8 classrooms until 2017. "We haven't seen these schools get on board with these new textbooks yet," Dominic Le Fort, executive director of the California-based nonprofit group Queer Education that works with schools on how to teach LGBT topics, told The Bay Area Reporter. " We have seen a lot of schools dragging their feet." Implementation in New Jersey and Illinois could also be slow since individual schools and districts will implement the laws locally, meaning that they can choose their own standards regarding the integration of LGBT history into their curriculum. Despite this new wave of efforts to integrate LGBT content into the classroom, six states – Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Texas – still have laws prohibiting the "promotion of homosexuality."