Apr 03, 2009  |  By: Lou Chibbaro Jr.  | COMMENTS     

Federally funded sex education programs in the nation’s public schools would be prohibited from discriminating against — and possibly omitting information about — gay people under a sex education bill introduced last week in Congress.

The Responsible Education About Life Act, commonly known as the REAL Act, has been stalled in committee since 2001 after facing opposition from President George W. Bush and a Republican-controlled Congress.

Congressional sponsors revised the bill this year to include language saying that school sex education programs funded by the legislation “shall not discriminate on the basis of sex, race, ethnicity, national origin, disability, religion, sexual orientation or gender identity.”

The bill’s supporters, which include groups promoting AIDS prevention programs in schools, say they are hopeful that support from President Barack Obama and House and Senate Democratic leaders will greatly increase the bill’s chances of passing in the next few years.

Marcela Howell, vice president of communication and policy for Advocates for Youth, an advocacy group that persuaded congressional sponsors to add the non-discrimination provision to the bill, said the legislation would leave full control over the content of sex education programs to local school boards.

However, she said the provision, among other things, would overturn laws and rules approved under the Bush administration that restrict some federally funded sex education programs to abstinence-only methods for birth control and HIV prevention. Under the REAL Act, abstinence-only sex education programs that exclude mention of same-sex relationships related to HIV prevention methods could result in a school district losing its federal sex education funds, Howell said.

The bill calls for $50 million in funds for the REAL Act program each year between 2010 and 2014.
The bill’s inclusion of non-discrimination language related to sexual orientation and gender identity comes at a time when gay and transgender advocacy groups are hopeful that Congress will vote this year to approve the Matthew Shepard Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act and the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, known as ENDA.

Both bills, as currently drafted, include protections based on sexual orientation and gender identity. ENDA calls for banning job discrimination against gays, bisexuals and transgender people in private sector employment.

The hate crimes measure authorizes the federal government to prosecute hate crimes targeting people because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. The bill was named after gay University of Wyoming student Matthew Shepard, who was beaten to death in 1998 in an anti-gay attack in Laramie, Wyo., that attracted worldwide attention.

Existing federal hate crimes statutes include protections for hate crime victims based on their race, ethnicity, religion and national origin, among other categories.

“The goal has been to pass hate crimes in the first half of the year and ENDA in the second half,” said Christopher Anders, director of the Washington office of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Lesbian & Gay Rights Project.

Anders said supporters in Congress of the hate crimes measure and ENDA have noted that they are under great pressure to act quickly on other pending legislation, especially bills related to the economy and the president’s health care reform proposals.

But he said that as of this week, congressional allies of the LGBT community haven’t given any indication that the expected timetable for bringing up the hate crimes measure in the spring and ENDA in the fall has changed.

Officials with the Human Rights Campaign, which is coordinating lobbying efforts in support of the two bills, have also said that Capitol Hill backers of the bills continue to assure them that the measures are expected to come up for vote this year.

In a separate development, new opposition surfaced this week for proposed legislation calling for the repeal of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” law that bans gays from serving openly in the military.

In a statement released Tuesday, more than 1,000 retired military officers, including several who were high-level commanders, urged Obama and Congress not to repeal the law, saying that doing so would “undermine recruiting and retention” of service members.

Those signing the statement included Gen. Carl Mundy Jr., a former Marine Corps commandant; Adm. Leighton Smith, a former U.S. Naval commander in Europe; Gen. Charles Horner, commander of U.S. aerial forces during the 1990-91 Gulf War; and Adm. Jerome Johnson, former vice chief of Naval Operations.

The release of the statement by the retired officers came two ays after Defense Secretary Robert Gates said in an interview on the weekly television program Fox News Sunday that the Obama administration doesn’t have immediate plans to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”

“Let’s push that one down the road a little bit,” he said, adding that ...