Kindergarten teacher says he exposes children to transgender, queer terminology

A kindergarten teacher in Massachusetts discusses sexual topics like transgenderism, queerness, and other alternate lifestyles in the classroom.

The teacher, whose identity has not been released, says he doesn’t discuss the full picture of what these lifestyles contain because it would be too difficult for  children to understand, according to the Washington Post.

Instead, he refrains from using anatomy to identify gender.

"We don’t say a penis belongs to a man," the teacher said. "Someone who was born a boy may not feel they are a boy."

This teacher isn’t the first to discuss such subjects in a classroom setting. Concerns about children’s exposure to inappropriate materials have sparked nationwide discussions about gender identity and its place in education.

In Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis led an effort to forbid teaching sexually-explicit concepts in a k-12 setting. Similarly, states like Texas, South Dakota, and others plan to follow suit.

Not everyone takes issue with giving kids an early start to adult-level concepts like sexual orientation and sexual preference.

In the same article, the Washington Post pointed to another teacher by the name of Sam Long who teaches at Denver South High School. A transgender themselves, Long teaches "LGBTQ identities are a naturally occurring facet of human variation, and that is why we need to learn about them in the context of biology and human anatomy."

As June is Pride Month, discussions about the balance of teaching children about their world and protecting them from concepts beyond their understanding will likely reemerge.