ATLANTA– Republican senators in Georgia want to remove sexually explicit books from schools, ban sex education for younger students, display the Ten Commandments in classrooms and allow religious chaplains to counsel teachers and students.
The measures, adopted in Senate committees on Wednesday, could spark contentious debates ahead of a key legislative deadline next week. Many of them mimic measures passed in other states as part of a broad Republican Party effort to reshape education.
It is not clear whether the bills will be favorably received in Georgia’s traditionally more moderate House. But even if they fail, they will give Republican senators a chance to show their conservative stripes in an election year when some could face significant challenges.
Here’s a look at the measures, each of which will go to the full Senate for consideration:
Public schools would be banned from purchasing materials depicting sexual acts after Dec. 1 under Senate Bill 394, dubbed the “Clean Libraries Act” by its sponsor, Senate Education Committee Chairman Clint Dixon.
“It has to do with the sexual content in books,” said Dixon, a Republican from Buford. “Heterosexual, homosexual, things like that, we don’t want to expose our children to that when they’re underage.”
The measure passed by the Education Committee would ban the distribution of sexual materials to students in sixth grade and below and limit it for seventh grade and above. At least some materials deemed necessary for teaching can be accessed by older students with written parental permission.
The rules would apply to books, videos, sound recordings, websites or other electronic material. “Materials of significant religious or historical significance” may be exempt if they “do not depict sexually explicit material in a patently offensive manner.”
The measure would create a board to set standards and restrict materials.
Senate Bill 154, also passed by the Education Committee, would subject K-12 librarians to criminal penalties if they violate state obscenity laws. Current law exempts public librarians, as well as those who work for public schools, colleges and universities, from penalties for distributing material that meets Georgia’s legal definition of “harmful to minors.”
Under the bill, school librarians can only be punished if they “knowingly” distribute such materials. The sponsor, Republican Sen. Greg Dolezal of Cumming, says Georgia should not have a double standard that allows the prosecution of teachers for obscenity but not librarians down the hall.
The bill was amended to allow librarians to argue that they should be exempt from prosecution if schools check every item in a library for obscenity. Sen. Ed Setzler, the Acworth Republican who introduced the amendment, said the measure “creates an incentive for schools to clean up their libraries.”
School districts could drop sex education and students would only be enrolled if parents specifically opt in under Senate Bill 532, which also passed the Education Committee. Dixon’s measure would ban all sex education in fifth grade and below. It would maintain the requirement for age-appropriate education on sexual abuse, violence and prevention.
“This bill protects our children and deters our children from premature education about sexual topics for children ages 10 to 11 or younger,” said Chelsea Thompson, an attorney for the Christian conservative group Frontline Policy Institute.
Currently, sex education standards require little explicit discussion of human reproduction among eighth-graders, although second-graders are expected to learn the names of all body parts and “appropriate boundaries around physical touch.” Fifth graders are expected to learn about puberty, and most mandatory sex education takes place during a health course in high school.
The bill would require the state Board of Education to set new standards and allow any school district to refuse to teach sex education. Instead of the current opt-out system for parental sex education, it would be an opt-in system.
Public schools could use chaplains under Senate Bill 379, which passed the Government Oversight Committee. Chairman and bill sponsor Marty Harbin, a Tyrone Republican, said chaplains provide an outlet for conversations students feel uncomfortable having with counselors.
“Sometimes we need good, sound advice, or just a friend to talk to. Isolation is a real problem these days,” Harbin said.
The bill would leave it up to school districts to decide whether to hire chaplains or accept volunteers, and to determine chaplains’ qualifications. Democrats raised concerns about chaplains’ qualifications, including whether they are appropriate for schools.
“How are we going to verify that these chaplains are prepared for secular spaces?” said Sen. Nabilah Islam Parks, a Democrat from Duluth.
The Government Oversight Committee also introduced a bill that would ban the spending of public money to the American Library Association. Sen. Larry Walker III, a Republican from Perry, has said Senate Bill 390 is needed because he believes the association is a “radical, left-wing organization.” The move comes among other nationwide efforts by Republicans to cut ties with it.
Walker amended his original bill to have Valdosta State University continue paying for ALA accreditation for its master’s degree in library science after university officials warned that losing the accreditation would devastate the program and drive students out of the state. Walker had also originally proposed eliminating state certification for librarians, but his amended bill shifts certification to the Georgia Council of Public Libraries.
The Government Oversight Committee also introduced a bill that would add the Ten Commandments to the list of historical civic documents that schools are encouraged to display, joining texts such as the Declaration of Independence and the Gettysburg Address.
“To be ignorant of the Ten Commandments is essentially to be uneducated, because they are the basis of all law,” said Harbin, the sponsor of Senate Bill 501.
The measure anchors the text of the Ten Commandments found in the Protestant King James version of the Bible. Other Christian and Jewish texts have different versions.
Harbin said that displaying the precepts would encourage virtue: “These have been largely hidden from us, and from our people, and from our students.”